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Writer: Takunda Muzondiwa Alistair Nwachukwu in A Friend of Dorothy (2025) I Medicine, Law, and Engineering and the Cost of Choosing Otherwise In many African households, the evening meal is loud with warmth. Laughter ricochets between plates of pounded yam, stew soaking into rice, and plantain caramelising at the edges. The room hums with joy but there is one thing Africans do not joke about. Education.  In homes where success is often defined by a narrow set of professions,

Writer: Takunda Muzondiwa Tom Bulpett in Dept. Q (2025) I The Boy Who Tried to Enter the Screen  The double-beat da-doom lands, its sound low and familiar. Then the red N  blooms across the screen, swelling like a sun rising too close to the horizon. A child leans closer. Knees pressed into carpet. Fingers curled on the edge of the TV stand. A voice calls from the kitchen, “Back up, it’s bad for your eyes!” He does not move. The glass holds him the way a tide holds a shell, r

Writer: Takunda Muzondiwa A New Years Resolution Guide for Actors Who Want to Enter 2026 Ready I Days That Slip Through Your Hands I miss the ease of summer. In summer, time spills. In winter, time congeals. It sits heavier in the body and demands to be handled. There is a deliberateness that winter demands. There are fewer hours of light and they must be spent on purpose or they disappear.  I’ve been indoors so much that I have become uncomfortably acquainted with how easily

Writer: Takunda Muzondiwa Jazz Jenkins | Akta Photography 3:04am and Other Coordinates of Wanting  It is 3:04 a.m. I have just typed what makes a good showreel  into Google again. I scroll through articles, bookmark tabs I’ll never read, drag Youtube links into a “watch later” folder swollen like an abandoned suitcase. I turn onto my back and stare at the ceiling.  Actors speak of showreels the way sailors used to speak of maps: a precious guide to a place they have never bee

Writer: Takunda Muzondiwa I The Hunger We Do Not Confess To We do not speak of it aloud. The wanting. The impatience. It sits behind the ribs like something half-hatched, warm and fidgeting, refusing us rest. We walk through the West End the way thirsty people pass fountains—pretending we’re just out for air while our insides press up against our skin, craning for a taste. The pavements glitter with last night's rain and every theatre door looks like a portal when we stare lo

Writer: Takunda Muzondiwa Joe Tracini on Mental Health and the Art of Being Bruised and Beautiful Joe Tracini (Photo: Akta Photography) I An Introduction to Honesty and Vulnerability Rarely is it that someone's work tears you open like a cut fruit left out in the sun, equal parts sweetness and bruise. Joe Tracini’s work does that. It brutalises you in the gentlest way, leaving you tender, aware again of your own fragility. Even more rarely is it that, within the same breath,

To network is to be confronted with yourself in ways rehearsal cannot touch. Auditions expose whether you can act; networking exposes whether you can stomach yourself.

In its simplest definition, casting type refers to the range of roles you are most likely to be considered for, based on your outward qualities; your age range, look, energy, vocal tone, even the way you enter a room. It is an external reading of your essence... These categories are shorthand for marketing departments and casting directors juggling hundreds of submissions, not prophecies to be carved into your bones.

Writer: Takunda Muzondiwa I The Mirage of the Overflowing Inbox There are many ways in which my writing of this blog has come to feel confessional. A confession of my obsessive inbox refreshing. My Alice-like descents into rabbit hole forums for tips from others who have come to mistake their scarcity of booking for proof of their failures. I am a ritualistic person. It often begins with opening my email, refreshing, waiting, refreshing again, as if the clicking might summon

When an aspiring actor asks, “Do I need to go to drama school?”, they are not asking about education in the abstract. They are asking whether the doors will still open without that key. They are asking if legitimacy is conferred by a building, a tuition bill, a certificate. Or if it can be self-forged in the fires of lived experience. The short answer is no, one does not need drama school in order to make it. The longer answer (the one that matters) is that the craft demands

If we may, Akta would like to offer a quiet rebellion, or rather a necessary provocation that may see us turned into the black sheep of the family: There is no such thing as acting for screen and acting for stage. There is only acting. Whether you are framed by red velvet curtains or a 35mm prime lens, the work remains the same: courage, commitment, and connection. 

A great performance can survive a wrinkly backdrop or an iPhone camera. But it cannot survive being undercooked. So spend your time where it counts. Go to class. Get messy. The dish you send to an agent should make them stop what they’re doing. It should interrupt their day. That’s what you’re aiming for. Because that’s what makes them sign you. Not the music. Not the menu. Not the polished email. The taste. The heat. The thing they still can’t stop thinking about hours later