It’s taken me a while to write this newsletter. Again.

At this point, leaving slightly longer and longer gaps between newsletters seems to have become part of my creative process. Or avoidance pattern. Difficult to know which. Probably both.

I think part of it is that I’m still trying to understand my place in this industry and what I actually want these newsletters to be. Approaching them purely as sales pitches has always felt slightly inauthentic to me, even though, ironically, every time I finally send one out, people book sessions, workshops fill, actors reach out and work happens.

But the thing I’ve started realising is that the newsletters aren’t really just about that. Its the fact that people reply to them.

Some people I’ve never met send incredibly thoughtful responses about something that resonated with them. People I know pop up to say hello. Old friends I haven’t heard from in years suddenly appear in my inbox with life updates. Sometimes actors tell me an article helped them understand something differently about themselves or their work. Sometimes someone simply replies with “Bloody Hell, Dom, are you okay?” after one of my more emotionally packed articles.

These responses make me feel a lot more connected to what I do. And connection is probably what I’m actually searching for underneath all of this. Although, no pressure to hit ‘reply’ as soon as you’ve read this.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about oppression and shame. Not just politically or systemically, though obviously the world currently feels like it’s running on cortisol and unresolved trauma. More the quieter ways these things get inside us. The ways we adapt ourselves in order to belong. The ways fear slowly becomes personality if we’re not careful.

I’ve noticed it in myself lately.

Watching communities tear chunks out of one another online. Watching people become more rigid, more certain, more frightened. Even in my own local area there’s currently a genuinely surreal battle happening between people putting flags up and people tearing them down. Entire village Facebook groups spiralling into fury while everyone involved believes they are definitely the calm and reasonable one.

But therapy and pivotally, my training, has also been making me look more honestly at myself too. How I have started to connect to a truer part of myself, and if I had found this part of me sooner, how my trajectory as an actor, coach, therapist, human would have been different.

This month’s main article explores all of this through acting training, Transactional Analysis, Meisner work and the strange seduction of becoming “normal.” Or at least whatever the world and industry tends to mean by normal, which often suspiciously resembles “less visibly yourself.” It’s a long one, so grab a cuppa.

Thankfully, alongside all the existential spiralling, life has also contained some genuinely joyful things recently.

I’ve returned from an incredible time coaching on set in San Francisco with a wonderfully warm collaborative film crew involving inflatable flamingos, grief, laughter and coastal walks. I’m also getting very excited about the upcoming Berlin Meisner intensives this summer, continuing online coaching work, and celebrating Amar Chaggar absolutely smashing it onscreen recently.

So this newsletter contains all of it really:
Therapy, acting, ‘normality’, humour, California sunshine, client premieres, and me trying to make sense of being human in increasingly inhuman times. Oh, yeah, and I now have a tash ( ˙灬˙ )

Thanks, as always, for being here for the conversation.

Love,
Dom

X

San Francisco, Grief and Inflatable Flamingos

I’ve just returned from an incredible few weeks coaching on set in San Francisco on a beautiful indie film exploring grief, family and connection with real tenderness, humour and eccentricity.

What struck me immediately was the atmosphere created by the production. The set was inclusive, collaborative and deeply warm. The crew were a gorgeous mix of queer, female and Fillipino - there was a humility and openness that felt very different from the hyper-masculine energy that can sometimes dominate film sets. People listened to one another. There was care. There was trust. There were jokes. There was also, importantly, a giant inflatable unicorn and flamingo accompanying us through much of the shoot like emotional support animals.

The film itself balances profound grief with quirk, absurdity and humour - I can’t wait to see it.

I’d been coaching the wonderful Yadao twins, Irene and Lisa, online for around four months before the shoot, so finally getting to work with them in person was genuinely a pleasure and an honour. Watching actors bring months of exploration into a living, breathing environment is always special (especially since they hadn’t acted since high school), and this experience felt particularly joyful since these ladies are not only a producing, directing, writing, acting power couple, but they also know how to create a magically nurturing set too. By the end of the process, they no longer simply felt like clients or collaborators, but new firm friends.

Add California sunshine, walks by the coast, Mexican food and getting to spend time with one of my closest friends, and it was a much needed reminder of how much collaboration and creativity fills my heart.

You can follow the film on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/dyingmoonfilm

Huge Congratulations to Amar Chaggar

It’s been a real joy recently watching Amar Chaggar absolutely explode onto screens lately, including a brilliant appearance in Casualty alongside his lead role in his recent film work in Never Had a Chance.

I helped Amar prepare both roles, and seeing the results of his dedication, openness and hard work landing so powerfully onscreen has been incredibly rewarding.

What I admire most about Amar is his willingness to keep digging deeper, staying curious and continuing to challenge himself rather than settling into easy choices. There’s a real emotional intelligence and playfulness in his work that audiences are clearly connecting with. The feedback from the screening I went to was unanimous in their respect for his layered work with the character.

One of the genuine privileges of coaching is getting to witness actors grow into their own anutonomy and presence over time. Massive congratulations to Amar. I’m excited to continue our journey together.

You can catch Never Had a Chance soon on cinemas. I thoroughly enjoyed it,

I have a few spaces opening up for new therapy clients.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, anxious, disconnected, or repeating patterns in your relationships or career that you don’t fully understand, therapy can offer a place to slow down and make sense of it.

I work relationally, drawing on Transactional Analysis, to help you explore why certain struggles persist, whether that’s anxiety, self worth, conflict, creative blocks, or a general sense of not quite fitting in your own life.

Contact me for a free 20 minute consultation so we can see whether working together feels like a good fit.

A recent client described the best thing about their therapy as my “ability to be sensitive, emotional and curious at the same time.” I don’t take that lightly. For me, therapy is about thoughtful attention, not quick fixes.

If you’re curious about beginning, you’re welcome to get in touch.

Either reply to this newsletter, or find me online at www.dominickellytherapy.com

Berlin Meisner Intensive 2026

This summer I’ll be back in Berlin for our Meisner intensive and I can’t wait.

Berlin has become one of my favourite places to teach this work. There’s something about the city’s openness, creativity and urban chaos that pairs very well with Meisner. People arrive nervous, curious and often a bit overthinking-y, and leave more connected, spontaneous and alive in their work.

This year the training is split into two parts:

Foundation Workshop
24th - 27th July

Perfect for actors wanting to begin their Meisner journey, deepen and reconnect to spontaneity and truthful connection, or finally understand what everyone keeps talking about when they talk about Rep.

Advanced Workshop
30th July - 2nd August

For actors wanting to continue developing their Meisner practice more deeply, expanding emotional range, behavioural truth and moment-to-moment responsiveness.

Both workshops can also be booked together, with two days off in between to explore Berlin, recover your nervous system slightly, eat yummy food and recharge..

The workshops are taught in English, but there are also opportunities to work in German throughout the intensive, so anyone with an understanding of English is very welcome to attend.

Whether you’re completely new to the work, returning after time away or continuing your training, the intensive is designed to challenge and support you simultaneously in a collaborative, playful and emotionally honest environment.

There’s an Early Bird offer running until 12th June, so get in quick!

For more information or to book, DM  Meisner Fabric, or email for costs and further information.

Contact our Instagram
@themeisnerfabric or by email: themeisnerfabric@gmail.com

“Sooo great. I missed this work with Dom so much” - @millulact

"One singular sensation, every little step she takes..."

I've never really thought much about the lyrics of the opening number from A Chorus Line. I just liked the tune. What always caught my attention was the visual: a line of dancers moving with precision, each one hitting the choreo with the same rhythm, the same beat. It's only recently that I noticed the contradiction in the lyrics - distracted as I was by their sparkly outfits and top hats.

The song celebrates individuality. They sing of one singular sensation, one extraordinary person, one unique talent. Yet the visual image is a chorus line. A group of people dressed similarly, moving together as a single unit. The success of a chorus line depends on nobody standing out. If one dancer starts doing their own thing, is out of beat, the illusion breaks. The line works because everybody agrees, consciously or unconsciously, to surrender their individuality.

The more I sit with that contradiction, the more it feels familiar. We live in a culture that celebrates uniqueness while quietly (and not so quietly) rewards conformity. We encourage children to be themselves, then spend years teaching them which parts of themselves are acceptable, and which parts less so. We praise authenticity, but often only when it arrives in a form we feel comfortable with. We allow difference, provided it isn't too different.

Perhaps that's why the image stayed with me. It captures something I've spent much of my life wrestling with, both as an actor and as a person. The tension between belonging and individuality. The desire to be accepted, and the subtle (and not so subtle) ways we learn to edit ourselves in order to achieve it.

Of course, nobody sits us down and explicitly tells us to be 'normal'. Well, not usually.

The process can be far more subtle. We pick it up through thousands of tiny interactions. A look that follows a curious question about the world. A scoff when you protect an insect. An eyebrow lifting when you choose a less masculine toy. A teacher praising one child while dismissing another. A friend being invited to a party that you're not.

Before long, we begin drawing conclusions.

Maybe I'm too sensitive.

Maybe I'm too loud.

Maybe I'm too emotional.

Maybe I'm too feminine.

Maybe I'm too masculine.

Maybe I should keep that part to myself.

The details differ, but the process is remarkably similar. We look around and start comparing ourselves to whatever version of "normal" our environment values. Then we begin making adjustments to our behaviour. These adjustments happen so gradually we barely notice them. We don't experience them as inauthentic choices. They feel practical. Sensible, even.

I remember choosing Transformers and He-Man figures whenever my traditional grandparents offered to buy me a toy. Left to my own devices I'd have happily wandered off with Fraggles or Disney teddies instead. Somewhere along the way I'd worked out that one choice would help me belong more than the other.

Human beings are wired for belonging. If changing a few things about ourselves helps us stay connected to our family, our peers or our wider community, why wouldn't we?

The problem is that adaptation can become a habit. What begins as a survival strategy can slowly become our identity. After a while, it’s difficult to tell where our performance ends and our personality begins.

I spent years believing other people were simply better at performing normality than I was. I was surrounded by boys who were better boys than I was. I avoided football at break times and instead played with the infants, or reenacted Labyrinth with Carly and Paula, who had also fled their nemesis - the pony crew who galloped up and down the netball pitch.

Growing up gay in a rural area was horrific. However, there was no dramatic moment when somebody sat me down and told me there was something wrong with me. It was far more disguised than that.

I absorbed countless messages about what boys were supposed to be, what men were supposed to want, and how masculinity was supposed to look. This was the era of Schwarzenegger action movies, machine guns the size of small cars, and playground games of ‘Armies’ where boys ran around shooting each other and pretending to be soldiers. The girls, unsurprisingly, were nurses.

I never quite knew where I fitted into that world.

Unable to imagine myself as either soldier or nurse, I somehow invented a rescue dog. Looking back, I suspect I'd have preferred to skip the whole game altogether and climb a tree on my own.

By comparison, parts of me, perhaps most of me, felt out of place.

I became increasingly skilled at reading the room and adjusting accordingly. Like many people who feel different, I developed a kind of social radar. I could usually tell what version of myself would be most acceptable in a given environment.

The trouble is that when you spend long enough adapting, you can lose sight of what you actually think, feel or want. You become so busy managing other people's comfort and securing their approval that your own authenticity begins to fade away.

A bit like that photograph in Back to the Future. The one where family members slowly disappear from existence. Except instead of your mum vanishing, it's the parts of yourself that never quite made the cut.

By the time I arrived at drama school, adaptation had become second nature.

Like many young actors, I believed training would help me discover who I was as an artist. In some ways it did. In others, it taught me how much of myself I was prepared to give away in order to succeed.

Some of the messages were subtle. Others weren't.

I was encouraged to neutralise my accent. Physicality-wise, there were persistent implications that expressions of gayness would limit my opportunities. Whether spoken directly or communicated through micro-aggressions, the message landed in the same place: success belonged to people who fitted more comfortably within the industry's idea of normal.

For a long time, I accepted this as the price of admission.

I remember one agent calling me into his office after seeing my headshot. He was irritated because the crop of the 10 x 8 suggested somebody broader, taller - more ‘rugby’ than the short, slim lad person who walked through the door. My CV clearly stated my height and slim build, but he didn’t appreciate me bring that to his awareness. He had already filled in the blanks.

Years later, after hearing similar stories from other actors, I learned that this particular agent had a reputation for filling his calendar meeting with young men he found attractive. The interaction suddenly made more sense.

What stayed with me wasn't his behaviour, problematic as it was - this was many many years before #metoo helped draw attention to this kind of behaviour. It was the realisation that I wasn't being seen for who I actually was. I was being measured against an image that existed in somebody else's imagination.

For years I assumed my difficulty with acting came from me just not being talented enough. What never occurred to me was that the problem might not be my inability to perform, but my inability to perform normality.

The problem was that normality itself felt fake.

Looking back, I think that's why one particular story from A Chorus Line stayed with me all these years.

Diana Morales describes a drama school exercise where the teacher asks the class to imagine they are on a bobsled in the freezing cold, surrounded by snow. Everybody else commits wholeheartedly to the fantasy. Morales feels absolutely nothing.

When left to consider why, she points out that it could be genetic.

They don't have bobsleds in San Juan.

It's a wonderful moment because the audience immediately understands something that the younger Morales doesn't. She tells the story as though she has failed. The audience can see that the teacher has constructed an exercise around an experience that doesn't belong to her world and then treated her inability to access it as evidence against her desire to be an actress.

The older Morales understands the absurdity. The younger Morales simply experiences herself as the problem, because everyone else there felt something.

I suspect many of us do the same thing.

We spend years assuming that our discomfort means there is something wrong with us. We rarely stop to ask whether the system making the judgement deserves the authority we've given it.

Perhaps that's why the story resonated so deeply. It reminded me of how much of my life had been spent trying to become acceptable rather than trying to realise my most authentic self.

Around that time, I encountered the Meisner approach to acting.

Ironically, one of my drama school teachers hated it. When I told him how much it was helping me, he informed me that I'd joined a cult. At the time I laughed it off. Looking back now, I think what attracted me to the work was precisely what made it feel threatening to some people.

Meisner wasn't asking me to become somebody else. It wasn't asking me to be more masculine, more marketable, more confident or more normal. Instead, it asked me to pay attention to what was actually happening.

How did I genuinely feel?

What was I genuinely noticing?

How was I genuinely responding?

That shift sounds deceptively simple, but for somebody who had spent years adapting themselves to fit other people's expectations, it felt quietly revolutionary. For the first time, I wasn't being rewarded for producing the correct response. I was being encouraged to trust my own intuition.

Not because my experience was always right, but because it was mine.

Years later, Transactional Analysis gave me language for something I had already begun to understand intuitively. The Free Child. The Adapted Child. The internal voice that constantly monitors whether we belong.

The more I explored these ideas, the more I realised that adaptation itself wasn't the enemy. Human beings adapt because adaptation helps us survive. The problem comes when survival strategies become identities. When fitting in becomes so important that we lose sight of who is actually getting lost in the process.

At a time when so much public conversation revolves around identity, belonging and difference, I find myself returning to that chorus line.

A group of people singing about individuality while moving in perfect unison.

Perhaps that's the tension many of us are still trying to resolve.

How do we belong without disappearing?

How do we adapt without abandoning ourselves?

And which parts of ourselves have spent years waiting patiently in the wings, hoping to be invited back onto the stage?

Years later, Transactional Analysis gave me language for something I had already begun to understand intuitively. The Free Child - the authentically free intuitive you. The Adapted Child - version of you that sacrificed your authenticity for belonging.

The more I explored these ideas, the more I realised that adaptation itself wasn't the enemy. Human beings adapt because adaptation helps us survive. The problem comes when survival strategies become our identities. When fitting in becomes so important that we lose sight of who we are - and in wider politics, we see this playing out the world over.

One of the things that has become increasingly apparent to me through therapy, acting and becoming an old fart is that the same psychological pressures that encourage us to edit ourselves operate in families, workplaces, communities and entire societies.

We often imagine oppression as something imposed from above, but more often it survives because oppression becomes normal. Ordinary. Familiar. So familiar, in fact, that questioning it starts to feel strange. In fact, it can often result in anger, hostility and violence. I only need to open up my social media to it playing out.

History is littered with examples of things that once felt entirely normal.

The oppression of women was normal.

The criminalisation of homosexuality was normal.

Colonialism was normal.

Segregation was normal.

The list goes on.

Which raises an uncomfortable question. If so many injustices were once considered normal, what does that say about our relationship with wanting to be normal?

When I watch politicians reduce complex situation into slogans, deny observable truths, or encourage us to see the world through increasingly simplistic binaries, I'm struck by how familiar the process feels. Not because I agree with it, but because I recognise it. The pressure to conform. The pressure to belong. The pressure to repeat what our tribe expects us to repeat.

We’ve all watched the horror unfolding in Israel and Palestine. The fact that we have had the loss of lives normalised, and witnessed the atrocities but been gas lit into thinking that these attacks are normal. The normalisation of political figures having zero accountability for their actions. Closer to home, I've watched local arguments become reduced to flags up or flags down, as though complicated histories, identities and experiences can somehow be compressed into a piece of fabric attached to a lamppost - one that bears the sign of a Palestinian saint.

The more I reflect on it, the more suspicious I become of normality itself.

Normal according to whom?

Normal for whose benefit?

Normal in service of what?

Because the same process that teaches a child to hide their difference is the process that teaches societies which differences are acceptable and which are not. The same force that taught me to soften my accent, monitor my mannerisms and edit aspects of my sexuality is present whenever people are encouraged to prioritise belonging over authenticity.

What concerns me is how easily human beings learn to confuse familiarity with truth. How quickly we begin treating the dominant narrative as common sense simply because we've heard it repeated often enough.

Perhaps that is why I keep returning to the image of the chorus line.

A group of people singing about individuality while moving in perfect unison.

Human beings need belonging. We always will. But perhaps the challenge is to belong without losing our self, without surrendering our curiosity. To keep questioning what we've been told is normal.

Oddly enough, I see this tension all the time when working with actors.

For actors, that challenge often shows up in a surprisingly simple question: What do they want?

It's an understandable question. The industry is overcrowded. Competition is fierce. Faced with that reality, many actors instinctively move towards safety. They make sensible choices. Predictable choices. Choices designed not to be wrong.

It reminds me of those shape-sorter toys toddlers play with. The lesson is simple: square goes in the square hole, circle goes in the circle hole, triangle goes in the triangle hole. By adulthood, many of us are still playing the same game. The difference is that we've become convinced that squares get all the jobs. So we spend years trying to file down our corners, flatten our edges and become something we were never born to be.

Yet the actors that move me are rarely the ones who turn up as squares. They are usually the ones who bring something of themselves, unique imperfections, contradictions vulnerabilities. An unexpected choice. A perspective that couldn't have come from anyone else. The irony is that many actors spend years trying to become more employable by sanding off the very edges that might have made them memorable in the first place. That was certainly my experience, and it’s taken years to get my pecadillos back.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that acting isn't separate from the wider themes I've been exploring in this article. Stories have always been how cultures have reinforced what is normal, who belongs, whose voice matters and whose doesn't. Stories can reinforce oppression, but they can also challenge it. They can reduce people to stereotypes, or they can restore complexity. They can encourage us to fear difference, or help us recognise ourselves in somebody whose life looks nothing like our own.

Perhaps that's why I struggle when acting is dismissed as something frivolous or disconnected from the wider world. Every role we play, every story we tell and every perspective we embody contributes, however modestly, to the cultural conversation. As actors, writers and creatives, we are not standing outside these questions. We are participating in them.

Lately, I've found myself thinking about The Empire Strikes Back. It's the darkest chapter of the original Star Wars trilogy. The heroes are scattered. The future looks bleak. The forces of control and domination appear to be winning. There is no triumphant ending. No neat resolution. The film leaves us sitting in uncertainty.

And yet, without that chapter, there is no Return of the Jedi.

Without the confrontation with darkness, there is no transformation. Without the recognition that something is wrong, there is no possibility of imagining something different.

Perhaps that is why I remain hopeful, despite everything. Yes, I see politicians reducing complex realities into slogans. I see cultures slipping into tribalism. I see the persistent pressure to conform, belong and identify with whatever our particular chorus line happens to be singing. But I also see people becoming increasingly hungry for authenticity. Hungry for complexity. Hungry for stories that challenge inherited beliefs rather than simply regurgitating them.

Maybe that's where our work begins.

Make your acting political - by resisting the temptation to flatten yourself and others into something more palatable. By remaining curious. By making room for difference. By refusing to mistake normality for truth. Bring your uniqueness, in order to build a different world.

Perhaps that's why I keep returning to that image of the chorus line. A group of people singing about individuality while moving in perfect unison.

The challenge isn't to reject belonging. The challenge is to belong without losing your self.

To question what we've been told is normal.

And to notice which parts of ourselves, and which parts of other people, have spent years waiting patiently in the wings, hoping to be invited back onto the stage and screen.

Love, Dom

x

Wondering how to work or train with me? Here are the current options:

• Acting 1:1 (Online): Bespoke sessions covering Meisner Technique (repetition, emotional prep, text work), self-tape coaching, new writing, and life coaching.

• Therapy / Counselling (Online): Weekly confidential support to explore emotions, navigate challenges, and build healthier patterns.

• Group Coaching (Online): Small group sessions (up to 4 people) focusing on Meisner scene work, repetition, or text analysis.