Slauson Rec, a Brutal Immersion in an Unorthodox Theatre School
Director Leo Lewis O’Neil has spent three years following a group of actors from a free theatre school founded in 2018 by the actor and director Shia LaBeouf. Slauson Rec — named after a rehearsal space in South Central, Los Angeles — is being presented in the Cannes Classics Selection, and it documents an increasingly intense creative ferment that is entirely led by Shia LaBeouf, who pushes some of the participants to their absolute limits.
Slauson Rec, director Leo Lewis O’Neil’s debut film, is a raw documentary, shot with a handheld camera over a long series of extremely intense theatre rehearsals. The filmmaker, who was himself involved in this adventure, offers a personal perspective on the experience and its participants, who he refers to as his “family”. His viewpoint swings between admiration and condemnation of this acting school’s founder, Hollywood actor Shia LaBeouf. LaBeouf never tries to hide or gloss over the flaws in his teaching method, and its brutality towards his students is filmed as it happens, in several sequences marked by moments of intense crisis and breakdown.
“From day one, Shia encouraged me to tell this story in my own way. He never told me what to film or how to edit the film.”
— Leo Lewis O’Neil
Slauson Rec falls somewhere between an individual portrait and a collaborative chronicle, delicately tracing the central role played in this creative process by Shia LaBeouf, where art is seen as a means of personal transcendence. From this viewpoint, the film also raises questions about the need to suffer for art, and the power that art can have over suffering.
Editor in Chief of Ikon London Magazine, journalist, film producer and founder of The DAFTA Film Awards (The DAFTAs).