HAVING a production scheduled around you is one feature of having arrived as an actor, but Jason Eddy is departing immediately, back to school, where he will not be able to audition elsewhere for the duration of his course.

This is less of a problem when the course is at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama, but the 20-year-old is still making the most of this summer, fitting in the second performance of this year's "Emancipation Play" just days before he leaves for London.

And he is definitely continuing his "people-watching".

"I do watch people. I think that's the best thing an actor can do, just watching people when they don't think they're being watched. You get the most natural response.

"It's hard, when people find out I'm an actor," he admitted. "They're afraid I'm not genuine."

Both Guildhall and the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York - where he spent two years training - discourage outside work but, far from starving students of limelight, Mr. Eddy said Guildhall prepared young actors to be professionals with very high expectations.

"The majority of (Guildhall) students have an agent before graduation," he said, "and once you graduate, you are automatically a member of Equity (the actors' union)."

He will also be training under Patsy Rodenburg - "Olympia Dukakis' acting coach!" - who heard his Shakespeare piece in the audition.

Aside from the expected "classics", the curriculum worked the actors' voices as well as their bodies, he said.

"I'm expecting to study a lot. My friends laugh at me, because, apparently, I'm very bad at impersonations," he admitted.

"It depends who I talk to. I pick up accents very quickly.

"The physical side also comes with observation: where the centre of gravity is and certain movements. It's amazing how one physical change can change a character. The curriculum has different courses, including stage combat and acrobatics."

But before September 14, when his Guildhall Bachelor of Arts degree begins, Mr. Eddy will have one night playing Peter in the Emancipation Play, repeated from Cup Match weekend.

The drama, played out as a chess game, is directed by Dr. Gary Burgess, and is one of the few parts Mr. Eddy has taken since he started his acting education two years ago.

Despite teasingly quoting his schools' definition of other directors as "outside influences", Mr Eddy praised Dr Burgess's direction: "Gary let us approach the characters in our own way.

"Peter is one of several slaves accused of planning a rebellion in 1761.

"Allegedly!" he added, dramatically. "I'm innocent. I'm not involved at all, just thrown in jail. I don't understand what's going on."

Asked - as a test of his confidence in his acting - whether it was difficult to declare "I don't know what's going on!" when we have all seen guilty people say that so often on television, he laughed.

"I guess I am a pretty good liar!"

The drama A Celebration of the Emancipation of Slaves in Bermuda, August 1, 1834, takes place in King's Square, St .George's, on September 1 at 8 p.m.