Graduate Acting (ACTG-GT)

Students gain hands-on experience in areas such as costuming, lighting, sound, props and deck work. Because theatre making is profoundly collaborative and students come to the program with a range of experiences, this class deepens their understanding of the technical and design elements that bring a production to life, connects them with the year 3 cohort and their process, develops important empathy and appreciation for design and technical collaborators, and fosters better collaboration and insight into the field as their own training progresses.

Students gain hands-on experience in areas such as costuming, lighting, sound, props and deck work. Because theatre making is profoundly collaborative and students come to the program with a range of experiences, this class deepens their understanding of the technical and design elements that bring a production to life, connects them with the year 3 cohort and their process, develops important empathy and appreciation for design and technical collaborators, and fosters better collaboration and insight into the field as their own training progresses.

Year 1 Acting Discipline. In your first year, we are primarily concerned with an invigorating mix of large playful release and minutely and rigorously observed behaviors. You spend time getting to know how your body (including your voice), imagination, and new capacity for expression are released through addressing tension/muscular holding and deepening your curiosity.

Year 1 Acting Discipline. In your first year, we are primarily concerned with an invigorating mix of large playful release and minutely and rigorously observed behaviors. You spend time getting to know how your body (including your voice), imagination, and new capacity for expression are released through addressing tension/muscular holding and deepening your curiosity.

Year 1 Movement Discipline. The first year is geared toward observation, imagination and listening. The work centers around situations that demand giving over to the essential rhythms and desires of animals then creating characters that embody the physical and intellectual research. Mask work allows a person to explore their own inherent physical expressivity and develop methods of adapting that behavioral movement. We use a series of exercises specifically meant to demand a continuous full-body engagement in the work. The result is an improved awareness of habitual patterns in engaging with ensembles, partner(s), and text, a courageous physical engagement to meet any demand, and an expanded knowledge and curiosity about how to widen your palate of available actions.

Year 1 Movement Discipline. The first year is geared toward observation, imagination and listening. The work centers around situations that demand giving over to the essential rhythms and desires of animals then creating characters that embody the physical and intellectual research. Mask work allows a person to explore their own inherent physical expressivity and develop methods of adapting that behavioral movement. We use a series of exercises specifically meant to demand a continuous full-body engagement in the work. The result is an improved awareness of habitual patterns in engaging with ensembles, partner(s), and text, a courageous physical engagement to meet any demand, and an expanded knowledge and curiosity about how to widen your palate of available actions.

Year 1 Voice & Speech Discipline. We work from the premise that behavior and sound is an extension of the character's experience. That sound, when not manipulated by preconceived ideas or the actor's habitual tendencies, will carry on the character's inner expression. Actors gain awareness of their articulators and learn anatomy of the vocal tract as well as International Phonetic Alphabet through physical and vocal exercises. Through a process of awareness, exploration and choice the actors build the skills necessary to acquire different accents and dialects. Particular attention is paid to the skills necessary to work in big theatrical spaces.

Year 1 Voice & Speech Discipline. We work from the premise that behavior and sound is an extension of the character's experience. That sound, when not manipulated by preconceived ideas or the actor's habitual tendencies, will carry on the character's inner expression. Actors gain awareness of their articulators and learn anatomy of the vocal tract as well as International Phonetic Alphabet through physical and vocal exercises. Through a process of awareness, exploration and choice the actors build the skills necessary to acquire different accents and dialects. Particular attention is paid to the skills necessary to work in big theatrical spaces.

Year 2 Acting Discipline. Focuses on the actor’s synthesis of skills including vocal technique, physical presence, dramaturgical analysis, and bold creative choice making, placing a particular focus on cultivating fearlessness in the actor, and instilling in the actor a habitual capacity to challenge and push themselves, deepening the roles that joy, discovery, and growth play in the actor’s individual creative process. Using a range of content that is not genre-specific but chosen in the context of each actor’s individual journey, this course deepens the actor’s awareness of themselves and their creative process and cultivates their capacity to engage in bolder and more challenging performance choices.

Spring Year 2 Acting Discipline. The second semester of your second year of actor training begins with a focus on language. By engaging with the writing of Shaw and Shakespeare, paralleled with contemporary playwrights such as James Baldwin and Ahad Akhtar, you will begin to take full ownership of dense and challenging text; learning how to make it personal, specific and active. We are concerned with meshing craft with the “passion of ideas.” That is - dense text can be brilliantly crafted, beautifully personal and have a heightened sense of truth and meaning that transforms the written word on a page into a vivid and universal experience.

Year 2 Movement Discipline: The second year focuses on styles of theater such as Commedia Dell 'Arte and Melodrama. We will study the psycho-physical layering of persona, shadow and archetype of a character, while using the observational tools learned in Toolbox, and the breathing patterns and accents learned in the voice classes. Course will also cover various forms of partner dance to develop the skills needed to learn choreography, understand dance vocabulary, and study how to move with a partner, as well as Combat to establish a strong foundation of skills that will be used in productions during your time in the program and in your professional career.

Year 2 Movement Discipline: The second year focuses on styles of theater such as Commedia Dell 'Arte and Melodrama. We will study the psycho-physical layering of persona, shadow and archetype of a character, while using the observational tools learned in Toolbox, and the breathing patterns and accents learned in the voice classes. Course will also cover various forms of partner dance to develop the skills needed to learn choreography, understand dance vocabulary, and study how to move with a partner, as well as Combat to establish a strong foundation of skills that will be used in productions during your time in the program and in your professional career.

Fall Year 2 Voice and Speech Discipline: Second year builds on the skills of awareness, anatomy, phonetics, and flexibility acquired in first year and delves deeper into the study of character idiolect and accents. Speech is investigated as a means to transformational acting. Students study a myriad of different speech patterns and accents using the International Phonetic Alphabet, vocal tract posture, prosody, flow of sound, and over all physicality of the speaker. We play in a palate of exercises that help identify where the body/mind tends toward tension and contraction in order to protect itself through habitual unconscious behavior. This year includes a Cabaret performance, so there is also focus on the physical elements of sung storytelling. In the second semester, students are encouraged to work on material that is contemporary.

Spring Year 2 Voice and Speech Discipline: Students have the opportunity, through work on a character, to develop a vocal choice that fits the natural progression of their rehearsal process. A more in depth process with text and memorization is worked. As well, a full investigation of how the choices of character will start to affect the vocal use of the character. Finally we begin to run the scenes with all the dynamics of play-like conditions in order to challenge the actor to maintain their learnt vocal use with the demands of the scene and performance in general.

This course shifts from a focus on the actor's process to the actor's relationship to and interaction with the profession. Through work on scenes, monologues, and audition sides students learn how to work with a variety of texts that they will encounter immediately upon graduation. Focused on practical experience, students work with Agents, Managers, Casting Directors, professional directors, and playwrights to build individual experiential learning components and through production practice. The course work also includes going outside of the program to work with casting offices such as ABC Casting and Lincoln Center Casting, through which they gain valuable professional experience for auditions, on-camera and for theatre.

Year 3 Acting Discipline: This course shifts from a focus on the actor's process to the actor's relationship to and interaction with the profession. Through work on scenes, monologues, and audition sides students learn how to work with a variety of texts that they will encounter immediately upon graduation. Focused on practical experience, students work with Agents, Managers, Casting Directors, professional directors, and playwrights to build individual experiential learning components and through production practice. The course work also includes going outside of the program to work with casting offices such as ABC Casting and Lincoln Center Casting, through which they gain valuable professional experience for auditions, on-camera and for theatre.

Year 3 Movement Discipline: Integration of the Alexander Technique as a support for all of your work, and as a preparation for the transition to the professional world. Clown work will explore the heights of boundless joy, the far reaches of despair, and everything in-between, all of which are fodder for the comedy and pathos the clowns bring to whatever world they inhabit. Dance work will build upon a classic jazz format that will expand your knowledge of movement terminology and dance vocabulary to enhance physical storytelling.

Year 3 Movement Discipline: Integration of the Alexander Technique as a support for all of your work, and as a preparation for the transition to the professional world. Clown work will explore the heights of boundless joy, the far reaches of despair, and everything in-between, all of which are fodder for the comedy and pathos the clowns bring to whatever world they inhabit. Dance work will build upon a classic jazz format that will expand your knowledge of movement terminology and dance vocabulary to enhance physical storytelling.

Year 3 Voice and Speech Discipline: Focus on the art of full integration and application. Begin working on bigger sound in bigger spaces and theaters - the focus here is to keep the integrity of intention in the voice while fulfilling the demands of bigger spaces. While students have an acting on-camera class, the vocal version of this concentration explores how breath and voice are used differently in film work vs. live theatre. Techniques of Voice are taught include exercises to clarify ideas, to sustain thoughts, to build speeches, to express contrasting or parenthetical ideas, and to convey a point of view. Musical Theatre is integrated as students are given solos and duets taken from the best material in musical comedy (from songwriters such as Cole Porter to Mel Brooks; shows such as On The Town to Spamalot) and learn the technical skills of characterization, timing, risk-taking and listening to a partner.

Year 3 Voice and Speech Discipline: Focus on the art of full integration and application. Begin working on bigger sound in bigger spaces and theaters - the focus here is to keep the integrity of intention in the voice while fulfilling the demands of bigger spaces. While students have an acting on-camera class, the vocal version of this concentration explores how breath and voice are used differently in film work vs. live theatre. Techniques of Voice are taught include exercises to clarify ideas, to sustain thoughts, to build speeches, to express contrasting or parenthetical ideas, and to convey a point of view. Musical Theatre is integrated as students are given solos and duets taken from the best material in musical comedy (from songwriters such as Cole Porter to Mel Brooks; shows such as On The Town to Spamalot) and learn the technical skills of characterization, timing, risk-taking and listening to a partner.