Your first summer you will also take a course in Viewpoints and Composition work, which will lay the groundwork for developing devised pieces and group script creation.
In your second summer, you will receive guided instruction in how to manage your professional portfolio. This course, Performance as Profession, is a practical nuts and bolts approach to being your own CEO—how to select headshots, how to evaluate audition opportunities, make a demo reel, prepare your professional resume, and make a living as a professional actor.
You will take a course in Advanced Performance Techniques, which is an intensive overview of acting styles, including mask work and improvisation. You will also take a course in performing for other media, which is done in collaboration with an advanced playwriting workshop called Writing for Other Media. Performers will be given instruction in acting for the camera and collaborate with the playwrights on the creation and filming of an original six-part web series that will be uploaded to our YouTube channel.
Each summer, the most important course you will take is a two-credit hour class called Ensembles in Collaboration. The class is built around participating as an actor in our annual Playwrights Festival. Each year we select 10 production ready plays from the full body of work of all of our M.F.A. playwriting students. Those 10 plays are given staged readings at the end of the summer in front of an audience of fellow students, faculty, the general public, and industry professionals we have flown in from all over the country. In the past we have had playwrights like Naomi Wallace, the lead drama critic for the Chicago Tribune, artistic directors, publishers, designers, actors, agents, and other theatre disciplines. It is an excellent opportunity to see and be seen! All our performance students audition for the readings and are cast by the playwright and director teams. We need to balance academic and creative work so each reading is allowed no more than seven total hours of rehearsal and actors can be in no more than two readings. Your work in those readings is part of your grade in the Ensembles in Collaboration course. At the beginning of each week, you’ll discuss with all of the other cohort performers how things are going with your director and playwright teams, problems you are having in working on the text, and how to find strategies based on best practices to solve those problems. Your instructor will give you feedback on your work and help with strategies to build a tight ensemble in rehearsal.