Second Year Acting Training

Second Year Acting Training

In the second year, we focus on more sophisticate concepts and material in all areas of training as we examine the realities of the professional theatre industry.  We explore audition techniques and the business of being a marketable actor, and we produce two full length public productions cast solely with second year acting students.

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Acting 2

  • Implement the tools of the first year training and apply to plays of various periods and styles.
  • Style works focuses on scenes from Chekhov and Shaw and the speeches of Greek Messengers.
  • Examine the use of intention/obstacle in plays of heightened language.
  • Explore the work of contemporary playwrights in scene study.

Movement 2

  • Focuses on the fundamentals of physical conditioning including flexibility and alignment with exercises from yoga, Pilates and modern dance.
  • Explores the basic understanding and control of the body.
  • Prepares for contact improvisation through spatial and group awareness, tumbling and lift skills, and choreographic technique.
  • Incorporates a clowning unit with improvisation, guided exercise and collectively generated performance

Combat

  • Encompasses the skills required for executing violence on the stage in a safe artistic manner.
  • Covers unarmed combat and single rapier, and may include broadsword, quarterstaff, rapier and dagger.

Musical Theatre Dance Styles

  • Continues dance training through musical theatre study.
  • Apply ballet technique to combinations based on the styles of choreographers in musical theatre from 1930s to the present.
  • Supports this work through warm up, across the floor work, and learning combinations.
  • Emphasizes the rapid acquisition and retention of combinations for dance auditions.

Shakespeare 2

  • Develop advanced skills in textual analysis by focused work on a single Shakespearean text.
  • Expand and hone mastery of rhetorical devices, scansion, rhythm, personalization of imagery and activation of language.
  • Students investigate through soliloquies and scene work.

Voice & Speech 2

  • Build stamina, resonance, and breath-energy through the techniques of Rodenberg, Fitzmorris and Lessac.
  • Directly activate the voice from physical and emotional impulse to achieve greater freedom and power.
  • Hone Muscles of speech through poetry, verse, logic and rhetoric texts and striving for clarity, color and sensitivity to language nuance.
  • Acquisition of dialects.

Singing Techniques

  • Emphasizes individual coaching for the singing actor.
  • Utilizes and explores Alexander Technique, Carl Stough Breathing Coordination.
  • Works to clear unnecessary habits of tension.
  • Draws on a variety of musical theatre styles to encourage open channels within the body/voice to move freely, powerfully and expressively.

Audition Techniques & the Business of Being an Actor

  • Explores audition techniques for theatre, musical theatre, callbacks, and university/graduate school auditions using the book No Caution! by Erik Stein.
  • Investigates the business elements in the acting professional’s life.
  • Work includes mock auditions and callbacks, communication with theatre companies and industry professionals.
  • Workshops and guest speakers are a part of this feature.
  • Learn to ask for what you want and how to build relationships with decision makers.