Year 3

Through a combination of workshops with guest experts in the stage combat field, this curriculum focuses on establishing a strong foundation of skills that will be used in productions during your time in the program and in your professional career. Some of those skills include, but are not limited to fisticuffs, the Renaissance rapier techniques, basic stick fighting for actors, martial arts, and staging scenes that require the use of weapons.

Tutorials continue to integrate the Technique as a support for all of your work, and as a preparation for the transition to the professional world.

Meet Kim Jessor

Here we pick up where we left off with Shakespeare’s Clowns in Year One. By now you have built the foundation of the clown work we’ll be doing together; a deep connection to your joy as a performer which in turn gives way to what we described as the assumption of your own brilliance. In here we'll take what we've learned from Trinculo, the Porter, Launce and other clowns and jump off a cliff with it, trusting that somewhere down there is a net ready to catch us. We'll 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.

Over the course of this class you'll go through the insane, grotesque, sublime, delicate process of creating your own red-nosed clown and will likely come to view that clown as an explorer. One of the bravest, most terrified, most terrifying, ridiculous explorers of the corners of our lives that many stopped shining lights into years ago.

Meet Kevin Isola 

The first semester third year is focused on the art of full integration and application. We increase the load the brain must deal with, both physically and mentally while attempting to stay as tension free and expansive as possible in the breath and voice. We 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. We meet for private tutorials in order to tweak any adjustments that need be made and emerge with a few daily exercises to focus on for the individual's unique needs.

During this semester, there is also a concentration with on-camera film and TV work. 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.  We work very specifically in this area so the student is left with an understanding of what are the nuances that tend to hold an audience’s attention from a vocal standpoint.

During this final semester we meet less frequently and more in the realm of coaching. By this time, you have created your way of working and little attention is given to altering the choices you've made. The focus is more on pure coaching, a more sterile approach you might receive out in the professional world. Simple adjustments, specific direction - often given for the sole purpose of seeing if you are supple enough to adjust accordingly; we work exclusively in a large theater space and concentrate on deeper (more physically challenging) and more athletic warm-ups.  All this work morphs nicely into coaching on the showcase scenes, by this time we’ve built a shorthand which requires very little effort and comes with great ease.

Meet Scott Miller

In the Techniques of Voice and Text classes, my goal is to develop the actors' voices so that they are flexible, versatile and strong. The techniques that 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. In Year Three, all of the technical exercises are connected to their acting training when each student works on monologues from Shakespeare's plays. We work to combine acting with the voice work and with the techniques they have learned. This work is definitely advanced and the students are ready for this step and eager to embrace it. Although these exercises use Shakespeare, everything they learn can be applied to anything from a voice over, to a TV sitcom script, to a monologue from, August Wilson or Chekov, to a film script.

Meet Shane-Ann Younts

This is a unique class, which combines skills learned during Years One and Two (singing, phrasing, character, style) and brings them together by exploring the fearless, presentational, often outrageous world of musical comedy. Deb Lapidus and Larry Maslon collaborate, drawing on their respective backgrounds (singing and history of musical theater). 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. Even students who aren’t gearing toward a career in the musical theater field learn about filling an outsize role and committing to large idea in a presentational style. Frequently, the students present their work informally to the rest of the school at the end of the semester.

Meet Larurence Maslon

Meet T. Oliver Reid

Meet Laurence Yurman

Scenes in the first slot of this semester are tailored to each actor’s individual needs at this point in the training. Scene assignment is specific and diagnostic, chosen to stretch the actor in those areas where attention is most required; some of these might include language, transformation, size, or an open expressiveness through heart, mind or body.

After being stretched in every way imaginable, we bring you back to yourselves. The final scenes you are assigned are chosen from the current New York Broadway, Off-Broadway, Downtown seasons, and you are cast to type, playing the kinds of roles in contemporary plays you will be stepping into once you graduate. You have come full circle.

Meet Janet Zarish

This class, unique to students of the Graduate Acting Program, involves the basic vocabulary of collaboration among actors, writers, directors, and designers on new material. Students attend a weekly session under the guidance of Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, which folds in students of the Dramatic Writing Program of NYU, supervised by Suzan-Lori Parks. New works are created, changed, evolved, and critiqued in a workshop environment and working relationships are forged.

Meet Oskar Eustis

Meet Suzan-Lori Parks

Meet Scott Illingworth

Over the course of the third year, you will learn techniques for all types of auditions from experts in the field which include many of the Casting Directors you will be auditioning for in your professional career. You will have workshops on audition techniques (self-tapes, live, on-camera) with casting directors from ABC, CBS, Caparelliotis Casting, Hart Casting, The Public Theatre, Findley Davidson Casting, as well as a workshop on the Krakower Technique, and many more.

In the Spring semester of the third year, the Career Class is designed to prepare students to enter the profession. The curriculum includes panels with Agents, Managers and Casting Directors (both theatrical, film/tv, voice over and commercial), as well as work with professional theaters such as Lincoln Center to gain professional audition experience. In addition, we hold working sessions with professional film and television Directors and Casting Directors. The course's professional collaborators include Telsey & Co., Daniel Swee (Lincoln Center) and many more.