102 courses with the subject DRAMA, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
Spring Orlando Pabotoy This course explores the performer’s relationship to the working space, the ensemble, and their own physicality. Actors bring their spirit of playfulness to reach a heightened state of readiness.
per semester Fall and Spring Shana Komitee and Guests Vibrant Legacies in Theater examines many of the world’s most influential theater artists and movements, performance styles, and pieces of dramatic literature ranging across time and space. Topics include Western drama’s origins in 5 th -century BCE Athens, performance cultures in India and Asia, the 19 th -century rise of theatrical realism, the contemporary scene in the United States, and much more.
Fall Orlando Reyes, Valeria Solomonoff Drawing strategies from Argentine tango (lead and follow dynamics), contact improvisation (weight sharing while attending to ease and flow), and Laban movement analysis (relating through space with different degrees of proximity while making aesthetic choices related to formal design and movement quality), this class cultivates connection through the actor’s physicality. Partnering engages the actor’s trust, care, responsibility, attentiveness, initiative, patience, sensitivity, responsiveness, curiosity, and readiness.
Fall Richard Feldman, Jimonn Cole Through a broad spectrum of improvisatory exercises, this course aims to free students from self-consciousness, fear, and pretense, to enhance their powers of concentration, to encourage expression and interaction, and to strengthen their instincts and imagination, thereby allowing them to live onstage more deeply, freely, and truthfully. Over the course of the semester, students will begin to develop a sense of process, including the ability to let go of planning and live in the moment.
Fall Faculty and Visiting Directors Actors collaborate on the Discovery Project, working on a play by Shakespeare. Through close reading of the text and physical improvisation, they discover and embody the story of the play as an ensemble. Next comes Approaching the Play, a six-week course in script and character analysis in which students apply themselves to identifying a play’s theme, structure, and character relationships. By examining the work as a whole, students will be better prepared to approach a specific role and do useful research and homework for rehearsal.
Spring Faculty and Visiting Directors Students are cast in two plays and rehearse them under the guidance of faculty and professional directors. These rehearsal projects are laboratory exercises for exploring an actor’s process and are not aimed toward performance results. Although the work is shared with an audience of fellow students and faculty, they are not “produced,” but rather presented in a room with basic rehearsal clothes, props, and furniture.
.5 credit Spring Jenny Lord This course aims to help students see their training and their art in a larger context — historical, political, and artistic. On a number of evenings, the class as a group attends museums, concerts, or other cultural events in the wider city. Through these encounters, students develop their own perspectives as actors, artists, and citizens.
Spring Elana Bell The focus of this course is to experience the craft of poetry as a reader, writer, and performer. Students will read the work of others, write works of their own, receive feedback, revise, and share these works with their peers and community.
Spring Richard Feldman, Jimonn Cole In this course, students will apply their skills in script analysis and improvisation to work on assigned scenes. Students will practice reading the script for past, present, and anticipated future circumstances. They will gain an understanding of the event of the scene and how that event is part of the overall arc of the play. Students will practice talking and listening, embodying given circumstances, pursuing wants and needs, living through the events of the scene, and allowing themselves to undergo change.
Spring Kathleen McNenny Self to Character charts a psychophysical practice for the actor using the tool of the mask. It is designed to awaken those parts of the self less known to the actor, increasing the artistic palette from which the actor creates. Level I introduces the actor to the Balancing Mask, which brings awareness to the calm, present stillness that exists under all masks. It is the balanced center (Self) from which transformation begins and to which the actor safely returns.
per semester Fall and Spring Charlotte Okie The Alexander Technique is a mind-body method for becoming aware of and changing movement habits. Focus is on the development of awareness of oneself in movement—to recognize and learn how to release excess tension and to change those habits of movement that interfere with the free and centered use of the body. Through a series of experiential exercises, hands-on guidance by the teacher, and selected readings, students will be introduced to basic Alexander concepts, including the principles of awareness, conscious inhibition, and direction.
Fall Dawn Akemi Saito This course includes vigorous physical training to develop muscle, tone, balance, coordination, flexibility, and agility and to increase physical stamina and focused concentration. Exercises will be employed to deepen listening and responding through the body, strengthen the connection between voice and body, increase awareness of oneself in space and in relationship to other bodies, release unnecessary tension to bring ease and empowerment, and explore physical and vocal transformation.
per semester Fall and Spring Darryl Quinton This conditioning and physical training class is designed to develop in students the endurance, physical agility, and mental discipline necessary for an actor. Emphasis is placed on stretching, strengthening, alignment, flexibility, and physical awareness as well as rhythm, phrasing, dynamics, and movement through space. The class will integrate basic concepts from Alexander Technique, Pilates, yoga, isometrics, plyometrics, and various dance genres.
per semester Fall and Spring Michelle DiBucci Music Studies introduces students to a wide spectrum of musical styles and compositional devices with an emphasis on listening to and speaking about music and its connection to all of the arts. The first semester will concentrate on key elements of music, including melody, rhythm, harmony, form, texture, and timbre. The second semester includes work on contemporary song forms, opera, and the origins of African-American music. Throughout the year, actors will have the opportunity to engage with music students and outside musical guests.
per semester Fall and Spring Patrick Mulryan Speech and Dialects I focuses on finding the ease, clarity, and flexibility that will enable the actor to be heard and understood in a rich variety of texts. Students will learn all the sounds in human language, both within and beyond their own personal speech system. Students will identify their own unique idiolect and identify any articulation challenges as they investigate, interrogate, and expand upon their physical capacities for expression. The International Phonetic Alphabet will be used as a tool throughout, as will aural samples and visual representations.
per semester Fall and Spring Kate Wilson Voice and Text I focuses on the principles and practice of respiration, phonation, resonance, and articulation. The course will also explore anatomy, physiology, and the physics of tone as students explore exercises for relaxation, flexibility, capacity, breath control, placement, and the production of sound.
per semester Fall and Spring Derrick Sanders (Fall), Evan Yionoulis (Spring) Work in the fall concentrates on how an actor’s examination of the social, political, historical, and emotional world of the play brings specificity to the portrayal of characters. Through work on 20 th and 21 st -century plays, actors will articulate playable objectives, deepen character investment, sharpen listening, and expand their range. In the second semester, actors will continue to develop their ability to identify, personalize, and embody a character’s given circumstances and need. They will also build on their skills in activating the language of the text in pursuit of the character’s objective. Scenes will include challenging material beyond realism, including heightened text.
Fall Faculty and Visiting Directors Rehearsal projects continue as laboratory exercises for developing the actor’s process and as a measure of a student’s ability to apply and integrate their expanding physical and language skills. Experiences include opportunities to create ensemble pieces as well as to work on plays requiring engagement with more poetic text and deeper character development.
Spring Faculty and Visiting Directors Rehearsal projects continue as laboratory exercises for developing the actor’s process and as a measure of students’ ability to apply and integrate what they’ve learned in class. Among these projects is the opportunity for students to apply their expanding physical and language skills to a play of Shakespeare and to further their attention to physical circumstances and character development through working on a play of Chekhov.
Spring Kathleen McNenny Level II of From Self to Character investigates the complexity of self, using the principles of Lucid Body. Actors work with biological energy centers to identify habitual patterns while encouraging expansion into new areas.
Fall Orlando Pabotoy This course is designed to help students develop a comedic point of view and overcome the anxiety that comes from a sense of an obligation to be funny. Improvisation in a variety of styles is developed with the class as an audience. Emphasis is on the need to approach comedic material with the same process and commitment appropriate to any other acting challenge. The work asks the actor to explore with a curious mind while testing emotional, physical, and imaginative limits.
per semester Fall and Spring Carolyn Serota This course is a continuation of the first year’s exploration of the Alexander Technique with increasing emphasis on the application of its self-awareness tools to the actor’s creative process, transformation into character, and performance skills.
per semester Fall and Spring Vicki Shaghoian, David Gaines This course is designed to develop the actor’s understanding of their authentic voice. Through a series of singing exercises and song assignments, coupled with a study of anatomy, students experience how the mind, body, and breath work in coordination to allow for a natural, fully resonant, fully supported, and fully expressive voice in both speech and song.
per semester Fall and Spring Patrick Mulryan Speech and Dialects II continues the development of each individual actor’s instrument by strengthening articulators and opening up expressive possibilities through dialects and accents. Students will apply the principles of rhetoric and begin working on techniques for tackling texts that employ heightened language. Students will develop an individual practice to maintain flexibility of their instrument and will develop the skills to learn a dialect/accent independently through explorations of Cultural Context, Prosody, Oral Posture, and Pronunciation.
per semester Fall and Spring Ellen Lauren Developed by internationally acclaimed director Tadashi Suzuki, the Suzuki Training Method is a rigorous physical discipline drawn from such diverse influences as ballet, traditional Greek and Japanese theater, and martial arts. This course seeks to heighten the actor’s emotional and physical power and commitment to each moment on stage. Emphasis is placed on the lower body and a vocabulary of footwork, sharpening an actor’s breath control and concentration.
per semester Fall and Spring Andrew Wade Building on the foundations of the voice and text work from the first year, work in this course aims to continue to open each actor’s voice and strengthen technique. Work will address breathing, resonance, muscularity with text, and the relationship between “form” and meaning.
Fall Mark Olsen This class introduces the discipline and skills of armed stage combat, a non-violent theatrical martial art that simulates attack and defense maneuvers within a highly regulated set of technical safety demands. It relies upon precise targeting, expert timing, alert and careful partnering, controlled energy, and the ability to convincingly enact the illusion of violent intention, urgent survival actions, and calibrations of pain–all within a container of shared protection and consent. Early work in the course is dedicated to developing the precision and safety features of simple foundational unarmed stage combat techniques. Later in the semester, those techniques will be applied to the enactment of safe and effective stage fights.
Fall Faculty and Visiting Guest Artists This course offers an opportunity for students to spend a semester delving into a particular movement tradition, learning its cultural underpinnings, and practicing its forms. Topics for this academic year include jazz funk, Eskrima, and devising.
Fall Deborah Lapidus, David Gaines This course is a continuation of the work done in the second year of training. A focus is placed on integrating vocal, textual, and musical elements. More complex vocalizing is introduced as well as scene and duet work with an emphasis on focus, imagery, and relationship with audience. Different genres of music and different parts of the vocal range will be explored.
per semester Fall and Spring Patrick Mulryan The aim of this course is to further expand actors’ verbal expressiveness and their range of speaking options in order to maximize their ability to use language in a character-specific way, particularly when working with dialects.
Spring Orlando Reyes, Valeria Solomonoff Partnering II builds on the work of the first year by exploring physical connection, awareness, and responsiveness.
per semester Fall and Spring Evan Yionoulis (Fall), Derrick Sanders (Spring) Third-year scene study concentrates on work on challenging texts that require a facility with language and a depth of characterization and transformation. Particular attention will be given to specificity of listening, with the goal of further honing the actor’s ability to work off a partner with nimbleness and ease.
Fall Faculty and Visiting Directors After having worked for the first two years on plays in rehearsal studios with the emphasis on exploration and skill-integration, students in their third year of training begin to work with limited elements of production and learn how process culminates in performance. In the fall, each student will perform in a heightened-language play (most often Shakespeare). The latter half of the semester is devoted to student-initiated projects in which students propose and bring to life projects for which they have a particular passion and engage in producing, directing, acting, designing, writing, devising, and technical work.
Spring Deborah Lapidus, Visiting Directors The first project of the spring semester is the Cabaret, an evening of songs with musical staging. This project is an opportunity to take what the actor learns in the classroom and to integrate–through the demands of singing–techniques of voice, speech, movement, Alexander Technique, and acting. Later in the spring, as a culmination of their third year of training, students perform in a play that allows them to stretch in vocal and physical expression, character transformation, and command of challenging language.
per semester Fall and Spring Carolyn Serota (Fall, Spring), Christine Caleo (Spring) Third-year Alexander Technique combines individual sessions and group classes to allow each actor to deepen their understanding of the principles and processes of the technique and to address personal habitual patterns of mind and body.
.5 credit Fall Sarah Cimino This hands-on workshop provides actors with practical techniques for the application of stage makeup and includes the assembly of personal makeup kits suited to individual requirements. The class also explores the application of makeup as an act of theater itself; it creates space for actors to engage with makeup as a tool for the exploration of persona and identity. Makeup for on-camera work and self-taping will also be addressed.
Fall Ellen Lauren Developed by internationally-acclaimed director Tadashi Suzuki, the Suzuki Training Method is a rigorous physical discipline drawn from such diverse influences as ballet, traditional Greek and Japanese theater, and martial arts. This course seeks to heighten the actor’s emotional and physical power and commitment to each moment on stage. Emphasis is placed on the lower body and a vocabulary of footwork, sharpening an actor’s breath control and concentration.
per semester Fall and Spring Andrew Wade (Fall, Spring), Kate Wilson (Fall) In the fall, this course focuses on vocal transformation through a seamless synthesis of skills, including rhetoric, stamina, and vocal characterization. Students will work individually and in small groups on material including political speeches as well as on classical and contemporary texts, with a particular focus on Shakespeare as part of preparation for work in the fall heightened text productions.
Spring Orlando Pabotoy This course is designed to have a laboratory-style approach, providing opportunities for the continued development of trust, confidence, and physical awareness. Students are expected to build upon the physical acting coursework from their first and second years with a particular focus on ensemble work, play, and experimentation.
Spring Mark Olsen This class aims to root the actor in experiences and situations that activate the process of making physical character choices and lead to increased freedom, simplicity, and ownership. Students apply the vocabulary developed to a series of laboratory experiments exploring various approaches to the creation of characters.
Spring Visiting Guest Artist The purpose of studying on-camera acting is to take the skills the actors have learned in their training thus far and apply them to the art of visual storytelling for film and television. In addition to learning how to bring to life the given circumstance in a script in an active and discernable way on camera, this course prepares actors to work on set in professional films and television shows.
Fall Jasminn Johnson, Alexander Shaw In preparation for an evening of scenes to be presented to industry members in both Los Angeles and New York in the spring, students meet regularly in the fall to select pieces which will best serve to introduce the actors to the profession. Scenes are chosen to showcase each individual student’s artistic strengths, interests, and unique talents.
Fall Evan Yionoulis In fourth-year scene study, actors will be asked to integrate all aspects of their training as their work moves towards more specificity, depth, and ease. Starting with work on scenes from Bertolt Brecht, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Luis Valdez, students will add analysis of the “story of the scene” to their practice as well as develop their awareness of the political dimension in these writers’ works. Running through the semester will be work on individual Interview Projects in which students will embody and give voice to the verbatim text of a person or persons they have interviewed in preparation for sharing the work with the Drama Division community.
Fall Faculty and Visiting Directors In the fall, all fourth-year actors are cast in a series of short films written by alumni of Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program and staffed by professional directors and film crews. These films give students the opportunity to build upon their training in Acting on Camera and gain hands-on experience working on a professional film set. In the spring, the films will be screened for an audience of Juilliard community members and industry professionals.
Spring Faculty and Visiting Directors During the school year, the Drama Theater season presents four plays, chosen from a diverse canon of classical and contemporary works, in full-scale production. Each play is mounted for five performances before an invited audience of the general public and members of the theatrical profession, giving actors a chance to share their work with a wider audience.
Spring Jasminn Johnson, Alexander Shaw As they prepare to graduate from the program, actors present an evening of scenes for members of the industry in New York and Los Angeles.
Fall Christine Caleo Alexander Technique in the fourth year focuses on the continuing development of each student as they deepen their self-awareness, self-knowledge, and poise using the Alexander principles and process. Students are encouraged to bring a spirit of investigation as they further master techniques for achieving readiness in the moment, for clearing out, for dealing with stress and anxiety, for taking a centered presence into the world. Character transformation work continues in relation to the fourth-year performance season.
Fall Darryl Quinton This course, in addition to continuing to build physical agility and mental discipline, fosters enhanced enjoyment of—and freedom with—the body in motion through the introduction of jazz and other dance sequences.
Fall Bob Krakower This series of classes continues the work of Acting on Camera I in preparing students for work on camera in their short film projects and in the profession.
per semester Fall and Spring Visiting Faculty This series of professional master classes helps fourth-year students gain a deeper understanding of how they might, with the training they have received, seek out and gain opportunities to practice their craft once they graduate. Among the many topics covered are audition techniques for all mediums, the creation of reels and websites, self-taping practices, and contract and union information.
Fall Elizabeth Whitaker American Theater Landscape explores trends and practices in professional theaters across the country. Students will discuss key issues in today’s American theater landscape and meet inspiring artists and leaders who are influential in the field.
Fall and Spring Faculty and Guests Through Community Meetings, Play Labs, and other practical training opportunities outside of school, this requirement seeks to translate our work in the studio and classroom into a broader understanding of the world and the profession. Community Meetings offer an opportunity to explore the context of our work as artists and citizens and broaden our understanding of the world. These gatherings are often devoted to a variety of guest speakers, offering students the ability to engage in enriching discussions of the political and artistic landscape. Through Play Labs, the community gathers to hear new works written by playwriting fellows and read by acting students. As part of this, additional performance and other related activities throughout the year, both inside and outside the school, develop a student’s career portfolio and are considered essential practical training.
Spring Faculty and Visiting Directors In January, second-, third-, and fourth-year students are cast in a variety of special projects, including the Norman Festival of New Plays, featuring readings and workshops of plays by second-year Juilliard playwrights. Other projects may include workshops with guest artists, technique intensives, or cross-divisional collaborative performances, among other possibilities.
Fall and Spring Faculty and Visiting Directors Through participating in projects as actors and as engaged audience members, all students gain a deeper fluency in the breadth of dramatic literature, the application of classroom technique to rehearsal and performance, and the possibilities of the theatrical experience. The Drama Division presents more than two dozen rehearsal and performance projects a year.
Fall Orlando Reyes, Valeria Solomonoff Drawing strategies from Argentine tango (lead and follow dynamics), contact improvisation (weight sharing while attending to ease and flow), and Laban movement analysis (relating through space with different degrees of proximity while making aesthetic choices related to formal design and movement quality), this class cultivates connection through the actor’s physicality. Partnering engages the actor’s trust, care, responsibility, attentiveness, initiative, patience, sensitivity, responsiveness, curiosity, and readiness.
Fall Richard Feldman, Jimonn Cole Through a broad spectrum of improvisatory exercises, this course aims to free students from self-consciousness, fear, and pretense, to enhance their powers of concentration, to encourage expression and interaction, and to strengthen their instincts and imagination, thereby allowing them to live onstage more deeply, freely, and truthfully. Over the course of the semester, students will begin to develop a sense of process, including the ability to let go of planning and live in the moment.
Spring Orlando Pabotoy This course explores the performer’s relationship to the working space, the ensemble, and their own physicality. Actors bring their spirit of playfulness to reach a heightened state of readiness.
.5 credit Spring Jenny Lord This course aims to help students see their training and their art in a larger context—historical, political, and artistic. Students examine the work of artists from theater and other art forms (dance, music, architecture) and engage with scientists, politicians, and activists, both in person and through screening documentary films. On a number of evenings in the first semester, the class as a group attends museums, concerts, or other cultural events in the wider city. Through these encounters with multiple points of view, students develop their own perspectives as actors, artists, and citizens.
Fall Tarek Bouraque Through a study of significant films from around the world, this course covers the essential principles of film grammar and the vocabulary used to make meaning in narrative cinema. Following a historical journey from the foundation of cinema with the Lumière Brothers to the adaptation of this form in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America, the films studied will represent each decade since the birth of cinema. Students will reflect on the political and artistic movements that informed each film’s style and message and will examine the legacy of the work today.
Spring Elana Bell The focus of this course is to experience the craft of poetry as a reader, writer, and performer. Students will read the work of others, write works of their own, receive feedback, revise, and share these works with their peers and community.
Spring Richard Feldman, Jimonn Cole In this course, students will apply their skills in script analysis and improvisation to work on assigned scenes. Students will practice reading the script for past, present, and anticipated future circumstances. They will gain an understanding of the event of the scene and how that event is part of the overall arc of the play. Students will practice talking and listening, embodying given circumstances, pursuing wants and needs, living through the events of the scene, and allowing themselves to undergo change.
Spring Kathleen McKenney Self to Character charts a psychophysical practice for the actor using the tool of the mask. It is designed to awaken those parts of the self less known to the actor, increasing the artistic palette from which the actor creates. Level I introduces the actor to the Balancing Mask, which brings awareness to the calm, present stillness that exists under all masks. It is the balanced center (Self) from which transformation begins and to which the actor safely returns.
Spring Jessica Blank This seminar covers basic principles of dramatic structure for theater, film, solo work, and episodic storytelling. Students will gain an understanding of the core texts of Western dramatic structure, including Aristotle, Egri, Freytag, and Campbell, as well as criticisms of these texts, with an eye toward application in their own projects. A focus is placed on elucidating students’ intuitive understandings of story as actors and articulating how these principles can be applied to the creation of original material through character-based story structure. Students begin to formulate an idea for a project in one of a variety of mediums and build upon their idea through a systematic, comprehensive character and story development process.
Spring Jenny Lord This seminar explores the role of the director in the theater, covering processes from conception through rehearsal. Students will engage in script analysis and interpretation, establishing given circumstances and identifying objectives and actions. Areas discussed will include historical perspective on the role of the director as well as explorations of design, production, collaboration, and casting. Topics will be investigated through readings, discussion, audiovisual resources, student presentations, and guest lectures.
Fall Jessica Blank This seminar covers advanced principles of dramatic structure and writing for theater, film, solo work, and episodic storytelling. Students will continue to develop their storytelling skills through a continuation of work on their projects begun in Story I. Throughout the course, students will examine how character-based story structure applies to various forms and continue to articulate how their work as actors can be applied to the creation of original material.
per semester Fall and Spring Charlotte Okie The Alexander Technique is a mind-body method for becoming aware of and changing movement habits. Focus is on the development of awareness of oneself in movement—to recognize and learn how to release excess tension and to change those habits of movement that interfere with the free and centered use of the body. Through a series of experiential exercises, hands-on guidance by the teacher, and selected readings, students will be introduced to basic Alexander concepts, including the principles of awareness, conscious inhibition, and direction.
Fall Dawn Akemi Saito This course includes vigorous physical training to develop muscle, tone, balance, coordination, flexibility, and agility and to increase physical stamina and focused concentration. Exercises will be employed to deepen listening and responding through the body, strengthen the connection between voice and body, increase awareness of oneself in space and in relationship to other bodies, release unnecessary tension to bring ease and empowerment, and explore physical and vocal transformation.
per semester Fall and Spring Darryl Quinton This conditioning and physical training class is designed to develop in students the endurance, physical agility, and mental discipline necessary for an actor. Emphasis is placed on stretching, strengthening, alignment, flexibility, and physical awareness as well as rhythm, phrasing, dynamics, and movement through space. The class will integrate basic concepts from Alexander Technique, Pilates, yoga, isometrics, plyometrics, and various dance genres.
per semester Fall and Spring Michelle DiBucci Music Studies introduces students to a wide spectrum of musical styles and compositional devices with an emphasis on listening to and speaking about music and its connection to all of the arts. The first semester will concentrate on key elements of music, including melody, rhythm, harmony, form, texture, and timbre. The second semester includes work on contemporary song forms, opera, and the origins of African-American music. Throughout the year, actors will have the opportunity to engage with music students and outside musical guests.
per semester Fall and Spring Patrick Mulryan Speech and Dialects I focuses on finding the ease, clarity, and flexibility that will enable the actor to be heard and understood in a rich variety of texts. Students will learn all the sounds in human language, both within and beyond their own personal speech system. Students will identify their own unique idiolect and identify any articulation challenges as they investigate, interrogate, and expand upon their physical capacities for expression. The International Phonetic Alphabet will be used as a tool throughout, as will aural samples and visual representations.
Fall Elizabeth Whitaker, Stephanie Ybarra This course serves to acquaint the actor with the work and responsibilities of the many people involved in theater-making beyond the rehearsal hall and to prepare them for what it might take to produce their own work. Students will examine the function, vision, and day-to-day operations of the various artistic, administrative, and production personnel within a variety of theater models–from larger commercial ventures and non-profit institutions to smaller off- and off-off-Broadway organizations. Students will develop mission statements and seasons for their own prospective theaters and present their visions to the class. Wherever possible, guest artists in the field will be brought in to talk about their process and work.
Spring Katherine Koerner This class provides students with the tools to structure theater-learning experiences in a variety of educational and community settings. Through a combination of hands-on experience and direct instruction, students will learn basic teaching strategies and develop a sense of their personal teaching style. Classwork will include reading assignments, in-class discussion, developing and writing lesson and unit plans, and opportunities to teach in class and in the field.
per semester Fall and Spring Kate Wilson Voice and Text I focuses on the principles and practice of respiration, phonation, resonance, and articulation. The course will also explore anatomy, physiology, and the physics of tone as students explore exercises for relaxation, flexibility, capacity, breath control, placement, and the production of sound. Through poetry and prose, actors use sound to reveal imagery, dynamics, and rhetoric.
Fall Elizabeth Whitaker American Theater Landscape explores trends and practices in professional theaters across the country. Students will discuss key issues in today’s American theater landscape and meet inspiring artists and leaders who are influential in the field.
per semester Fall and Spring Shana Komitee, Guests Vibrant Legacies in Theater examines many of the world’s most influential theater artists and movements, performance styles, and pieces of dramatic literature ranging across time and space. Topics include Western drama’s origins in 5 th -century BCE Athens, performance cultures in India and Asia, the 19 th -century rise of theatrical realism, the contemporary scene in the United States, and much more.
per semester Fall and Spring Derrick Sanders (Fall), Evan Yionoulis (Spring) Work in the fall concentrates on how an actor’s examination of the social, political, historical, and emotional world of the play brings specificity to the portrayal of characters. Through work on 20 th and 21 st -century plays, actors will articulate playable objectives, deepen character investment, sharpen listening, and expand their range. In the second semester, actors will continue to develop their ability to identify, personalize, and embody a character’s given circumstances and need, and to activate the language of the text in pursuit of the character’s objective. Scenes will include challenging material beyond realism, including heightened text.
Spring Kathleen McNenny Level II of From Self to Character investigates the complexity of self, using the principles of Lucid Body. Actors work with biological energy centers to identify habitual patterns while encouraging expansion into new areas.
Fall Orlando Pabotoy This course is designed to help students develop a comedic point of view and overcome the anxiety that comes from a sense of an obligation to be funny. Improvisation in a variety of styles is developed with the class as an audience. Emphasis is on the need to approach comedic material with the same process and commitment appropriate to any other acting challenge. The work asks the actor to explore with a curious mind while testing emotional, physical, and imaginative limits.
per semester Fall and Spring Carolyn Serota This course is a continuation of the first year’s exploration of the Alexander Technique with increasing emphasis on the application of its self-awareness tools to the actor’s creative process, transformation into character, and performance skills.
per semester Fall and Spring Vicki Shaghoian, David Gaines This course is designed to develop the actor’s understanding of their authentic voice. Through a series of singing exercises and song assignments, coupled with a study of anatomy, students experience how the mind, body, and breath work in coordination to allow for a natural, fully resonant, fully supported, and fully expressive voice in both speech and song.
per semester Fall and Spring Patrick Mulryan Speech and Dialects II continues the development of each individual actor’s instrument by strengthening articulators and opening up expressive possibilities through dialects and accents. Students will apply the principles of rhetoric and begin working on techniques for tackling texts that employ heightened language. Students will develop an individual practice to maintain flexibility of their instrument and will develop the skills to learn a dialect/accent independently through explorations of Cultural Context, Prosody, Oral Posture, and Pronunciation.
per semester Fall and Spring Ellen Lauren Developed by internationally acclaimed director Tadashi Suzuki, the Suzuki Training Method is a rigorous physical discipline drawn from such diverse influences as ballet, traditional Greek and Japanese theater, and martial arts. This course seeks to heighten the actor’s emotional and physical power and commitment to each moment on stage. Emphasis is placed on the lower body and a vocabulary of footwork, sharpening an actor’s breath control and concentration.
per semester Fall and Spring Andrew Wade Building on the foundations of the voice and text work from the first year, work in this course aims to continue to open each actor’s voice and strengthen technique. Work will address breathing, resonance, muscularity with text, and the relationship between “form” and meaning.
Fall Mark Olsen This class introduces the discipline and skills of armed stage combat, a non-violent theatrical martial art that simulates attack and defense maneuvers within a highly regulated set of technical safety demands. It relies upon precise targeting, expert timing, alert and careful partnering, controlled energy, and the ability to convincingly enact the illusion of violent intention, urgent survival actions, and calibrations of pain–all within a container of shared protection and consent. Early work in the course is dedicated to developing the precision and safety features of simple foundational unarmed stage combat techniques. Later in the semester, those techniques will be applied to the enactment of safe and effective stage fights.
Fall Faculty and Visiting Guest Artists This course offers an opportunity for students to spend a semester delving into a particular movement tradition, learning its cultural underpinnings, and practicing its forms. Topics for this academic year include jazz funk, Eskrima, and devising.
Spring Orlando Reyes, Valeria Solomonoff Partnering II builds on the work of the first year by exploring physical connection, awareness, and responsiveness.
per semester Fall and Spring Evan Yionoulis (Fall), Derrick Sanders (Spring) Third-year scene study concentrates on work on challenging texts that require a facility with language and a depth of characterization and transformation. Particular attention will be given to specificity of listening, with the goal of further honing the actor’s ability to work off a partner with nimbleness and ease.
per semester Fall and Spring Carolyn Serota (Fall, Spring), Christine Caleo (Spring) Third-year Alexander Technique combines individual sessions and group classes to allow each actor to deepen their understanding of the principles and processes of the technique and to address personal habitual patterns of mind and body.
.5 credit Fall Sarah Cimino This hands-on workshop provides actors with practical techniques for the application of stage makeup and includes the assembly of personal makeup kits suited to individual requirements. The class also explores the application of makeup as an act of theater itself; it creates space for actors to engage with makeup as a tool for the exploration of persona and identity. Makeup for on-camera work and self-taping will also be addressed.
Fall Deborah Lapidus, David Gaines This course is a continuation of the work done in the second year of training. A focus is placed on integrating vocal, textual, and musical elements. More complex vocalizing is introduced as well as scene and duet work with an emphasis on focus, imagery, and relationship with audience. Different genres of music and different parts of the vocal range will be explored.
per semester Fall and Spring Patrick Mulryan The aim of this course is to further expand actors’ verbal expressiveness and their range of speaking options in order to maximize their ability to use language in a character-specific way, particularly when working with dialects.
Fall Ellen Lauren Developed by internationally-acclaimed director Tadashi Suzuki, the Suzuki Training Method is a rigorous physical discipline drawn from such diverse influences as ballet, traditional Greek and Japanese theater, and martial arts. This course seeks to heighten the actor’s emotional and physical power and commitment to each moment on stage. Emphasis is placed on the lower body and a vocabulary of footwork, sharpening an actor’s breath control and concentration.
per semester Fall and Spring Andrew Wade (Fall, Spring), Kate Wilson (Fall) In the fall, this course focuses on vocal transformation through a seamless synthesis of skills, including rhetoric, stamina, and vocal characterization. Students will work individually and in small groups on material including political speeches as well as on classical and contemporary texts, with a particular focus on Shakespeare as part of preparation for work in the fall heightened text productions.
Spring Orlando Pabotoy This course is designed to have a laboratory-style approach, providing opportunities for the continued development of trust, confidence, and physical awareness. Students are expected to build upon the physical acting coursework from their first and second years with a particular focus on ensemble work, play, and experimentation.
Spring Mark Olsen This class aims to root the actor in experiences and situations that activate the process of making physical character choices and lead to increased freedom, simplicity, and ownership. Students apply the vocabulary developed to a series of laboratory experiments exploring various approaches to the creation of characters.
Spring Visiting Guest Artist The purpose of studying on-camera acting is to take the skills the actors have learned in their training thus far and apply them to the art of visual storytelling for film and television. In addition to learning how to bring to life the given circumstance in a script in an active and discernable way on camera, this course prepares actors to work on set in professional films and television shows.
Fall Jasminn Johnson, Alexander Shaw In preparation for an evening of scenes to be presented to industry members in both Los Angeles and New York in the spring, students meet regularly in the fall to select pieces which will best serve to introduce the actors to the profession. Scenes are chosen to showcase each individual student’s artistic strengths, interests, and unique talents.
Fall Evan Yionoulis In fourth-year scene study, actors will be asked to integrate all aspects of their training as their work moves towards more specificity, depth, and ease. Starting with work on scenes from Bertolt Brecht, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Luis Valdez, students will add analysis of the “story of the scene” to their practice as well as develop their awareness of the political dimension in these writer’s works. Running through the semester will be work on individual Interview Projects in which students will embody and give voice to the verbatim text of a person or persons they have interviewed in preparation for sharing the work with the Drama Division community.
Fall Christine Caleo Alexander Technique in the fourth year focuses on the continuing development of each student as they deepen their self-awareness, self-knowledge, and poise using the Alexander principles and process. Students are encouraged to bring a spirit of investigation as they further master techniques for achieving readiness in the moment, for clearing out, for dealing with stress and anxiety, for taking a centered presence into the world. Character transformation work continues in relation to the fourth-year performance season.
Fall Darryl Quinton This course, in addition to continuing to build physical agility and mental discipline, fosters enhanced enjoyment of—and freedom with—the body in motion through the introduction of jazz and other dance sequences.
Fall Bob Krakower This series of classes continues the work of Acting on Camera I in preparing students for work on camera in their short film projects and in the profession.
per semester Fall and Spring Visiting Faculty This series of professional master classes helps fourth-year students gain a deeper understanding of how they might, with the training they have received, seek out and gain opportunities to practice their craft once they graduate. Among the many topics covered are audition techniques for all mediums, the creation of reels and websites, self-taping practices, and contract and union information.
Source: The Juilliard School's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
