Theater Education & Training, Part 1

 

[Even casual readers of Rick On Theater will probably know that theater and arts education—that is, teaching about theater and the arts, not necessarily training in the arts themselves—is of particular interest and concern to me.  I have blogged on the subject often over the years I have maintained ROT, as I have on theater and performance in schools.  A quick look at the archive for this blog over on the left of the screen will reveal this.

[In that spirit, I’ve gathered several articles on theater education and training, some about academic theater programs and others concerning the professional training working artists received.  One source, American Theatre magazine, devoted the Winter 2024 issue to this topic, but I’m beginning with a pair of articles from other publications.  Since I haven’t decided on all the pieces I’ll be putting up on ROT, I can’t tell readers how long the series will be yet.]

“25 BROADWAY PROFESSIONALS SHARE THEIR TRAINING”
by Andrew Gans

[One of several pieces on the Playbill website (Playbill: Broadway, Off-Broadway, London News, Listings and Tickets | Playbill), all published on 6 September 2024, that concern the professional training that current denizens of Broadway got before they became working theater artists, Andrew Gans’s “25 Broadway Professionals Share Their Training” will be part of the series of articles I’m posting on ROT.

[Playbill published a number of pieces which I won’t be reposting, but I want to draw readers’ attention to two of them because they directly relate to ”25 Broadway Professionals”: “Where Did the Creatives of the 2023-24 Broadway Season Go to School?” and “Where Did the Actors of the 2023-24 Broadway Season Go to School?” both by the PlaybiIll staff, are lists of the top 10 universities where the current crop of Broadway playwrights, directors, designers, composers, and actors got their schooling; the lists are available at Where Did the Creatives of the 2023–24 Broadway Season Go to School? | Playbill and Where Did the Actors of the 2023–24 Broadway Season Go to School? | Playbill.

[A note about the links embedded in the article below: Playbill provided links to recent listings from the magazine of the credits of some of the artists included.  You’ll see that not all the artists have these connections, but I have left the ones that are provided in my repost for interested readers.  (The first link, by the way, is to a list of other Playbill articles on this subject.)]

A mix of actors, designers, directors, and stage managers recall the schools that were part of their journey to the Main Stem [i.e., the Theater District in Manhattan].

Last year, Playbill launched its new feature series, How Did I Get Here, which spotlights not only actors, but directors, designers, musicians, and others who work on and off the stage to create the magic that is live theatre.

Since that time, over 70 artists have shared their journeys to Broadway, including the many conservatories, colleges, and graduate schools that were pivotal to their eventual success.

Below, as part of Playbill's Back to School Week coverage, we compiled 25 theatre professionals' answers to the question, "Where did you train/study?" Read their responses, and click here for the full series of interviews.

Stage manager Christopher Kee Anaya-Gorman

I received my BFA in Stage Management from the University of Arizona [Tucson] (go Wildcats!). It was an excellent program to learn within, and that’s been more evident as I met younger stage managers coming out of school and discussing their programs. At the U of A, I worked alongside MFA students as an undergrad on main stage productions with full performance schedules, understudy rehearsals, automation, fly rail, traps, etc., all in conjunction with our coursework.

[For anyone who’s not familiar with U.S. college and university degrees, a BFA is a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, an undergraduate degree; an MFA is a graduate degree, a Master of Fine Arts, usually a two-year program. There are also some universities that grant DFA degrees, a Doctor of Fine Arts. Fine arts degrees are, of course, not limited to theater; they’re awarded in the visual arts, music, and dance as well, for instance.

[The fly rail is another name for the fly system, or the theatrical rigging system that’s an arrangement of ropes, pulleys, counterweights, and related devices in a theater that enables a stage crew to hoist (fly) components such as curtains, lights, scenery, stage effects, and even actors into the space above the stage, the fly loft.]

Director and actor Michael Arden

I attended the Interlochen Arts Camp and Academy [Green Lake Township, Grand Traverse County, Michigan] and The Juilliard School of Drama [New York City].

Actor Roman Banks

I consider my training ongoing, but I officially trained for a year at Shenandoah Conservatory [Winchester, Virginia] as a musical theatre major! However, high school programs like YoungArts [an American charity based in Miami, Florida, to help nurture emerging high school artists] and the Georgia Governor's Honors Program [a four-week summer educational program for intellectually gifted and artistically talented high school students in the State of Georgia] taught me key lessons about ethics and my craft that I still utilize today.

Costume designer Gregg Barnes

I have my BFA in English Literature from San Diego State University [California] and an MFA in design from New York University.

Music director and conductor Kristen Blodgette

I began taking piano lessons when I was four years old. I took piano lessons, violin lessons (violin lessons didn’t last long, as I was terrible), voice lessons, and played French Horn. I ultimately graduated from the Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music [Ohio] with a degree in Piano Performance and attended graduate school at CCM in Opera and Accompanying. I had a graduate assistantship in the opera department and had the wonderful opportunity to work in most of the voice studios and the opera studio.

Vocal, text and dialect coach Gigi Buffington

I trained with [dialect coach] Robert Neff Williams in his two-year Voice, Speech and Shakespeare program after two years with [acting coach] Maggie Flanigan at William Esper Studio [New York City acting school dedicated to the technique of Sanford Meisner (1905-97)]. A decade later, I received my master's at The Guildhall School of Music & Drama in Training Actors (Voice) followed by a Post Graduate Award from the University of Warwick in Teaching Shakespeare to Actors and Artists.

Actor Jonathan Burke

I began my training as an actor major at the Baltimore School for the Arts [Maryland] for high school and trained at the Arena Players [Youtheater; the oldest continuously operating African-American community theater in the U.S.; Baltimore] while matriculating through high school. I then went on to receive my BFA in musical theatre from Ithaca College [Ithaca, New York].

Lighting designer Isabella Byrd

I was lucky to have early exposure to the arts growing up, which led me to a public Houston [Texas] school, HSPVA (High School for the Performing and Visual Arts). I dove deep into theatre then while also studying dance at the Houston Ballet Academy. That gave me the confidence to apply for conservatory college track—where I chose CCM, University of Cincinnati—studying lighting design. It was wonderful to work within so many performance styles at school—theatre, musical theatre, opera, and dance.

I did not go to grad school, but instead joke that I went to the school of hard knocks: New York City! This incredible city is fundamental to the artist I am striving to become.

Actor Nick Cearley

I grew up in Fairfield, Ohio, right outside the Cincinnati/Dayton area and went to Fairfield High School. I went to Boston Conservatory [Massachusetts] and got my BFA in Musical Theatre.

Set and costume designer Bunny Christie

I went to Central School of Art [London, England; Christie is Scottish by birth], where I did a foundation course and then a degree in Theatre Design.

Actor Jordan Dobson

Temple University’s musical theatre program in Philadelphia [Pennsylvania]. But every show I do is like an additional education, so I’m still studying!

Actor Hawley Gould

I did so much theatre as a kid. It was really those school shows and community theatres that fostered my love of performance, long before I ever imagined that it could be my literal job. I’ll never forget how Paula Dawson and Ally Van Deuren cast me as a Wickersham Brother [a group of monkeys from Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who! (1954); characters in the 2000 children’s musical Seussical] in seventh grade and let me dance down the aisles during “Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!” That actually changed my life’s trajectory forever. More "seriously," I received my BFA from NYU [New York University] Tisch School of the Arts, training at the New Studio on Broadway.

Actor Dorian Harewood

I studied at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, training with the great mezzo soprano, Lucile V. Evans.

Actor Judy Kaye

I studied theatre and voice at UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles]. I was part of a course of study called The Acting Specialization. It was something of a conservatory within the theatre major. We studied voice and diction, stage movement, mask and mime, Shakespeare scene study, and acting. I was also a member of the Opera Workshop and the Musical Comedy Workshop.

Actor Telly Leung

I graduated from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama [Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania]. 

Musical director, conductor, and arranger John McDaniel

I went to Carnegie Mellon University as an actor, and I have a degree in drama.

Actor Jessie Mueller

I started voice lessons in high school and then went to Syracuse University [Syracuse, New York], studying in their musical theatre and acting programs.

Director Jack O'Brien

As Catherine Sloper states in The Heiress [which O’Brien had staged in Los Angeles], “I was taught by masters.“ I was an English major at the University of Michigan, clueless about my future when I fell under the spell of the late Ellis Rabb’s wonderful APA [Association of Producing Artists] Repertory Company [1959-69], which was in residence at the University. I stalked, pursued, cajoled, and entertained until Ellis finally offered me to be his assistant during the New York season. For the next five or six years, I took notes for him, John Houseman, Eva Le Gallienne, Alan Schneider, and Stephen Porter—learning the styles, the insights, the attack of these virtual giants, as the only assistant the little company could afford. It changed my life.

Stage manager Danielle Ranno

I am mostly self-taught. I started out as an acting major at Alexander Dreyfoos School of the Arts [public high school in West Palm Beach, Florida]. We were working on a class project in my theatre history class, and our group needed someone to act as the stage manager, so I volunteered. I didn’t have much knowledge of what a stage manager did . . . I knew that they called cues for lighting, sound, etc. and wrote down blocking.

After that, I did not revisit stage management until I was in college. My sophomore year I went to USITT [United States Institute for Theatre Technology]. To help pay for the conference, I worked a few hours a day in the computer lab. On a break, I was walking through an exhibition floor and saw a booth that caught my eye for the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. I interviewed for a summer internship and later found out I got in! I told myself that if I could survive the 12 weeks and still enjoyed it, then I knew that stage management was what I wanted to do. Since my college was a BA program and (at the time) did not offer any SM specific classes, I did a lot of faking it until I made it. I spent all my free time looking at different types of paperwork and recreating it. I attribute a lot of my early SM education to this summer program.

[USITT is a non-profit membership organization headquartered in Syracuse, New York, which aims to advance the skills and knowledge of theater, entertainment, and performing arts professionals involved in the areas of design, production, and technology, and to promote their interests. To this end, USITT mounts conferences and exhibitions, promulgates awards and publications, and supports research.]

Video and projection designer Finn Ross

Central School of Speech and Drama, London. My degree was in alternative theatre—24 years later, I am still not sure exactly what that means, but it did give me a lot of room to experiment and find my way into video.

Actor Jennifer Simard

I trained at The Boston Conservatory—honestly, watching and doing over and over again and gaining experience.

Costume designer Paul Tazewell

Undergraduate: Pratt Institute [Brooklyn, New York] and University of North Carolina School of the Arts [Winston-Salem]. Graduate: New York University Tisch School of the Arts.

Actor Kara Young

New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts [New York City], Labyrinth Theater Company [Off-Broadway theater company in New York City], all over New York, and still studying.

Costume Designer Paloma Young

BA in U.S. History from UC [University of California] Berkeley, MFA in Costume and Sound Design from UC San Diego.

Set and costume designer David Zinn

This is a long answer to a simple question, but I feel like I really began my study while I was in high school (in the Pacific Northwest) and my local community theatre, as well as some of the theatres in Seattle [Washington], gave me a place and community to start to study and learn what theatre design was all about. But, more formally, I came to NYU right after high school in 1987. At the time they had a (since-discontinued) program where you could be enrolled in the graduate design program as an undergraduate, and so I did that, not really knowing exactly what I was getting myself into. It was very hard, but I was surrounded by a ton of folks that continue to inspire me: Marsha Ginsberg, Paul Tazewell, Christine Jones, Constance Hoffman. Gregg Barnes and Kitty Leech were downstairs in the undergraduate costume shop, Moisés Kaufman directed at ETW [Experimental Theatre Wing]. It was a cool time to be there.

[NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts’ undergraduate drama program, known as Tisch Drama, has 10 professional training studios to which acting students are assigned. Each studio—which include the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, the Atlantic Acting School (affiliated with the Atlantic Theatre Company), The Meisner Studio, and the Playwrights Horizons Theater School (affiliated with the theater company, Playwrights Horizons), among others—has its own approach to theater. The Experimental Theatre Wing is Tisch’s own studio.]

[Andrew Gans has worked for Playbill since 1991; he’s been a senior news editor since 2006.  Gans writes two of Playbill’s most popular online features, “Diva Talk” and “Their Favorite Things.”

[In the interest of full disclosure, my undergraduate degree is a BA in French and German.  After graduating from college, I spent almost five years in the army, playing the part of an intelligence officer. Upon release from the service, I studied at the HB Studio in New York City, then did a semester at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, returned to HB, and then went to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and earned an MFA in acting at what became the Mason Gross School of the Arts.  A little later, I studied with Lee Wallace at the Terry Schreiber Studio.] 

*  *  *  *
“IT’S A CLOWN’S LIFE: LESSONS FROM CLOWN SCHOOL”
by Lara Bevan-Shiraz

[Lara Bevan-Shiraz’s “It’s A Clown’s Life” was published in Roar on 18 September 2024.  Roar is King’s College London’s official student newspaper.  (King's College London is a public research university located in London, England.)]

Staff Writer Lara Bevan-Shiraz reflects on the life lessons she learnt whilst clowning around at École Philippe Gaulier this summer.

Behind the wings, no one wants to go first. Yet, the cheesy circus music has already begun. In a few short seconds, the teacher will bang his tambourine-sized drum and someone will need to step out into the blinding yellow lights. A couple more moments, some sneaky manoeuvring on the part of my peers and all eyes are fixed on me. I’m now closest to the curtain. At this point, there’s really nothing to do. Bang!

Over six weeks this summer, I threw myself headfirst into the world of clowning with no prior direct experience. Why? It sounded like a great deal of fun! École Philippe Gaulier (EPG) based in Étampes, France [a “satellite city” of Paris, 30 miles south-southwest of the capital], presented itself as a spin-off from the Lecoq method of physical theatre [Jacques Lecoq (1921-99) was a French stage actor and acting movement coach], specialising in humour. The notorious reputation of the school’s eponymous founder did nothing to dissuade me. [The title of a Guardian article by Brian Logan is “'Once you can handle the insults, you begin': inside Philippe Gaulier's clown school” (2 Aug. 2016; 'Once you can handle the insults, you begin': inside Philippe Gaulier's clown school | Stage | The Guardian)] While I didn’t meet Gaulier himself [b. 1943; theatre director, clown, circus artist, playwright, and theatre teacher], who is now over 80 and appears not to have been teaching for a couple of years, reading between the lines indicates that the new generation(s) of teachers have somewhat softened his style; even so, some peers were still driven to tears. EPG, like the Arts in general, seems to be at a turning point, replacing punishing dismissal with something closer to constructive criticism (though still incisive and curt, sometimes more than borderline – Gaulier’s wife, Michiko, sat in on a couple of lessons, adding a kind of punctuation through the loudspeakers with the sound effect of bottles being thrown at unsuccessful clowns). 

My six weeks of “fun”, whilst replete with comedy, thus turned out to be rather gruelling at times. Morning movement classes added further rigour as they sought to get the students into shape. Bootcamp in style, we did hundreds of squats, planks and push-ups, our international troupe counting each set of ten in a dozen different languages and dialects. Afternoons provided limited respite, starting with the foundations of play before we progressed to a riotous explosion of clowning.

Le Jeu (The Game)

“Play” here means an unrestrained engagement with yourself, your friend(s) and your audience, without competition or self-consciousness. In Le Jeu, we use “play” as a framework to facilitate the almost untranslatable and undefinable “complicité”. As I’ve come to understand it, complicité is a kind of direct, unfiltered connection with the audience, a sense of being in it together for the fun and mischief of it, as you would be with an imaginary friend. It’s also active, constantly under maintenance. Complicité requires a continual presence and openness. At the same time, “Light on your feet” was a constant cry from our teachers in the first week – a sign of fanaticism and a loss of good faith play. The Gaulier method, typically contrarian, demanding complicité whilst screaming that demand at us!

[Le jeu means ‘the game,’ but it also means ‘play’ in the sense of ‘child’s play.’  In medieval times, what we call a ‘play’ today, a dramatic text, was also un jeu—as in Le Jeu d’Adam (“The play of Adam”).

[Complicité can be translated as ‘collusion,’ ‘complicity,’ or ‘accompliceship.’ The sense is ‘being in cahoots’ with someone—as Bevan-Shiraz has it, an actor “being in it together” with the audience. It’s a bond between two people who are both in on a joke that others don’t see, and the two in complicity merely nod or smile slily to one another to acknowledge the humor that only they get.

[There is a company in the United Kingdom called Complicite, founded by Simon McBurney—it was originally named Théâtre de Complicité—whose work is founded on the theories of Lecoq and Gaulier.  They define complicité as ‘shared creativity’—shared among the players and by the players with the audience.]

Still, that sense of honest collaboration was integral to the activities we explored, from ball games, to tag, to dance competitions, to the downright awkward: massaging a partner’s earlobe. The latter was introduced as an attempt to provoke laughter, but those receiving this bizarre treatment were instructed to suppress any giggles. This, however, turned out not to be the true aim. The fun, both for the pairs and the audience, revealed itself when people didn’t take the rules too seriously but instead revelled in the connection and the mischief, losing happily and hopelessly. Mischief, not cut-throat rivalry. You can put your friend in a tight spot but not out of malice, rather in the spirit of play. Good complicité exists when, as in a game of tennis, the rhythm changes stroke by stroke in a rally, the audience stirred by the apparent overreach of both players striving beyond their limits. 

I began applying complicité outside clown school as well: in discussions with acquaintances whose politics were polar opposite to mine and with friends with whom that connection was spontaneous. It’s not that I hadn’t done this before, but now I was consciously persisting, refusing to stop sending complicité.

As a commuter student up against the capricious Parisian RER [Réseau Express Régional, or Regional Express Network, a commuter and rapid transit rail system] line C, I had to rein in my inner sloth, arriving into Étampes from Paris an hour early most days to give myself three train options. Each morning, I exchanged smiles with the same weary dog walkers being dragged along at an enthusiastic pace and sat alongside fellow passengers who played a daily roulette dodging their fares. I observed the way train drivers of the same company said “hi” to one another by tooting; I watched the transition of the fields from poppies, to sunflowers, to lavender. 

A minute from the school is a little public garden which catches the sun’s rays each morning. Like a terrapin, I warmed myself whilst reading a book there, greeted by the affable street sweeper as he did his daily round. I thus learnt and implemented new French colloquialisms: “Bon courage!” [‘Good luck!’] often replaced “Bonne journée!” [‘Have a nice day!’]; outbursts of “oh là là” and the hilarious raspberry type noise produced when one doesn’t know what to say peppered my conversations. 

Complicité most naturally resides in incidental interactions like these. Where it falls apart is when we learn our incompatibilities. We see them as fated impasses not puzzles to resolve. Clowns are loved for their innocence. Their fault is to be eternal optimists: they try, and they keep trying, until they find a way to break down these walls we have built. So perhaps, we all just need to be a little more clown-like.

Keeping up this level of complicité within and outside of class is exhausting and taxing, and in a certain sense, it should be. It’s an active participation and collaboration that requires you to listen, engage and respond, all at once; still, the connections it fosters largely make up for the hardships. However, it’s incredibly draining to exhibit complicité in our fractured societies where there’s currently no reward and politics are ever more irreconcilable. You engage with eye contact, but what returns is a glazed stare. They’re playing a game at you, maybe even for an audience, but not with you. Yet those with complicité are the foundations of society, just as they are the foundations of any theatre company. We need conversations which are dialogues and not opposing monologues in order to progress cohesively. Whilst there will be outliers, if you keep sending complicité, the worst reaction you’ll get is apathy and that’s better than hostility.

“The Flop is the Friend of the Clown”

The antidote to my inner editor. Clowning required a clear, unhesitant mind: any hyper-critical commentary was secured in a soundproof box. Peace! As a writer, this nearly never happens, but as a performer, it’s essential. That’s not to say that the clown is careless and unthinking. Clowns are prepared but not rehearsed. 

Clowning provides a new take on failure: “the flop is the friend of the clown” being an oft-repeated Gaulier maxim. Each time you flop and wriggle your way out of it, you make it that much easier the next time. This persistence allows you to work out what audiences do and don’t respond to and how they respond. You must be sensitive to each and every mood and focus change in your audience to realise not just when their attention drifts, but also when you have caught it. Many opportunities slip away when the clown gets afraid of losing the laugh and rapidly moves on to something else. In hoping to prolong that laugh, the clown shuts it down. 

The perspective of the audience is frequently at odds with that of the clown. Often, the clown will do an action and upon completion expect the audience to be pleased. When the clown doesn’t get that reaction, they are confused, at which point the audience laughs at the clown’s irrepressible earnestness. Life is the same: we are our own worst critics. Where we see failure, someone else will see a seed ready to take root. 

Interpretation is dependent upon the viewpoint of the interpreter. In one exercise, five of us were spaced out in a row, all strictly facing the audience, with glances amongst our ensemble forbidden. The person at the right-hand end of the row was instructed to come up with and perform an action (make a cup of tea, wash the dishes, etc). Then the person directly adjacent would try to copy what they had seen from their peripheral vision and so on and so forth until the person on the other side of the room did their impression of the action. The first and last actions ended up completely unrelated. Each individual put their own interpretation and imprint on the actions, often inadvertently, be that a balletic flair or a hesitation in their movement. Even in conversations, we don’t realise what we give away. We “um”, repeat our favourite words and use unique intonations. We also listen differently, retaining certain information according to our respective inclinations and predispositions. We just realise more when clowns do it. They, like all comics, push the limits, making us uncomfortable even in our laughter when we recognise ourselves in a parody.

The little notebook I took with me to France is crammed full of quotes and discoveries. It even has a hasty sketch of a car crash, doodled to express the pent up sentiments of a particularly hard day. Reflecting upon these experiences, I am acutely aware that the thoughts that captured my attention then no longer do. We give weight to our preoccupations according to the intensity of the moment when we should really consider the brevity of the present. The clown does not worry whether the audience will laugh tomorrow, but whether they are laughing now. 

In the end, what has emerged from those six weeks at clown school is not a sure career in clowning, but a sharpening of perspective. Things won’t go as planned, but that’s okay. I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve to save a flop and maybe even steal a laugh. 

[Lara Louise Bevan-Shiraz (British; b. ca. 2005) is a creative and innovative scientist who works to promote women and girls in science.  She has won a Dr. Jane Goodall Outstanding Roots and Shoots Award, the Aspen Brain Institute's Social Impact Action Prize, and a Distinguished Student Award from the New York Academy of Sciences.

[Just to complete my comments in regard to Complicite, the theater troupe, I’ll reference my blog report on the one performance of theirs on which I wrote.  I saw them twice in New York, but the first time, in The Street of Crocodiles, was at the Lincoln Center Festival in 1998, years before I was writing performance reports.  I saw them again in 2010, at another Lincoln Center Festival, with A Disappearing Number.  That report is on ROT on 8 August 2010.  (There’s also a brief discussion of Complicité’s (as they were calling themselves at that time) in “‘Hear, Hear: Spotlight on Sound Design,’ Article 7” on 6 April 2021.)

[The second installment in this series on theater education and training will be published on Sunday, 6 October.]