The first year features an interdisciplinary emphasis on developing and defining basic skills.

ALL COURSES REQUIRED FOR EVERY FIRST YEAR STUDENT.

This course focuses on releasing the inner life of the actor through embodied experience. This is accomplished through meta-physical explorations, the creation of original work and the study of contemporary plays. Behavioral, physiological and psychological 'States of Being' are explored to release the actor's instincts, essence and imagination. Experience is shaped into original work that focuses both on character and story development. Actions, objectives and obstacles that integrate the inner life of the actor with given circumstances are then applied to monologues and scenes from cutting edge, contemporary plays.   

back to top

In 'The Actor's Practice', students explore the actor's creative process and vocabulary by investigating physical action as the springboard for emotion.   Through Viewpoint training, improvisation, and rehearsal process of a play, students discover what it means to be an ensemble; to be alive in the moment to all of the possibilities that occur on stage; to experience the ease with which spontaneous and untamed emotion arises from any committed action.

back to top

This course acts as a laboratory in which the students must use everything they're learning at PHTS to stage whole, theatrical stories.  Students work all year as a performance company, learning how to find their way through the creative process of making theatre.  The Fundamentals vocabulary combines the tools and techniques of Aristotle, Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Brecht, Grotowski, Brook, and Bogart, and focuses on understanding the role of the director in a theatrical collaboration.  In the fall semester, students work in groups to stage several silent stories that focus on what it means to create a theatrical experience.  In the spring, the students stage productions of a short play, then end the year each directing a scene from a published play of his or her own choosing.  Throughout the year, the students all participate as directors, actors, and audience, and discuss each others' work in order to develop a clearer and more objective relationship to their own.

 

back to top

This two-semester course is designed to assist in the discovery of alignment and physical reconditioning. Inspired by modern dance, ballet, and traditional movement forms, including African and 16th century European court dance, the purpose of this class is to maintain body alignment, monitor muscle tone related to stress, and correlate the connection between the dynamics of physical response and dramatic action through the justification of choreographed activity.

back to top

The objective of this course is to introduce students to New York City as a theatrical, literary & cultural arts center.  The course takes a backstage look at theater management, the non-profit theater structure and the history of Playwrights Horizons.  Course requirements include, but are not limited to, selected readings, museum visits, viewing productions and serving as run crew for a PHTS production.

back to top

Voice & Speech I is a two-semester course developed to awaken the young artist to the expressive range of the human voice, as well as to the intricacies of speaking American English. A thorough warm-up is employed to bring power, flexibility and subtlety to the actor's voice and speech: exercises physical, vocal and articulatory. Among many topics of focus are the structure of the actor's breath, the fostering of vocal resonance, increased awareness and control of articulatory options, and the development of rhetorical skills. Students in this class are taught the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as it is applied to American speakers. Exercises and text work originally taught by Skinner, Jones, Fitzmaurice, Colaianni, Dal Vera, Barton, Knight, Rodenburg, Linklater, and Berry are explored with the goal of uniting body, breath, voice, and speech into an expressive whole.

back to top