CURRICULUM

Our acting, voice, and movement curricula include exercises and techniques developed during the past thirty years of performance and research in each discipline. By providing students with the opportunity to study a variety of methods, we help them to understand their creative processes, direct their own training, consciously choose their techniques, and become innovators, capable of reshaping the contemporary theatrical landscape.

Our curriculum is divided into a lower level for first and second year students, who follow a prescribed course of study, and an upper level for third and fourth year students, who choose from advanced courses in voice, movement, and acting. We also run an upper level transfer track designed primarily for third and fourth year students transferring from other NYU studios.

The first year of training at ETW is designed to introduce students to themselves as performers, and to expand their artistic consciousness. Training approaches include Linklater voice and speech work, physically-based acting, scene study, Meisner realistic acting technique, theatre games, improvisation, ballet floor barre, contact improvisation, Six Viewpoints, and postmodern dance technique. At the end of the first year, students create projects based on the work of a professional choreographer or director.

The second year of training focuses on the development of craft, repeatability, and personal artistic vision. Classes include free jazz vocal improvisation, Roy Hart extended voice work, speech, script analysis, Meisner, advanced physically-based acting, scene study, postmodern dance, Allan Wayne technique, choreography, and self-scripting. At the end of the second year, each student creates, designs, produces, and performs an original work of theatre.

The upper level curriculum deepens and extends the first two years of training through advanced technique work, and provides exposure to a wide variety of performance styles in theatre, dance, and music. Course offerings change from year to year, depending on the needs and special interests of the third and fourth year students. Each student creates her own curricular structure from the various upper level courses offered that semester. Recent upper level options have included advanced acting classes focusing on the work of Beckett, Shakespeare, and contemporary playwrights, Brechtian theatre making, directing, found-object puppetry, advanced self-scripting, audition technique for film and stage, clowning and commedia, video art, advanced Linklater voice, Bel Canto singing, contemporary music composition, Le Coq mask work, Afro-Haitian dance, advanced contact improv, hip-hop dance, Suzuki, advanced choreography, and Butoh.