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Drama Division
Performance Activities  Throughout the first and second years of actor training, students are cast in plays and rehearse them under the guidance of professional staff or guest directors. Plays are selected to challenge students in a variety of increasingly demanding ways. The rehearsal projects are exercises for exploring an actor’s process and are not aimed toward performance results. Casting is determined by the needs of the training, rather than the demands of the play. While the projects are developed to a point at which they are shared with an invited audience from the Juilliard community, they are not “produced,” but are shown in a studio with only basic rehearsal clothes, props, and furniture. In their second year, students rehearse and present three plays by Drama Division playwrights-in-residence. These rehearsal projects are also yardsticks for measuring the degree to which the student is able to apply and integrate what has been learned in the various classes.
In the third year, play projects continue to be an integral part of the training, but shift from the classroom to a small studio theater with the addition of modest, professionally designed costumes, scenery, and lighting as well as makeup and, where appropriate, music and sound effects. Seven productions are mounted, including a musical cabaret performance in a New York club and two Shakespeare plays performed in repertory at the end of the school year in the 200-seat Stephanie P. McClelland Drama Theater. For the latter production, junior-high and high school students from the greater New York area are bussed to Juilliard for several morning performances. Other plays may range from French farce to the Greek classics. All third-year productions are open to an invited public.
The fourth year begins with a Playwrights Festival featuring three new plays written by current and alumni playwrights. Following the festival, four plays in a broad range of periods and styles are given full-scale productions for the general public and a select group of theatrical directors, agents, casting directors, representatives from professional theaters across the country, and other members of the theatrical profession.
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