All courses were developed by New Art Theatre during its 5 year residency at the New Hampshire Institute of Art with Bob Shea serving as Vice President for Academic Affairs.

CURRENT OFFERINGS:

The following are a sample of courses offered by New Art Theatre. Generally 1 or 2 courses are offered at any given time.

COURSE CATALOG::

INTRODUCTION TO ACTING:
8 WEEKS
Students develop fundamental skills for acting in the live theatre. Stage presence, voice, and movement skills are explored. Students work in a fun and unpressured environment to develop performance skills for monologue work and small-cast (multi-character) scene work. Topics for class work include: relaxation and creative energy, posture and gestures, imagination and improvisation, blocking and stage business, working with scripts, emotion memory, and artistic continuity or "bringing it all together". This class is also beneficial for persons who wish to further develop general communication skills.
Limit 12.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT:
8 WEEKS
Students consider character development in the context of the entire play script and within the more immediate scope of individual scenes. Stuent actors will work three scenes from a full length script of their choice. Students are taught to clearly define motivations, world view, and relationships as the scenes and character evolve in time and space. The development of script analysis skills is a primary focus of the course. Student actors are encouraged to discover the playwright's artistic meaning and to merge that with the actor's personal creative process of discovery. Student actors are introduced to methods for the creation of the character's inner life. Text and script materials are purchased separately.
Limit 12.

VOICE AND DICTION:
8 WEEKS
The course is designed to familiarize the student actor with the power and creative potential of their voice through excercises that will relax and free their vocal intrument , affording them the knowledge and confidence to approach period style and verse plays as well as contemporary reportoire. The diction portion of the course will concentrate on articulation, projection and interpretation skills to build the actor's creative vocal/verbal technique. The course is also useful for those interested in developing communication and public speaking skills for other applications (ex. business, teaching, politics, etc.).
Limit 12

MOVEMENT FOR THE ACTOR:
8 WEEKS
The course encourages student actors to think of scene blocking as stage choreography. Students view all action/movement on the stage as artistically significant and full of visual, kinetic, and symbolic meaning. In addition to scene blocking, student actors will explore physical techniques of mime, ensemble movement, stage combat, and physical improvisation.
Limit 12

ACTING STYLES: WOMEN IN SHAKESPEARE:
8 WEEKS
The truth of Shakespeare’s plays is often spoken by the characters with the least power and the most vulnerability - in particular, the women. Although Shakespeare’s female characters frequently refer to themselves as ‘weak’, ‘defenseless’, and ‘lacking wit’, in fact they prove throughout the plays that they are insightful, incisive, sometimes martyred, frequently as ambitious as their men, often lusty, and commonly very funny. Unfortunately, when plays are being produced, it’s the women’s roles that most often get cut in the interest of saving time. In this class we’ll study and play the wide range of Shakespeare’s women in the proper context of their plays and of their era, which disallowed women from playing themselves on stage. Plays studied will include old familiars like Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Taming of the Shrew, but will spend more time examining some of the issues raised by ‘pants play’ like Twelfth Night and As You Like It, as well as looking at the powerfully eloquent historical renderings of Joan LaPucelle, Queen Margaret, Queen Katherine, and as many others as we can cram in. Students will be expected to come to class with a prepared monologue of up to 30 lines of text. Over the course of the class we’ll add more monologues and scene work designed to enhance students’ understanding of the text, subtext, language, and context of Shakespeare’s rich canon of plays.
Limit 12

ACTING STYLES: STANISLAVSKI & THE METHOD:
10 WEEKS
Konstantin Stanislavski, co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre, dedicated his life to discovering how actors can best create truthful behavior within imaginary circumstances. The “method” or “system” he formulated revolutionized theatre training in America, inspiring the creation of the Group Theatre and the Actors Studio. Through improvisation, exercises and scene study, students in this course will examine such concepts as “emotion memory”, the “magic if”, and the “inner creative state” as elucidated in An Actor Prepares, the first text in Stanislavski’s trilogy on the art of acting.
Limit 12

ACTING STYLES: EARLY NATURALISM:
10 WEEKS
The late 19th and 20th Century plays of masters like Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, and Hauptman helped encourage a revolution in the techniques of acting. The success of these earlier Naturalistic playwrights lead the way for a major upheaval in the American Theatre with the works of Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and Edward Albee. Older more formal and melodramatic acting styles were replaced by new ones which emphasized the realistic interactions of ordinary people. This course explores, in monologues and multi-character scenes, the techniques of 20th Century Naturalism/ Realism and how it has evolved to present day contemporary acting styles.
Limit 12

THE AUDITION:
6 WEEKS
You Can’t act if you can’t get the part. This course will show you how to present the perfect five minutes, how to select material that is appropriate for you, how to prepare and present it (and yourself), and how to anticipate the unexpected. Using monologues and scenes, the course is a survey of the fundamentals of effective acting as well as a practical guide to the process of Auditioning.
Limit 15