Year Two Curriculum

Year two of the program is about performance. We put theory into practice through Professional Labs (partnering with professional theatre companies throughout Portland) and Conservatory-produced plays. Studies will expand to include Advanced Scene Study, Styles, Dialect Intensive, Theatre Management, Monologue Development, Audition Technique, Acting for Film, and Professional Orientation classes. Your second year of study concludes with a graduation showcase for professional stage and film directors, agents, and casting directors from the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

Year Two Calendar

Core Classes

TA310 Advanced Acting / Rehearsal 1 (Professional Lab) / Credits earned: 4
Building on skills explored in the first year curriculum, students will work with professional companies, to explore the professional work environment. Students will work side by side with professional playwrights, dramaturgs, directors and some of the most respected professional actors in the Pacific Northwest. The class will culminate in a professional staged production.

Instructor: Luan Schooler

TA311 Advanced Acting / Performance 1 (Professional Lab) / Credits earned: 4
Building on skills explored in the first-year curriculum, students will work with professional companies to explore the professional work environment. Students will work side by side with professional playwrights, dramaturgs, directors, and some of the most respected professional actors in the Pacific Northwest. The class will culminate in a professional staged production. Students will focus on maintaining the integrity of the play while keeping it fresh and playing it as if it is the very first time in a sustained run of the show.

Instructor: Luisa Sermol

TA312 Advanced Scene Study / Credits earned: 3
This acting class emphasizes scene-study that includes dramatic literature written by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) playwrights. It builds on previously established foundations of acting and text analysis by layering “applied dramaturgy” into students’ developing skill sets. Continuing work on such concepts as accessing impulses, use of self, active listening, imagination, given circumstances, objectives, actions, obstacles, and beats, this course will also infuse learning about specific socio-historical and sociopolitical commentaries explored by each piece/playwright studied, and then apply what the play calls upon the actor to do with that information through action and relationship in performance.

Instructor: William Earl Ray

TA410 Advanced Acting / Rehearsal 2 / Credits earned: 4
Students will put theory into practice by incorporating all the training gained in the first year of training in a fully realized play. Through in-depth exploration of the play, their characters and their choices and actions, the students will begin to empower themselves as artists and attempt to discover authentic behavior under the imaginary circumstances. Emphasis will be on a naturalistic text with a heightened theatricality.

Instructor: Michael Mendelson

TA411 Advanced Acting / Performance 2 / Credits earned: 2
Students will put theory into practice by incorporating all the training gained in the first year of training in a fully realized play. Through in-depth exploration of the play, their characters and their choices and actions, the students will begin to empower themselves as artists and attempt to discover authentic behavior under the imaginary circumstances. Emphasis will be on a naturalistic text with a heightened theatricality. Students will focus on maintaining the integrity of the play while keeping it fresh and playing it as if it is the very first time in a sustained run of the show.

Instructor: Michael Mendelson

TA314 Styles / Credits earned: 3
Exploring key acting styles of our western theatrical tradition including: realism, comedy of manners, wit, absurdism (post realistic) through discussions and presentations, students will gain an in-depth familiarity with social/historical periods and the acting techniques related to individual styles including Chekhov, Wilde, Shaw, Beckett, Pinter, and contemporary naturalistic lyricism in the style of Romulus Linney. Students will learn and apply techniques specific to each style related to character mask, movement, given circumstances, and text.

Instructor: Michael Mendelson

TA323 Acting for Film / Credits earned: 2
How to develop the inner emotional life of a character, how to react – not perform – how to feel relaxed, comfortable, and focused when the director says “Action” is the key to a creative and natural on-camera performance.

Instructor: Angie Tennant

TA413 Graduation Thesis Project / Credits earned: 4
The two-year program will culminate in an evening of theatre and/or film that students will devise, produce, and create as an audition for the professional acting community.

Instructor: Chris Harder & William Earl Ray

Skills and Method

TA320 Monologue Development / Credits earned: 2
Students will synthesize the skills explored in the first and second-year program; emphasis will be placed on professional monologue audition skills. Students will develop and create audition pieces for professional auditions, learning how to choose and execute appropriate material.

Instructor: Sarah Lucht

TA420 Audition Technique / Credits earned: 1
Students will learn professional audition techniques, including self-taping, callbacks, general auditions, cold reads and the psychology of auditioning.

Instructor: TBA

TA322/TA422 Professional Orientation 1 & 2 / Credits earned: 1/1
In this class, actors will begin to clarify and articulate what professional success looks like for them, and they will learn foundational skills and tools to move them toward this vision. Students will learn strategies for developing resiliency in anticipation of the stressors of being a professional actor. Informed by workshops with professionals in the industry and class discussions, students will investigate their own professional aspirations, identifying goals for meeting them as well as the resources they will need. Finally, applying the skills gained in first year classes along with the tools built through this workshop, students will learn the fundamentals of producing their own work via the production of a graduate showcase, introducing their talents to the professional world.

Instructor: Caitlin Lushington

TA313 Graduation Thesis Research / Credits earned: 2
Drawing from the work the students have created throughout the year, and new material gathered, the students will craft and curate a Graduation showcase for professional purposes, that includes live stage scenes and filmed monologues. This class meets in both the first and second semester.

Instructor: Chris Harder & Sarah Lucht

Instrument

TA331 Dialect Intensive / Credits earned: 2
Students will continue to build upon their voice work of breath support, projection, articulation, and resonance placement. Students will continue to learn the anatomy of their unique voice and will be introduced to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as a tool for learning English Language dialects.

Instructor: Luisa Sermol