Dear Educators,

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We are looking for students who are curious, passionate, and driven. We are looking for students who may want to make a life in the theater, and who want to know about all aspects of theater making. We hope for students who are self-motivated and eager to try new things, and learn new skills. We are looking for the student who wants, and who will thrive in an environment where they are asked to take constant creative risks, and possibly fail, and get right up and risk again. 

What NTI provides—whether studying with us in Connecticut or Moscow —is an opportunity for old world, deep study of the theater, seven days a week. Immersion in not only what it means to make a piece of theater or how to act or direct, but immersion in the sense of they get to find their place in the craft. Our students study with professional mentors ten hours a day. They find out what a life in the theater might look like. And they find out what the true demands may be. When I say true demands I am talking about the hours of dedication, rehearsal, and research that it takes to be a successful theater artist. I am also talking about the creativity and respect one must nurture to be a good collaborator. 

 

Our curriculum is designed to stretch and strengthen the students’ imagination and body.  It is constant practice based in technique, with room for the student’s creative impulses and opinions. We hope to help them build an endurance that is both creative and physical. Our students study design, dance, acting, choreography, playwriting, composition, directing, and voice for 70 hours a week, in addition to a variety of master classes and conversations with established and renown theatrical luminaries. Every week, they are given the opportunity to step up to a different play or musical and direct or act in a space that is their entirely of their own creation and have the guidance of a professional director. They are asked to have an opinion about what they are staging, they are asked to be in conversation with their time.  

Students leave all of our programs with very tangible things, a play or a musical that they have written, a song they can sing, audition pieces certainly. They leave with intimate knowledge of at least 25 pieces of theatrical literature. They leave knowing how to move, how to support their voices. They collaborate with each other in different configurations every week, so they have lots of practice and the potential to become great collaborators. They also come back to their home institution invigorated.  They have a better sense of themselves, of what they want. They have a better sense of the professional landscape and how to navigate it. They have an improved work ethic, and they most often cite that they are more compassionate, respectful theater artists simply from having worked with their ensemble at NTI. 

Above all, it is our hope that students return to their university with a renewed enthusiasm and a desire to do whatever is required of them to make the kind of theater that they love.