NEW YORK, N.Y. – Shakespeare & Company’s Center for Actor Training is offering two, New York City-based sessions this September and October – a Weekend Intensive followed directly by a new class focused on scene work and Play.
Led by Sheila Bandyopadhyay and Andrew Borthwick-Leslie, the NYC Weekend Intensive will be held Friday, Sept. 29 through Sunday, Oct. 1, designed for professional actors and theater students who seek an introduction to Shakespeare & Company’s training methods, as well as alumni who wish to refresh and reconnect with the work. The Intensive includes both individual and group exercises integrating voice, movement, and monologue work aimed at furthering the actor’s connection with Shakespeare’s text.
Tuition is $385; actors who have completed the Month-long Intensive, Summer Shakespeare Intensive (formerly the Summer Training Institute), or Conservatory programs are eligible for 15% discounts, and members of acting unions and of the Shakespeare Theatre Association (STA) are eligible for 10% discounts on tuition for Weekend Intensives.
On Monday, Oct. 2, a six-week, in-person course titled The Game of Shakespeare: Explore Scene Work Through Play begins. This class addresses what it means to be playful in a Shakespeare role; how we can increase our ability to have a meaningful yet fun relationship to ourselves and our acting partners, and ways to enhance the personal connection to Shakespeare’s text through play while exploring a scene.
Drawing on the collective experience in physical theater of instructors Sheila Bandyopadhyay and Michael F. Toomey, this class focuses on process and finding the game of the scene. Participants will be introduced to exercises that support embodied language and physical impulse. Sessions are held 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Mondays through November 6, Tuition is $425; scholarships are available for People of the Global Majority/BIPOC artists; alumni, STA, and union discounts are also available, as well as a $60 discount available to those who also sign up for the NYC Weekend Intensive.
For more information or to apply, visit shakespeare.org.
About the Center for Actor Training
Shakespeare & Company’s curriculum is internationally recognized as a deeply effective training experience for actors who aspire to bring their talent, intuition, and spirit to a higher level. Through the Center for Actor Training, actors, directors, writers, and teachers from all over the world come to work with the Company’s faculty to train their voices and their bodies with a daily regimen of demanding classes, and to delve deeply into their own imaginations, intellects, and emotional lives. To bring a Weekend Intensive to your city, theater company, or university, contact us.
Faculty Bios
Sheila Bandyopadhyay is the Director of Training for Shakespeare & Company, leading its Center for Actor Training. A director, deviser, movement specialist, Alexander Technique and yoga teacher, Bandyopadhyay has been part of the faculty at Shakespeare & Company since 2007. Her Movement Direction credits include Macbeth (The Humanist Project); Mother Courage and her Children, The Cherry Orchard (American Academy of Dramatic Arts Company); Hamlet, Measure for Measure (NYU Gallatin), and Twelfth Night (FSU Conservatory/Asolo Rep). She has directed shows in New York at the Brick, the United Solo Festival (Theater Row), the Tank, the Women in Theater Festival (the Gural), the West End Theater, and the 72nd St Theater Lab. Bandyopadhyay’s favorite roles include Stephano in The Tempest (Stages on the Sound), Tamora in Titus Andronicus (The Humanist Project) and Bianca/Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew (Tempest Ladies). She is a proud member of the Humanist Project and a sponsored artist with Leviathan Lab.
Andrew Borthwick-Leslie has taught, directed, and acted at Shakespeare & Company for 20 years. He is also the co-Artistic Director of The Humanist Project in New York, N.Y.. He has taught acting and voice at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Emerson College, DeSales University and the University of Maryland among others. Andrew has run workshops for the Center for Renaissance Studies, the American Bar Association, the New England Homeless Veterans shelter and many more. He has directed, devised, or assisted on over fifty productions—from Cymbeline to Perestroika. Most recently he directed Love’s Labour’s Lost and Merchant of Venice for the Shakespeare Forum at the Gym at Judson in Washington Square, Macbeth and Frances Goes to War for The Humanist Project, and Double Falsehood for the Letter of Marque Theater Company.
