Acting school is one place to get training and make connections in New York City.
The Big Apple seems to have as many acting schools as it has pizza parlors. Starstruck players can find everything from advanced academic degrees to schools that trained legends like Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and Robert De Niro. Many schools require entry auditions, some are rigorous about acceptance and some more open to anyone with the tuition --- often steep --- and a dream.
HB Studio
HB Studio was founded by actor and director Herbert Berghof in 1945. Actress Uta Hagen became artistic director of the studio's acting classes three years later and established legendary master classes that trained some of the great actors of American film and Broadway. Classes, intensive summer sessions and year-long training programs provide technique in acting, voice, musical theater, dance, movement, improvisation, fencing, stage combat and performance in Shakespeare, Chekhov and O'Neill dramas. The studio offers some preteen and teen acting training as well.
The Juilliard School
In addition to its world-famous music and vocal tracks, Juilliard offers training in drama and in dance. Students take either the four-year BFA program and graduate with a college degree, or come to Juilliard with undergraduate degrees and spend four years in the diploma program, gaining a Juilliard certification for those with academic degrees from elsewhere. Eighteen students are admitted to the program each year by application and audition. There are intensive studies in Shakespeare, improvisation, modern drama and comedy, contemporary theater and film acting, character development and musical theater performance, as well as a significant amount of training in voice, speech, Alexander technique and audition preparation.
New York Film Academy
The New York Film Academy trains neophytes and career-changers who want to polish up their Broadway skills for film. Actors also get basic training in directing, screenwriting, producing and crew technique, so they will be thoroughly grounded in the filmmaking business. The academy offers an MFA program, accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, which can be taken for the first year in New York City and completed at the academy's Los Angeles branch for the second year.
Stella Adler Studio of Acting
The Stella Adler Studio of Acting, founded in 1949, has been affiliated with NYU's Tisch School of the Arts since 1969. The school provides professional actor training through several models. Part-time workshops cater to people with day jobs and weekend teen programs train young actors. The BFA program is part of NYU's Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and the professional conservatories are available as either full-time three-year MFA-equivalent programs or intensive evening training for those who can only attend part time. Acting students learn the Lee Strasberg Sense Memory Technique and Adler's acclaimed methods. The studio offers summer intensives and teen summer conservatories.
Tags: academic degrees, Adler Studio, Adler Studio Acting, Film Academy, musical theater, Stella Adler