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Olney Theatre Summer Institute (OTSI) is an intensive, five-week summer theater training program where students bring personal experience to vivid, theatrical life. Through ensemble interaction and creative play-making techniques, students create wholly original material. During classes in acting, singing, movement, playwriting, and directing, students practice skills and gather ideas for scenes, monologues, songs, and dances. With the guidance and expertise of the staff, students then write, compose, choreograph, and rehearse the program. The company presents a showcase of its original work at Olney Theatre Center on August 6 & 7.

GENERAL INFO
Program dates: July 5- August 7, 2010, Monday- Friday, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Class size: 30 mature and talented 8th-12th graders
Student to Faculty ratio: approximately 6 to 1.

APPLICATION PROCESS
Our simple application is due no later than June 1, 2010, along with an application fee of $25. The application will include one letter of recommendation from a teacher, drama director, or anyone with whom the student has had a close working relationship in the recent past and a Telephone interview between the applicant and a member of OTSI staff. Decisions will be made within two weeks of the phone interview. Applications Received by March 15 Will Receive a Tuition Discount!
Click here for an application.


TUITION AND FEES
Application fee: $25
Tuition: $2,000
Books & Events fee: $50
Application Deadline: June 1, 2010

CLASS DESCRIPTIONS
Daily Warm-Ups (5 meetings/week):
Every day begins with a full company meeting in which students are led through a series of exercises that prepare the body, voice, imagination, and mind for the day’s activities.

Collaborative Play-Making (5 meetings/week):
CoLAB is our core class, centered on the conceptualization, creation, rehearsal, and performance of original work. Students create theater pieces out of personal experiences, non-dramatic source material, nonverbal images, and interdisciplinary interactions. Drawing on skills learned in other classes, students research, write, direct, and choreograph their original material. Students discover the common themes and motifs and combine the individual pieces to create a unified and unique anthology that is performed in the end-of-summer showcase.

Acting (3 meetings/week):
This course introduces students to the fundamentals of the actor’s craft, including the basis of the Stanislavksi approach to creating believable behavior onstage. Improvisation, monologue, and scene study.

Singing (3 meetings/week):
Learn an approach to singing specifically designed for the actor, including the relationship between singing and speaking, and the expansion of individual voice
quality and pitch range. Classes focus on musical theater repertoire and exploration of composing original songs in ensemble singing, duets, and solos.

Movement (3 meetings/week):
Develop an expressive body, exploring imaginative impulses, risk-taking, alignment, stretching and strengthening exercises, and physical responses to environment, partners and ensemble. Using status, body centers, abstract imagery, space, rhythm, music and text, students will create choreography for theater.

Click here for detailed class schedule/description.

EXTRAS
Master Classes
Throughout the summer, students will have the opportunity to work
with their teachers and guest artists on special topics such as Shakespeare, Audition Technique, Dance, and Stage Combat.

Olney Theatre Center Productions
Students will attend performances of Olney Theatre Center’s summer productions. Tickets are included in the Books and Events fee.

Future Opportunities
After successful completion of OTSI, advanced students may be invited to audition for Olney’s professional productions. For those seeking training at the college level, students may audition for Boston University’s School of Theatre at the end of the summer.

“We are pleased to provide the region with an intensive and comprehensive young actor training program. Our future participants will be uniquely positioned to take advantage of opportunities in professional theater, with institutions including Olney Theatre Center, National Players, and Boston University’s School of Theatre.”
-Jim Petosa, Artistic Director of Olney Theatre Center and Director of the
School of Theatre at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts.