Apprentice

The Apprentice Actor Training Program

The Great River Shakespeare Festival’s Apprentice Actor Training Program focuses on developing and enhancing actors’ knowledge of and experience with verse, and is intended to help actors make the transition from training programs to the professional world.

The program has three components:

Learn: Apprentices take classes and workshops from GRSF company members. Ranging from study of Shakespeare’s First Folio to movement training, our classes provide a complete immersion in work on classical texts. Apprentices acquire tools to create a solid working process for rehearsal and learn how to apply that process in a professional setting. GRSF text coaches lead the majority of classes. Nationally known director and festival founder Paul Barnes will also offer workshops along with Associate Director Doug Scholz-Carlson and other company members.

Observe: Apprentices are given understudy assignments in one of the three main stage season productions. Understudies are required to be at every rehearsal for which the actor they are understudying is called, from initial text work to opening night. By following one member of the professional company from beginning to end of the rehearsal process, Apprentices have the opportunity to observe first hand how an experienced actor handles the challenges of working on Shakespeare in a professional setting.

Perform: Apprentices apply what they have learned as they rehearse and perform their own project under the direction of GRSF artistic staff. Each season’s Intern/Apprentice Company project performs in the Dorothy B. Magnus Studio Theatre in the Winona State University Performing Arts Center, adjacent to the main stage theatre in which the GRSF professional company productions take place. The 2013 season Intern/Apprentice Company project, Macbeth, will perform eight times during the last week and a half of the season. Project production values are minimal so the focus remains on the actor, the text, and the audience. Past projects have included As You Like It (2004), Twelfth Night (2005), Cymbeline (2006), Julius Caesar (2007), Pericles (2008) and Hamlet (2009), Titus Andronicus (2010), King Lear (2011) and All’s Well That Ends Well (2012).

Apprentices are also asked to perform technical theater and administrative office assignments throughout the production build and performance run, on an as needed basis under the supervision of GRSF’s professional staff.

Tuition for the 2013 Apprentice Actor Training Program was $1200, which includes housing for the summer. Scholarships and some financial aid is available. Rehearsals in 2013 begin Tuesday, May 14th. The professional company productions of King Henry V and Twelfth Night open on June 28th and 29th and run in repertory through Sunday, August 4th. The Intern/Apprentice Project, Macbeth directed by Rick Barbour, opens July 25th and runs until August 1st in rep with the other productions. Apprentices participate in strike and are finished on Wednesday, August 7th.

Audition

The audition season for 2013 has ended.

Check back later for information about 2014.
For the audition, please prepare 2 monologues each under 2 minutes in length. At least one and preferably both should be Shakespeare and preferably in verse.

See more GRSF videos at YouTube.com/GreatRiverShakes

Photos of the 2012 Intern/Apprentice Production of All’s Well That Ends Well
See more on Flickr