Anyone in Atlantic Theater Co Studio?

dramomma
Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:56:31 +0000

revd4jc and ntysua1491, We had a great day at NYU yesterday, attended an overall parent panel with Q&A that was very informative while drama students met with respective studio representatives and students. My D loved that casual student-only time and was very positive about her fellow classmates and Atlantic’s philosopy. We joined them later and was able to “eavesdrop” on the Atlantic session still in progress. Although it was hard to hear with all the other groups taking up different corners of one large room with a lot of discussion going on, here is some of the pertinent info. I picked up on. Atlantic students can still take vocal instruction as an NYU elective, and a lot of them do. Some take dance outside of NYU at the many dance studios in the city, and can also take various dance courses as electives. Altantic students can audition for musicals or any Tisch production for that matter. In fact one of the Altantic student reps. is performing in a caberet with Sutton Foster coming in May. Be assured the opportunities are there if you choose to go for them!
More importantly, the actor training is amazing. It is very disciplined and rigorous, but impressive. The Atlantic Studio has around 50 in the incoming class which they said they break down into 3 groups of roughly 15-20. They all know each other well and operate as a theater family, even with the upper classmen. My D and I both loved Mary McCann (director of the Atlantic School). She was there to speak with the students, answer a lot of questions, and was down-to-earth and very gracious. Other Altantic directors were there as well and were equally helpful, taking care to answer questions and meet individually with students and parents.
We too, took the walk to Atlantic Theater acting school in Port Authority Building across from Chelsea Market (how dangerously convenient!). It is a long walk, but the students say they can do it in 20 min. It took us a half hour at a very good clip! We actually got in the building and went up to the Atlantic studios. About 7-8 very nice studio spaces. They have an equity theater, Altantic Stage 2,underground in that building also which has a couple more studios and is sometimes used for scene study. We walked to Atlantic’s off-broadway theater on W. 2oth and it is terrific.
Any of the freshman dorms around Washington Square would be about the same walking distance. The only dorm that would be close and convenient for Altantic students is Carlisle up near Union Square, and not available to Freshmen who they feel should be more on campus the first year. I thought the housing was great for NYC. Better than I expected.
We feel that the opportunities are endless for professional actor training and exposure. These kids are blessed to have the opportunities. NYU Tisch had about 2,900 auditions this year. Our kids whether they go or not, and no matter what studio thay are in, should feel very accomplished. Yikes…so long, but I hope some of this helped!