One Extraordinary Year.
At STC Academy, we recognize that many actors are seeking a way to deepen their craft without stepping away from the profession for several years. Our twelve-month graduate program is designed with that goal in mind, offering a path that combines serious artistic development with practical experience. While traditional MFA programs often provide only limited focus on classical acting, our curriculum is grounded in this essential discipline, allowing you to build the tools and instincts that are invaluable for any actor in any production.
Our program is physical, demanding, and immersive, with an extraordinary amount of time spent learning and working alongside seasoned professionals. Five full days a week, you’ll be in the thick of it—classes, rehearsals, and performances—growing not just as an actor, but as a whole artist. With 44 weeks of nearly non-stop training, you’ll find yourself pushed to new levels of skill and imagination, ready to face the challenges of the industry with confidence.
Our program is structured into three terms—Fall, Spring, and Summer—each one layering new experiences on top of the last. In the Fall and Spring, you’ll devise and perform Shakespeare productions with leading directors from Shakespeare Theatre Company and beyond. And in the Summer, you’ll dive into full-length classical productions, rehearsed on an Equity schedule. By the end of this journey, you will have gained a level of mastery that will serve you long after the program ends.
Curriculum
STC Academy MFA Course of Study
Acting training at the Academy combines the emotional, physical, and imaginative life of a role with the technical skills needed to express that character to its fullest. This is achieved through rigorous foundation work and applying the basic tenets of acting to the acting of plays in verse; making strong choices that are grounded in the text, establishing a connection to the scene partner, listening, and responding to what is happening in the scene.
A thorough and detailed process is established in order to bring the language to life through thoughtful text analysis, attention to the intricacies of meter and punctuation, clarity of changes in action (shifts or beat changes) and freeing up the imagination to create a wider variety of available choices. Using scenes and monologues, the students work closely with the instructors to bring their physical and vocal instruments to meet the demands of the material, and integrate the work done in other classes.
Work with Shakespeare’s text is central to classes at the Academy, whether it is a voice, acting, movement, or academic seminar. Additional focused text classes provide the foundation and tools for that work. Scansion begins as a technical skill supporting clarity and ease with the verse, but becomes a resource for character and situation as well. In preparation for the spring, we return to scansion and meter, exploring both the evolution of Shakespeare’s verse in the late plays and the verse and prose tactics of other classic playwrights.
In Shakespeare, rhetoric is a mode of thought, not simply decorative language. Mastering rhetoric enables us to articulate complex thoughts with clarity and to experience the way Shakespeare’s characters think.
We approach the work through both brain and body: balancing analytical and physical techniques for understanding and harnessing the dynamics of Shakespeare’s language.
Voice training at the Academy aims to develop clarity, ease, and nuance, and help the actor have strong breath support and the capacity to unleash the power of the poetry.
Because no one vocal technique provides all answers for all people, Academy vocal work entails a variety of approaches to developing the actor’s voice. Breath work is primary, as freedom of breath helps deepen the actor’s access to emotion. We work with the actor to develop vocal support, resonance, capacity, range, spontaneity and flexibility.
The Academy’s speech work is integrated thoroughly into the acting process. The speech professor attends classes to give notes, identifying ways in which the student might communicate more meaningfully and effectively, and works with directors when the students are working in the repertory plays in the last term. As with all other classes at the Academy, speech classes are fully participatory and interactive.
Core strength, freedom of breath, and ease are critical for an actor’s craft. The Academy movement curriculum focuses intensely on centering, breathing and precision. With the Alexander Technique, actors can learn to free their breath at will, release into strong emotion, support themselves with less effort and choose from a far larger palette of acting choices and match the clarity of their acting intentions with a clarity of execution.
Stage Combat at the Academy explores the art of violence in classical acting. During the program, the participant will explore in-depth the principles of Hand-to-Hand Combat, Broadsword, Rapier, and Rapier and Dagger. Special emphasis is given to acting the fight, bringing meaning and intent to the physical actions and how to develop a fight to serve the play. The actor will develop a personal understanding of how the body moves and listens, and freely expresses itself safely in the dynamics of stage violence. Each actor will have the opportunity to earn their Actor Combatant Certifications in the Society of American Fight Directors.
For the classical actor, mask work is about generating energy, size and presence. The mask has a very practical use and a profound purpose: to make the body the primary instrument of expression rather than the face, and to develop the physical presence needed to inhabit a role. Mask work guides us to eliminate inhibiting habitual patterns, encourages clarity of movement and fosters a greater command of stillness. In distilling action down to essential rhythms, we comprehend the space and force of gesture. The actor discovers greater depths of expressiveness, how to move with power and presence and deeper understandings of spatial dynamics.
This academic curriculum covers the theories and topics of theatre history, dramatic literature and criticism. Using primary sources — plays and writings from the Elizabethan, Restoration, and Jacobean eras — students will examine the historical world in which the plays were written as well as the imaginary worlds created in the plays themselves. With partners, students also do research and create class presentations. Students will be asked to prepare short writing assignments that will serve as a basis for the final written component of the program, in which the student focuses on a particular character or play.
In the second trimester, students will examine the history of black actors in American Shakespeare, along with the history of racism and theatre in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Classroom training should prepare actors to work in front of a live audience. Performance opportunities at the Academy help actors incorporate their studio work into practical performance techniques. In the Fall semester, actors will perform in an adaptation of a Shakespeare play, directed by an STC or Washington, D.C.-based artist. In the Spring, the class works together to devise an adaptation of an epic play or story. And in the Summer term, each Academy actor rehearses and performs in two full-length, fully-produced productions, which play in rotating repertory at the end of the term.
Faculty
Your instructors for the year
Alec Wild
Alec Wild was Founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning Folio Theatre in Chicago, and Founder/Producing Director of the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Minnesota. As the recipient of a Fox Fellowship, Mr. Wild traveled to Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he studied Directing and Biomechanics at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Theater. Among more than 50 productions of Shakespeare’s plays, he has directed The Taming of the Shrew at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles, Titus Andronicus and Richard II for Milwaukee Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Chautauqua Theater Company, The Winter's Tale and Macbeth for the UMN/Guthrie Training Program, The Winter’s Tale, Richard III, Twelfth Night, Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Othello, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Great River Shakespeare Festival, and The Maid’s Tragedy, Pericles, Henry 60, Tales from OvidCymbeline, The Odyssey, and Romeo and Juliet at STCA. His film, Whisper, won prizes for Best Film, Best Actress, Best Acting Ensemble, Best Musical Score, and Best Screenplay at the 2015 St. Louis 48 Hour Film Project, and was an official selection for the St. Louis Filmmakers’ Showcase and the St. Louis International Film Festival. Mr. Wild has taught and directed at American Conservatory’s Advanced Training Program in San Francisco, University of Minnesota/Guthrie Conservatory, Fordham University, and Manhattanville College. He holds an M.F.A. in Directing from the Yale School of Drama, and a B.F.A. in Acting from The Theatre School at DePaul University.
Moimusa Ahmadu
Moimusa Ahmadu is the sole proprietor of Guts Pilates and SportsMedicine. He is also currently the Assistant Athletic Trainer in the SportsMedicine Department at The Landon School for Boys. He started his career in Pilates in 1992 at the Pilates Center in Boulder, CO. The training he received helped him to recover from an injury and prepared him to compete successfully In the Ironman Triathlon World Championships in Kona Hawaii. Over the past 30 years, Moimusa has functioned as an Instructor/ Teacher Trainer, Guest Speaker, and Presenter all over the world - from Hong Kong to Brisbane and Durban, to his native Freetown - sharing the virtues of the Pilates Method. He has worked with professionals over a broad spectrum of the Allied Health Care Provider community, including chiropractors, orthopedic surgeons, and physical therapists. He received his Bachelor of Science, Exercise Science/ Athletic Training at the George Washington University Milken Institute, School of Public Health in 2014. He is sustained by the love of his two children, Kokotowa, age 15, and Sia Rosalia, age 12, along with the rest of his large Sierra Leonean family. Moimusa’s family's motto is, “Let’s take care of each other.”
Lisa Beley
Lisa Ann Beley is head of Voice and Text at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. She obtained a BFA from the University of British Columbia and as an actor worked in theatre, film and television as well as established herself as one of Vancouver’s top voice-over talents. She can be heard in numerous animation series, commercials, and corporate videos. She received her MFA and Voice Teachers Diploma from York University. She has taught voice, speech and text at Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia, Vancouver Film School, Tooba Physical Theatre, as well as many workshops for private and corporate clients. Lisa has spent over 15 years on faculty with Canada’s National Voice Intensive where the focus of the text work is on Shakespeare. She is a member of Vasta and of the Guild of Embodied Practice. Much in demand as a dialect coach in feature films and television she has worked with notable actors such as Paul Bettany, Freddie Highmore, Sam Neill, Daniel Radcliffe and Christina Hendricks. Lisa is passionate about the process of the actor, valuing the integration of the physical, vocal and mental rigour demanded in the actor craft and training.
Christopher Cherry
Christopher Cherry is the director of Studio 2C, a studio for the performing arts and the Alexander Technique, where he focuses his Alexander practice exclusively on helping performing artists attain greater freedom, grace, clarity, and skill. He has given lessons backstage at Lincoln Center, taught workshops at theatres and universities across the U.S., and consulted on many productions in Washington, D.C., and New York City. A charter member of the ACA faculty, he previously taught at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Summer Acting Conservatory, and is himself a graduate of that program. As a playwright and composer, Cherry has created several musicals for family audiences, including Buried Treasure, Homeward Bound, The Joy Gods Return, Perseus and the Gorgon and a musical version of As You Like It. He regularly directs theatre productions in the Washington, D.C., area in collaboration with his partner, pianist and musical director Stefan Brodd, with whom he also coaches singing actors. Before becoming a certified teaching member of the American Society for the Alexander Technique, he earned his bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary, and his master’s and law degrees from the University of Virginia.
Dody DiSanto
Dody DiSanto trained in Paris and is an esteemed teaching protégé of the late Jacques Lecoq, whose teachings she carries forward. She is also on the faculties of The Catholic University of America and the Center for Movement Theatre, and has recently been a Guest Artist for Cirque du Soleil and The Yale School of Drama. She is the founder and artistic director of the Membrane Ensemble Theatre, and was a founding member of Phoenix Dance Theatre. She has been a member of several ensembles, including Chantier Theatre, Present Company and Barking Rooster Theatre. Her thirty years of performing include Off-Broadway at LaMaMa E.T.C., Lincoln Center Serious Fun Festival, Theatre for the New City, the Avignon Festival, and television and film work. DiSanto’s teaching credits include Fundamentals of Lecoq at the Center for Movement Theatre, Dynamic Studies in Space, Gesture and Structure at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Graduate Acting: Performance Ensemble and Neutral Mask at Towson State University, a Lecoq Colloquium at Tufts University, Mask at University of Toledo, Neutral Mask at M.I.T., and various workshops and courses for Ringling Clown College, Penn State University, Amherst College Department of Theatre and Dance, The George Washington University, the Mid-Atlantic Movement Theatre Festival, MotionFest and the ATA National Convention at Tulane. She holds a diploma and teaching certification from Ecole Jacques Lecoq, where she received a private pedagogic apprenticeship and also completed the Laboratoire Etude de Movement course of study. She studied corporal mime with Etienne Decroux, wire, juggling, acrobatics and tap under the direction of Annie Fratellini at the Ecole Nationale du Cirque, and was the assistant to Jacques Lecoq at the Theatre of Creation Festival. She is nationally certified for Massage Therapy and Bodywork and also created, owned and managed the internationally acclaimed music venue Nightclub 9:30 in Washington, D.C. from 1980-1987
Ed Gero
In 31 seasons with the Shakespeare Theatre Company, he most recently appeared as King Henry in Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2. 70 other roles for STC include Hotspur in Henry IV (Helen Hayes Award), Bolingbroke in Richard II (Helen Hayes Award) and Macduff in Macbeth (Helen Hayes Award). A 32-season veteran of the Washington Theatre community, he is a fifteen-time nominee of the Helen Hayes Award and four-time recipient. In 2015, he created the role of Justice Antonin Scalia in the world premiere of John Strand’s acclaimed play The Originalist directed by Molly Smith at Arena Stage. He appeared as Mark Rothko in Robert Falls’ production of RED at the Goodman Theater in Chicago and Arena Stage in Washington, DC. Other DC credits include Scrooge in A Christmas Carol at Ford’s Theatre; Salieri in Amadeus at Roundhouse Theatre; Donny in American Buffalo at The Studio Theatre and Sweeney Todd in Sweeney Todd at Signature Theatre. He has played Richard Nixon in Nixon’s Nixon at Roundhouse Theatre in 1999 and 2008 and received a Helen Hayes nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor both times. Other favorite performances include John in Shining City, Ivan in The Seafarer, Tom Sargeant in Skylight (Helen Hayes Award), Vershinin in Three Sisters, and Philip Gelberg in Broken Glass. Other regional credits include Horace Vandergelder in The Matchmaker at Center Stage in Baltimore. Film and television credits include House of Cards, Turn: Washington’s Spies, Die Hard II, Striking Distance, and narrations for The Discovery Channel and PBS. He is an Associate Professor of Theater at George Mason University. He earned a BA in Speech and Theater at Montclair State University. Mr. Gero was also honored to receive the 2015 Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship.
Robb Hunter
Robb Hunter is a member of AEA, SAG/AFTRA, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and is a Certified Fight Director and Teacher of Stage Combat for the Society of American Fight Directors. As a professional fight director he has choreographed violence/movement for many DC theatres including The Shakespeare Theatre, Arena Stage, Center Stage, Washington National Opera, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, The Studio Theatre (where he has received multiple Helen Hayes Award nominations for his choreography), Olney Theatre, The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, Rep Stage, and Washington Shakespeare Company. Robb holds an MFA in Theatre Pedagogy from the Virginia Commonwealth University and is currently Artist in Residence at American University where he choreographs, directs and teaches movement, mime, stage combat, acting and various sections of theatre history. He also teaches stage combat for McDaniel College and for the MFA program at Catholic University.
Emma Jaster
Emma is a performer and generative artist. She has been called a “splendid mover” (The Washington Post) and “a master of her craft” (Baratunde Thurston). She strives to create original, physically compelling theater that directly engages the audience. Her work has been categorized as everything from clown to performance art and lots of juicy things in between. She has performed in New York at Dixon Place, The Brick, Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, and HERE Arts Center. She has worked with Cie. Pas de Dieux in Paris, Natanakairali Institute for Sanskrit Theater in India, LaMama’s International Theater Symposium in Italy, and U-Theatre, a Grotowski-based Zen-drumming troupe in Taiwan. She has choreographed for dancers, actors, students, & puppets. She received her degree in theater and dance from Amherst College and credits the blissful melding of these two forms to her time at the Lecoq school in Paris. She is the recipient of two Roland Wood Fellowships for independent graduate study in theater and dance, a HARP artist residency at HERE Arts, and an artist fellowship from the DCCAH which funded the initial development of her last work, To Know a Veil (“Jaster has created the kind of performance for which the 21st century is going to be very hungry” -playwright Gwydion Suleibhan).
Lisae Jordan
Lisae Jordan is originally from upstate New York, where many small towns have ballet schools as a result of the Ford Foundation’s support for George Balanchine and his efforts to establishing regional professional ballet companies and training for American dancers. She studied and performed classical ballet since age 5, training at Ramsey School of Ballet and the School of the Hartford Ballet, and performing with Ballet North, WomenWerks (a company of actors and dancers), and other regional companies. Her roles include classical and contemporary works and, of course, all female roles in the Nutcracker (as well as several of the male variations). Since moving to Washington, DC, she danced with the Washington National Opera, Baltimore Opera, and as a guested with various local companies. Repertoire includes Samson et Deliah, Aida, Luisa Fernanda, Hamlet, MacBeth, La Traviata, Le Boheme, Maid of Orleans, and Lakmé. She is a proud member of the American Guild of Musical Artists and services on the area committee for the region.A teacher respected for her focus on responding to the needs of actors and dancers, Lisae teaches ballet, conditioning and body mechanics, and stretch. Her work incorporates aspects of dance, feldenkrais, gyro, pilates, and floor barre, but is grounded in the desire to provide performers with the strength and flexibility they need to be artists. She teaches at the Maryland Youth Ballet and the School of the Washington Ballet, and was part of the original faculty at the American Dance Institute founded by Pam and Michael Bjerknes.
Jodi Kanter
Jodi is a full-time faculty member at the George Washington University, where she teaches acting, directing, dramaturgy, and contemporary performance history. As a scholar, Jodi applies the theoretical lens of performance to everyday practices and so, while her methodology is consistent, the subjects of her work vary—from, for example, end of life health care to contemporary dramatic literature to the American Presidency. She is the author of two books in the Southern Illinois University Press’s Theatre in the Americas series, Performing Loss (2007) and Presidential Libraries as Performance (2017). As an artist, Jodi’s focus is on strengthening communities through theatrical improvisation, oral history collection, writing and performance. To this end, over the last twenty-five years, she has created dozens of workshops and performances in a wide variety of settings, including prisons, hospices, libraries and community centers. She has also served as a production dramaturg at a number of DC theatres, including Roundhouse, Woolly Mammoth, Olney Theatre Center, Mosaic and Theatre J. Jodi received her PhD. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and her MA in Counseling / Expressive Arts Therapy from Lesley University.
Bess Kaye
Bess Kaye is a proud STCA graduate of the class of 2018 and is a local stage combat instructor and Fight and Intimacy Director. She is an Advanced Actor Combatant and Associate Instructor with the Society of American Fight Directors and The Noble Blades Stage Combat Troupe. She trains in Intimacy Choreography best practices with Intimacy Directors and Coordinators and Theatrical Intimacy Educators. Her stories of love and violence have been seen on stage with Avant Bard, the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Flying V, Pinky Swear Productions, Monumental Theater Company, and the Washington Stage Guild.
Craig Wallace
Craig Wallace is an actor, director, and teaching artist as well as an affiliated artist with the Shakespeare Theatre Company and an associated artist at Ford's Theatre. Craig's training includes a BFA from Howard University, an MFA from Pennsylvania State University and The Royal National Theatre, London. His many performance credits include numerous roles and awards. Folger Theatre: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Mary Stuart, Twelfth Night (2003, 2013), The Taming of the Shrew (Helen Hayes Award nomination Ensemble), Cyrano (Helen Hayes nomination Outstanding Ensemble), Much Ado About Nothing (2009), Othello (2002), As You Like It, Measure for Measure, Romeo and Juliet; Shakespeare Theatre Company: Henry IV parts 1 and 2, The Government Inspector (Helen Hayes Award nomination Outstanding Ensemble), Tamburlaine, Edward II, Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet; Ford’s Theatre: The Laramie Project (Helen Hayes Award nomination Outstanding Ensemble), Our Town, Necessary Sacrifices, Sabrina Fair, Jitney; Arena Stage: K2, All My Sons, The Great White Hope, Hot-n-Throbbing; Signature Theatre: Angels in America, Parts 1 and 2 (Helen Hayes nomination for Part 2); Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company: The Last Orbit of Billy Mars, Tommy J & Sally, Our Lady of 121st Street, Starving; Round House Theatre: Young Robin Hood, Permanent Collection, Tabletop, The Little Prince.