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We rely on the generous support of people like you to sustain our tradition of artistic excellence, and secure a bright future for our Company.
Center For Actor Training
The very heart of Shakespeare & Company is its professional actor training. The aesthetic of the Company was created within the training devised by Tina Packer and the Master Teachers, and it is through these programs that the aesthetic is continually investigated, redefined, and reinvigorated.
Through the Center for Actor Training, Shakespeare & Company’s performance artists, education artists, and artist-managers develop a common artistic vocabulary and coherent approach to performing Shakespeare that provides a solid foundation for their work. Actors, directors, writers, and teachers from all over the world come to work with the Company’s faculty to train not only their voices and their bodies with a daily regimen of demanding classes, but also to delve deeply into their own imaginations, intellects, and emotional lives.
Shakespeare & Company’s curriculum is internationally recognized as a deeply effective training experience for actors who aspire to bring their talent, intuition, and spirit to a higher level.
Donate To DKFF
The Dennis Krausnick Fellowship Fund (DKFF) provides financial assistance for artists of color to participate in our professional training programs.
Actor Training Programs
Summer Shakespeare Intensive
Please see below for an update on the Summer Shakespeare Intensive.
Month-Long Intensive
Greetings to you all near and far, Our devotion and commitment to the Center for Actor Training involves transparency and inclusion in all ways. We have been working with diligence and care to keep the doors open to the many rooms in the Training program and though we have had to make the following tough but wise decision, we have you all in mind while hoping for your safety and well being. Due to the on-going COVID-19 crisis, we are canceling the 2021 Month-Long Intensive, and we are currently developing a series of virtual workshops to offer in January 2021. I am looking forward to the time of change when the virus has passed us and we can be in 'the room' together making what we make and enjoy as theater artists. We will be sharing our for January plans with you all very soon. Stay tuned! With my best wishes, Susan Dibble, Interim Director Center for Actor Training
Weekend Intensive
Designed to meet the needs of professional actors and theater students who seek an introduction to Shakespeare & Company's training methods as well as alumni who wish to refresh and reconnect with the work, the Weekend Intensive integrates voice, movement, and monologue work. Participants explore ways to unlock the emotional and intellectual content inherent in Shakespeare's language, yielding a direct relationship between actor and text.
In-Person Specialized Workshops
The Center for Actor Training typically offers a variety of specialized workshops throughout the year exploring a full range of disciplines including rhetoric, wit, clown, fight, voice, movement, public speaking, and more. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some programming is currently being offered online.
Online Classes and Workshops
The Center for Actor Training now offers a variety of workshops and classes online, providing the opportunity for theater professionals around the world to study with our distinguished faculty.
Meet the Faculty
Jane Nichols
Jane Nichols is an actress, director, and teacher. She first studied with Shakespeare & Company in 1983, and has taught and acted with the Company off and on since then. Inspired by the work of Merry Conway at the 1983 workshop, Jane developed a passion for Clowning. Her teaching today brings together skills and techniques of Le Jeu, Physical Comedy, Clown, Bouffon, Improvisation, and Mask.
In addition to Merry Conway, she has studied with Philippe Gaulier (Ecole Gaulier), Clive Mendes (Theatre Complicite), Ronlin Foreman (DellArte School of Physical Theatre), Michael Kennard (co-founder of Canada’s Mump & Smoot, and Master teacher of the Richard Pochinko native American mask/clown technique), Avner Eisenberg (Avner the Eccentric), Davis Robinson (author of Physical Comedy Handbook), Keith Johnstone (Impro and Impro for Storytellers), and world-renowned Czech clown, Bolek Polivka.
Before S&Co, Jane worked as an actress in Boston, and was the Founder/Artistic Director of Crosswalk Theatre for Children. In 1985, applying her knowledge of children’s theatre to Shakespeare, Jane created and implemented the curriculum for the S&Co Elementary and Jr High School program which continues to this day.
In addition to S&Co, Jane has held teaching positions at the Yale School of Drama; Juilliard; Harvard University; ART; ACT; Brown University; the Actors Center in NYC; Stella Adler Conservatory; Emerson College; Simon’s Rock College of Bard, and University of Washington.
She has directed shows at Harvard University, Brown University, Washington Ensemble Theatre (WET), Intiman Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare Co, Seattle University, Cornish College of the Arts, and Room Circus Medical Clowning. With her company of former clown students, Logic Limited, Ltd., she devised: Desdemona’s Dream; Schaden, Freude, and You: A 3 Clown Seminar; TiVO la Resistance; New Shorts; and A Night at the Trojan Wall: a Clown version of the Iliad. For Cirque du Soleil she worked with John Gilkey, Daniel Passer, and Wayne Wilson to develop and devise the cabaret Your New Best Friends.
Acting credits include roles at Dallas Theatre Center, Portland Stage Co, En Garde Arts, Synapse Productions, New Georges, Shakespeare & Company, Gloucester Stage Co, Nora Theatre, Lyric Stage, Berkshire Public, Counterpoint Theatre, Cambridge Theatre Co. Film and TV credits include: School Ties; Heights; The Living Room Waltz; Ed; Law & Order SVU; America’s Most Wanted; Connect With English; and Rachel’s Dinner with Olympia Dukakis. She has done numerous voice overs and commercials.
From the Alumni
Halima Henderson
I’ve kept busy over the past year, and I have to say that weekend intensive has proven to be very effective! Everyone always asks about it when they see it on my resume and I love waxing poetically about it! Not only that, friendships that I made during my weekend have been long-lasting, I love running into folks at auditions more
Jenna Hoff
All of the vocal and physical training we did enabled me to see how much freedom and availability are possible, which raised my expectations of myself. But for the first time I felt that I had the tools to move forward with those expectations. I can hone, clarify and broaden my Shakespeare monologues (and other pieces, too!), and I gained more
Maura Matarese
I attend at least one workshop at Shakespeare & Company each year as it always allows me an opportunity to grow as actor, to continue to free my actor’s instrument, to meet exciting new artists from around the world, and to spend time in an environment I love, with a faculty whom I deeply respect. more
Teresa Spencer
The most important thing I’ve taken from the Conservatory has been a sense of professionalism. I used to consistently walk into auditions feeling the terror of unpreparedness: even if I’d rehearsed my monologue or sides forwards and backwards, I would arrive at an audition and suddenly feel overtaken with a sense of not knowing what the hell I was doing, more
Lulu Fogarty
My experience at the 2007 Summer Training Institute was absolutely priceless….I learned to bring a sense of play to everything I do. Play might be the most important tool for an actor but it’s surprising how quickly we forget to play because we try to be ‘right.’ There is no such thing as ‘right.’ To me, this is what the more
Shakespeare & Company is a professional live theatre company in the heart of the Berkshires, presenting a vibrant summer performance season featuring the works of Shakespeare in repertory with classic and contemporary plays. The Company offers one of the most extensive actor training programs by a regional theatre in the country, and is also home to an award-winning and nationally recognized theatre-in-education program.