- What really made me want to come to Juilliard
was the callback weekend.
After that three days,
I already felt like I was a better actor.
I was like, if that's what they can do in three days,
I can only imagine what they'll do in four years.
(gentle music)
- At Juilliard Drama,
we want to prepare students to tell the stories
that they're uniquely prepared to tell.
We want to help our actors develop their bodies and voices
to be as strong and as expressive as they can be
and for them to be able to use themselves
as well as to transform.
- Who is the artist and what are you bringing to the table?
How does the text reveal something that is true
within your own world?
- The Drama Division community is a rigorous,
disciplined, passionate community.
- We like to think of our first year work as foundational.
- We start living in imaginary circumstances,
trying to help the students get past the need to perform,
get past self-consciousness.
- Asking us to exercise our imagination
as a kind of technique and as a muscle,
I think is really exciting.
- Freeing up parts of your body that you're not even
used to thinking about
and realizing how that's connected to your emotions
and your voice.
- The voice and the speech work,
and the movement work,
because we do it in small classes, is so individualized.
- What we do is give you an immersion
so you can put that time in and make mistakes,
fail forward, take huge risks,
find every facet of your arsenal
so that you're really working at full capacity.
- It doesn't feel like the voice classes are only voice
or the movement classes are only movement.
Like, you're really sort of working across the board.
- The second and third years were expanding on that,
I like to call it capacity building.
We want to build their strength and their expressivity.
And in the fourth year, we really work to that bridge
to the profession so that our students
have the career skills to put the work that they now can do
to use in the industry.
- I think, those bare bones rehearsal projects
prepared me for believing in something when it's not there,
so that in the third and fourth year,
when we get costumes and makeup and
all the bells and whistles that allow you
to easily believe in the world that you're creating,
it all of a sudden feels easy.
- We want to help our playwrights develop
their unique voices and give them the elements of craft
that will help support a lifelong career.
- I think the mission of the playwright's program
is to develop and nurture exciting new voices
for American theater.
We hope to find writers who are trying to tell stories
that are engaging, and potent, and emotional, and relevant.
- I mean, it's very scary to walk into a room
and sit down with your heroes every week.
They have such a love for,
I don't know, for the school and for the program itself
and for the process of being a playwright in the program.
- I wanted to come to a program that was rigorous,
that was tough, that would make me a better writer.
- Listening to the actors speak their words
is an important part of the process because the writer
also is listening to their own voice
and that's part of cultivating their voice.
- One way in which Juilliard is unique
is that our MFA and BFA actors study together
in all studio courses.
- To have a different range of experience in the room
is amazing.
So many people in my class constantly surprise me
with the knowledge that they've acquired.
- I've learned to be more playful and I, like,
I take things very seriously.
And so the BFA's have really like-
Just to see their curiosity
and the way kind of like just leap into a new experience.
- If you just walk down a hall,
you look into one studio and you see a trombone player
tuning their instrument, and then you go to the next studio
and you see some drama students putting on
like a Shakespeare performance.
So, just existing in this space is already invigorating
by just activating the senses and looking up for two seconds
and seeing all the different forms of art that's around you.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- There's a level of focus in the building
when everybody's trying to be a master of their craft.
When you can see that echoed in a dancer
in the way they approach the work,
in a musician, a cellist, or a harpist,
it is evident in the halls,
but also they get the opportunity to talk to each other
and work together.
- I can't imagine a better artistic,
cultural, political community
to be a part of.
- Walking into Julliard feels like
walking into a laboratory.
What new thing about myself do I get to discover today?
And in turn, what can I discover about humanity
and the world around me?