Juilliard Drama Division Overview

One of our primary goals in the Drama Division, I
think, is to search for those passionate young people who have found a voice in
the theater, bring them here, and hopefully over the course of four years,
provide opportunities for them to develop the tools that will make them just more
expressive versions of themselves. The uniqueness of the training lies in the
immersion, in the luxury of time to have four years to really grow and play and be wondrous about every aspect of the work, And so there's no one way to get at that, and the training here is eclectic. The training here is mainly about strengthening, expanding, and opening your imagination, your voice, your body, to be a free spirit. And we work from the inside to the
outside from the outside to the inside and hopefully you're leaving here with a toolbox.

They mean business here. They play hard. It's almost like an athletic sort of team, building your body from scratch. When you work on all of that, you become an interesting person.

All of this happens in one of the most
culturally diverse and rich environments in the world. You walk down the halls here and you feel like
you're in the middle of something exciting and huge and growing and vibrant. It just stimulates my curiosity and creativity. Oh, I just feel so motivated and inspired here in New York.

They live, and they experience, and all we do in acting is
basically find ways how to shape an experience in an artistic way. With the exception of one quarter, the students are in rehearsal every single evening for their four years. Although we do
everything here, and they're doing Shakespeare and they're doing Chekhov, and they're doing Ibsen, 90% of the work the students will do when they leave here will be brand new work. A HUGE advantage to the program is we have, I think, truly one of the best writers' programs in the country.

What the Juilliard program does is it trains exquisite writers to be able to live in the theater and function. It appeared to be a unique opportunity to have an intensive, supportive environment, and the
benefit of being and working in New York What Juilliard offers, unlike any school in the nation, is this acting company that surrounds the playwrights. One of the most important lessons our acting students can learn here is
really about how to be a collaborator. It's extraordinary to see what comes
when you immerse artists with each other.

It's a partnership -- it's the playwright and
the actor coming together to better a piece of art. When they leave, they are mature. I've learned so much of just how simple it is to just be who you are. We are ready for when that moment comes, we will be ready to let go.

And I'm not worried about what happens after Juilliard. It's not about reaching a certain level and a certain cap. It's about how to make this not a four-year program, but a 70 year program. Our aim is that you leave here as the most expressive instrument you can be, the most expressive person you can be, and your fullest self.


And so that's ultimately what I hope happens in the school in their four-year experience -- they graduate having a deeper sense of themselves, the craft itself, and how they can be a
generous partner in the making of new work, That's what it's about. That's what this work is about. Just being able to let go, accept who you are, and bring that to the text, which this school lets you do..