Acting Prime Vision:
Carver Center Acting Prime students will attain the knowledge, dedication, respect for the craft, and artistry to transition successfully into post-secondary or professional careers in the industry.
Rigorous Training in a Supportive Environment:
Acting students learn a series of codified processes to believably inhabit characters onstage and create memorable moments. Students take a minimum of two acting classes a year, with more options as they matriculate. Students work with faculty who are current working professional actors and directors, as well as visiting guest professionals to learn the techniques of such theatre luminaries as Stanislavski, Meisner, Grotowski, Brecht, and Viewpoints training, just to name a few.
Artwork is Work:
The Carver Acting Prime is built upon the ideas that artwork IS work, Form=Freedom, and hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
Dedication to Craft in Service of Story:
The actor is one member of a team of equally important storytellers alongside directors, designers, and other members of the team. The story is the most important thing. The only way an actor can function as a member of that team is through dedication to their craft.
Trapdoor Theatre Company:
In 11th and 12th Grade, students have the ability to audition into the Trapdoor Theatre Company, a fully student-run theatre company where, as a class, the students run both the art and business of an ensemble theatre company, including: choosing the shows, acting, directing, designing, and running all aspects of the business. Their work produces two fully-staged productions a year in addition to other Carver offerings.
Performance Opportunities:
The Carver Theatre Company Produces five fullystaged offerings a year. One musical is always produced, one contemporary play is always produced, and the other offerings vary from devised immersive theatrical experiences, one-act plays/musicals, and classical work to name a few. Productions take place outside of the classroom
and are a support to the curriculum, not the curriculum itself.
Past recent shows include: Big Fish, Out Town, Anastasia, The Prom, Fame, 9 to 5, Bring It On, Airness, Museum, Rent, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Canterville Ghost, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Noises Off!, and Freakshow.
Beyond Carver:
Recent grads are attending top collegiate Acting and Musical Theatre programs including: Julliard, New York University, Pace University, University of Southern California, UCLA, Syracuse, Northwestern, Columbia of Chicago, Rutgers, Ryder, Howard, and The American Musical and Dramatic Academy.
Graduates recently or currently on Broadway or Broadway National Tours of:
Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, Beautiful, Motown, MJ, and Book of Mormon, and Tina. Recent TV/Film Credits include: Inventing Anna, Bosch, Treme, It 2, Law and Order, Marvelous Ms. Maisel, and more!