Dobama Emerging Actors’ Program (DEAP)

  Dobama Theatre continues its commitment to education programming as the successful Dobama Emerging Actors Program, our summer acting program for high school and college students, returns for the 4th season in July 2013. 

Dates: July, 1, 2013-July 28, 2013
Production: TBA

DEAP application form 2013 (pdf)

for more information email: deap@dobama.org

Overview:
Acting is an art form.  This fact is at the curricular center of the Dobama Emerging Actors Program.  In all art forms, technique work is essential to give an artist the greatest ability to communicate.  The dancer builds strength and flexibility, the singer works on vocal support and resonance, and the painter perfects brush techniques and the creation of shape or color.  But in today’s culture, the vast majority of theatre experiences for the young actor place product over process; emphasize parts in plays over coursework in technique and training. DEAP is different. DEAP is a process-centered and technique-based program for serious young actors.

Faculty
D.E.A.P. students work with faculty with both degrees from respected performing arts programs and extensive professional experience.  These instructors specialize in the coursework they teach and have the singular focus of broadening each student’s understanding of the art of acting.

Productions

• Productions are performed in blackbox style, so that by stripping away elaborate sets and costumes, students and audience members are left to focus on the actors on the stage.
• Combined with the work done in class, and the discoveries made through exercises in their coursework, these performances contain exciting moments of theatre and promote artistic growth for each actor.
• Productions are centered on ensemble building, character development, storytelling and communication, as well as deeper understanding of text.  Each piece is done in the beautiful and intimate Dobama Theater.
• DEAP’s mainstage production is always based on heightened text and/ or classical repertoire.

History:
In July 2010, Dobama initiated DEAP, the Dobama Emerging Actors Program, an auditioned, month-long intensive acting program for high school and college students featuring technique-based courses culminating in a full-length production. The education model is that of a college conservatory curriculum.  Guest artists and master teachers teach high-level courses, then students apply those skills in afternoon rehearsals for a heightened text production.  

D.E.A.P. began in order to give students in the Northeast Ohio area an opportunity to get serious, technique-based training to support a process-centered approach to acting.  This instruction will help prepare young actors for collegiate acting programs, give students a broader perspective of what theatre is, and enrich their performance experiences by changing their approach to creating a character and building their own technique.

Curriculum: