“I have had the pleasure of working with a number of recent graduates of Northern Illinois University’s actor training program, and I have found them to be exceptionally well prepared as artists and as professionals. I feel NIU is certainly one of the premiere training programs in our region, and quite likely in the country.”
Steve Scott
Associate Producer
The Goodman Theatre
The focus is the cultivation of the student's fuller understanding of themselves and of human behavior to enable them to work within a framework of truth onstage. Actors achieve this ability through developing their imagination, their sense of conversational reality, their responsiveness and spontaneity, and their capacity for a full emotional life which can be expressed with meaning and clarity. The individual components of voice, movement, and technique work are taught concurrently as disciplines within themselves but sharing an essential interrelationship that supports the overall development of the performance training.
An important element of this approach is that an ensemble of graduate acting students is created that trains, works and performs as a cohesive unit for the entire tenure of the degree program. Students are not added to the program until the current group of students graduates, then a new ensemble is created. Consequently, applications to the program are accepted every three years. The next class will be formed for the Fall 2013 semester. Consequently applications to the program will not be accepted until the Fall of 2012.
Candidates for the specialization in acting are required to audition in person. Every candidate must choose and present two memorized audition pieces, a classical selection in verse, and a contemporary piece. One selection must be in the comic mode and one serious. The total time of presentation should not exceed four minutes. The acting candidate is also asked to supply the audition committee with at least one current photograph and a resume. An option of a video tape (VHS) of the audition pieces may be accepted if the candidate lives 500 miles or more from DeKalb and is unable to appear in person.
Students enrolled in the acting specialization will take a wide variety of courses including the following: