Each season is selected with an emphasis toward givingstudents experience in working with the greatest classical texts and the most compellingnew American and international plays. Particular stress is placed on the actor'semerging ability to synthesize the lessons learned in the studio with the practical realitiesof casting. The third year of the program is devoted exclusively to an internship at the CincinnatiPlayhouse in the Park under the supervision of its artistic director, Edward Stern. ThePlayhouse, currently producing some of the finest work in American regional theater,has demonstrated its dedication to the value of actor training by forging with OhioUniversity a bold new program designed to bridge the academic and professionalworlds. Performance experience is the key.
Interns also perform in a varietyof outreach programs.
Classes fashioned to meet the special needs of emerging artistsand career-minded professionals are offered by members of the Playhouse staff as wellas visiting theater practitioners. The PATP encourages students to pursue summers acting opportunities to apply inpractical situations the full range of the resources they have acquired in their training. For 39 years the Ohio University Players have performed at the Monomoy Theater inChatham, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. Each spring artistic director Alan Rust, himselfan alumnus of Ohio University, conducts auditions in Athens and fills the majority of itscasting needs from among the current PATP students. The Monomoy season,consisting of eight productions ranging from musicals to Shakespeare, plays toconsistently sold-out houses in an exquisitely preserved New England prosceniumtheater.