Old Globe, USD Get Act Together : New Master’s Program to Blend Class, Stage Experience

The University of San Diego and the Old Globe Theatre will launch an unusual joint graduate program that combines classroom study of drama with on-stage experience in Old Globe productions, leaders of the two institutions announced Monday.

Aspiring actors with a passion for classic theater will be candidates for the two-year master of fine arts degree. Competition for a spot in the program is expected to be fierce.

This fall’s premiere class of seven students will be chosen through both a traditional higher education application process and auditions to be held in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.

“This is going to be a very, very special school,” said Old Globe Executive Producer Craig Noel, who first envisioned the program 25 years ago and helped create it.

Subsequent classes will enroll about 15 students. All of them will be supported by fellowships offered by USD, said Sister Sally Furay, vice president of USD and president of the Old Globe’s board of directors.

“I realized when I went to auditions that lots of the actors who had Equity cards still did not have the experience and the training to make them successful in the profession,” Noel said.

The program is designed to offer that experience. Students will study drama under USD English professors to acquire the knowledge to perform Shakespeare and will practice their craft with Old Globe actors and directors before performing in Old Globe productions. They also will serve as consultants to USD’s undergraduate drama department. The school has no graduate drama department.

Though the current focus is on acting, Noel hopes a few future slots in the program will be reserved for playwrights and directors. Barton Thurber, chairman of USD’s English Department, said that actors’ academic preparation has been skimpy, partly because they have not needed classical training to work in television and films.

“They don’t have the intellectual tools to understand what is supposed to be happening when you start speaking Shakespeare,” he said.

David Hay, the Old Globe’s associate director and director of the new program, promised that the tiny enrollment will allow individual attention. Each actor will receive an evaluation of his strengths and weaknesses each semester. Classroom and acting time will be allocated according to those assessments.

The program will “help them to become the best, the most flexible, the most usable working actors that they can possibly become,” he said.

The rare joint program, currently offered at five other universities across the country and nowhere else in California, is also seen as a way of perpetuating classic theater and linking USD with the community in much the same way as its School of Nursing is linked to local hospitals, officials said.

“It’s an attempt on our part to build a relationship with the Old Globe,” said USD President Author Hughes.

USD will spend $55,000 to $60,000 to start the program and to fund seven fellowships for this fall’s class, Furay said. The price will double when next year’s class is accepted. Future funding could come from donations and named fellowships, she said. The Old Globe has not yet determined its costs.

A nationwide publicity campaign is about to begin, but USD has already received about 20 inquiries about the program.