On a recent bitter January morning, Marcus Stern encouraged a group of Harvard undergraduates to experiment with citrus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat would happen,\u201d he asked them, \u201cif you stuck an orange under each armpit?\u201d<\/p>\n
The whimsical suggestion had real implications for the 20 young women and men who have chosen to forgo a midwinter vacation and return to campus for a new kind of intense study.<\/p>\n
Stern, associate director of the American Repertory Theater<\/a>\/Moscow Art Theater School Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University<\/a> (the A.R.T. Institute), was teaching a drama class, one designed to help the budding actors create a new character, using changes in voice and body positions that would render them unrecognizable. The orange experiment, he said, could lead to \u201cphysical adjustments\u201d that they could incorporate later, without the aid of the fruit, into their transformations.<\/p>\n \u201cThe goal is to get them comfortable with fully transforming their voices and bodies so they can get closer to creating characters that are completely different from themselves,\u201d Stern said, so they can act more \u201cfreely, impulsively, spontaneously.\u201d<\/p>\n Using a deep register for her voice and sharp hand gestures, one undergraduate took on the role of a pope. Another portrayed a woman confined to a wheelchair.<\/p>\n \u201cGo a little higher, softer, more nasal,\u201d Stern coached Emily Hecht \u201911, urging her to change the pitch of her voice to help make her character, a vulnerable and emotionally troubled young woman, more believable.<\/p>\n The undergraduates are part of a new immersion program, a collaboration among the A.R.T. Institute, the Office for the Arts<\/a>, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club<\/a> (HRDC). During the three-week intensive workshop, they are learning a wide range of dramatic techniques and various aspects of acting. The curriculum includes workshops on comedic scenes, intensive study with a dialect coach, improvisation classes, and even seminars on the business of being an actor.<\/p>\n Students work with participants and faculty at the A.R.T. Institute, as well as prominent guest lecturers. Jim True-Frost, famous for his role on the HBO series \u201cThe Wire,\u201d led a seminar on acting for the camera, and well-known director and Harvard alumnus David Hammond recently conducted a Shakespeare workshop.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has been very exciting for us to be able to show the undergraduates that in the graduate school it\u2019s a much more in-depth, intensive approach to acting,\u201d said the institute\u2019s director Scott Zigler<\/a>, who designed the new program\u2019s curriculum.<\/p>\n While A.R.T. Institute faculty currently teach undergraduate classes as part of the Harvard College<\/a> curriculum, for those students considering a graduate degree in acting or pursuing the craft directly out of college, said Zigler, the intensive course really gives them a look at the \u201cnuts and bolts of the profession.\u201d<\/p>\n