BWW Exclusive: Introducing The National Theater Institute's Complete Theater Training

The National Theater Institute is excited to partner with BroadwayWorld on the launch of a new blog to give an inside look at the undergraduate training program that has launched the careers of thousands of actors, directors, dancers, composers, designers, and playwrights since 1970.

Offered by the two-time Tony Award-winning Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, a "semester-away" at NTI is an intensive, immersive theater program that prepares young artists for today's theatrical landscape unlike any other undergraduate training in the world.

Situated on the Connecticut shoreline, NTI is housed on a historic campus that has been in service to theatrical creativity--specifically the development of new work--for 50 years. It is on these grounds that our students live and work and learn. It is the place where emerging artists are given space and time and valuable instruction in many disciplines from a great variety of master teachers and industry professionals. It is the place where these artists meet more challenges than they ever thought possible, 7 days a week, 10 hours a day, for 14 weeks. At NTI, students dive to the center of a play, they devise a design and transform a space, they dance, they write a song, they stage a scene, and they have a conversation with a theatrical luminary. Sometimes all in the space of 48 hours.

The National Theater Institute offers six, credit-earning training programs that provide theater artists with a place to research their craft, their ideas, and themselves in order to find out the exact conversation they would like to initiate or enter into with the theater. NTI is a practicum, a laboratory. It is our mission to provide the tools to broaden theatrical studies. For nearly 45 years, students have been flocking to NTI from colleges and universities across the country to spend a semester--or summer--learning what it means to work as a theater professional.

NTI is the place where these aspirants write, direct, dance, sing, act, produce, design, where actors come and discover they are writers, where directors come and discover they are dancers, where playwrights discover they are designers and actors as well. NTI teaches young theater craftspeople to create and sustain a life in the theater through training as a complete theater artist.

We are a place seriously invested in our students being able to enter the theatrical landscape upon leaving us. We are a place seriously invested in ensuring the quality, compassion, and innovation of theater through the training of these young artists. To a student of the theater, there are not many promises about this career path that I can make, but to those that choose to study at NTI, I promise this: you will know how to work; you will know what it means to live many full days in the life of a theater maker; will leave knowing much more about your craft, yourself, and others; you will leave wanting to know still more; the people you work with here will join you on your professional and personal journey sharing a common experience, language, and work ethic. Ready?

Let's begin!

Rachel Jett
NTI Artistic Director

Next week: Take a look at NTI's latest semester-long, credit-earning intensive, the National Music Theater Institute (NMTI) with NMTI Artistic Associate Jonathan Bernstein.

To learn more and apply to NTI, visit www.nationaltheaterinstitute.org and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (@NTIRiskFailRisk).

Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Barn

National Theater Institute campus at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center

National Theater Institute Theater Lab

National Theater Institute Theater Lab scene

National Theater Institute stage combat

National Theater Institute

National Theater Institute

National Theater Institute Class