Riverside Shakespeare Company - The Riverside School For Shakespeare and The First Folio

The Riverside School For Shakespeare and The First Folio

To train actors, directors, and teachers in the performance of the classic text of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the company began its professional training program, The Riverside School for Shakespeare, in the fall of 1980, at The Shakespeare Center, headed by John Clingerman.

Actor training classes were offered by company members with professional performance experience and training in the classics: in verse, stage combat, movement and Commedia dell'arte. Among the teaching staff were Marya Lowery, Robert Walsh, Maureen Clarke, Eric Hoffmann, Joel Leffert, John Carroll, Robert Mooney, Peter Siiteri, Dan Southern and Timothy Oman. Numerous special guests offered workshops, such as Raúl Juliá, Barnard Hughes, Roger Rees, and Paul Rogers.

The Riverside Shakespeare Company also began to host residencies for actor training with verse by noted Shakespeare teachers Cicely Berry (in her first such workshops in New York City), and Patrick Tucker from the Royal Shakespeare Company for training American actors in use of Shakespeare's First Folio as a cornerstone of professional stage performance.

According to Backstage:

Initiated in the fall of 1980, The Riverside School for Shakespeare has been expanded to train actors in areas of Renaissance language, thought, movement as well as stage combat and other Renaissance performance styles, focusing on the preparation of the serious professional actor for the performance of Shakespearean and other Renaissance dramas. The RSC actor training program has been set up by RSC's Artistic Director, W. Stuart McDowell, and by the program's director, John Clingerman. The courses will cover the breadth of Renaissance stage acting, offered by a staff of instructors with professional experience gained through work with the only Shakespeare company performing year-round in N.Y.C.