So I took a trip past my old highschool yesterday, and it turns out that there are a bunch of people there interested in coming to the University of Toronto.<\/p>\n
And a bunch of them want to take drama.<\/p>\n
So I’m going to start recalling my experience going from Grimsby Secondary School to the University College Drama Program (UCDP) at UofT.\u00a0 I’m going to break it into chunks – so I guess this is part 1.\u00a0 I’m just going to freeball this, so I’m sorry if this is all over the place.<\/p>\n
The drama program at Grimsby Secondary School is extremely physical.\u00a0 The teachers, Soyka, Rosie, and Ebert, come from a physical tradition of theater originating from a man named Jacques Lecoq.\u00a0 So, essentially, if you’re going to GSS, you’ve probably got a bit of Lecoq training in you.<\/p>\n
And believe it or not, that GSS training is pretty special.\u00a0 The Lecoq school is in Paris, and so it had to cross quite a distance to get into Grimsby, Ontario.\u00a0 The theater tradition in Canada, generally speaking, does not involve theater as physical as Lecoq’s – it’s a bit of an anomaly.<\/p>\n
So entering the UCDP was a bit of a shock.\u00a0 The UCDP does not focus physically like GSS – it’s much more broad, and tries to give its students high academic exposure to a myriad of different theater styles.\u00a0 I say academic exposure, because while you might talk about other styles in academic classes, on the practical level, the theater style at the UCDP is pretty consistent across the board for the first few years.<\/p>\n
Let me back up a bit, and get a bit more precise:\u00a0 I’m going to be talking about the performance <\/em>practicals at the UCDP, so that means the acting classes.\u00a0 There are three levels of acting classes:\u00a0 DRM200, DRM300, and DRM400.\u00a0 If you make it past auditions, you enter into DRM200 to begin with.<\/p>\n DRM200 is taught by Toronto writer\/director Ken Gass – a legend in the Toronto alt theater movement, and the brains behind Factory Theater.<\/a><\/p>\n