The New Actors Workshop was a two-year acting conservatory in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 founded by Master Teachers Mike Nichols

Mike Nichols

Mike Nichols is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate...

, George Morrison

George Morrison (director, acting teacher)

George Morrison is one of the leading teachers of acting in the United States.-Biography:Born in Evanston, Illinois, he attended the public schools there and started acting in the pioneering children’s theater headed by Winifred Ward. By age 13 he was playing Tom Sawyer in an elaborate production...

 and Paul Sills

Paul Sills

Paul Sills was a director and improvisation teacher, and the original director of Chicago's The Second City.-Biography:...

 in 1988. The school offered a unique, dual-track curriculum combining Stanislavski-based technique with Viola Spolin

Viola Spolin

Viola Spolin was an important innovator of the American theater in the 20th century. She created directorial techniques to help actors to be focused in the present moment and to find choices improvisationally, as if in real life...

 Theater Games. The workshop stopped accepting students in 2010.

The founders

Sills, Morrison, and Nichols enjoyed a long association dating back to the 50's at the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

. Their experience convinced them that there was a unique value for the actor in the double challenge of performance improvisation and Stanislavski-based training, and they founded The Workshop specifically to offer this powerful experience to a new generation of actors.

Performances

There were different types of performances throughout the year in which students participated.

Friday Night Improv

Students of the workshop played Spolin theatre games for an audience. These shows were free and open to the public.

Scene Nights

At the end of their first year, students performed for family and friends in a New Actors Workshop Scene Night.

Story Theatre

At the end of their second year, students went into a rehearsal period with a guest director. This production was most often a Story Theater show, a genre invented by Paul Sills

Paul Sills

Paul Sills was a director and improvisation teacher, and the original director of Chicago's The Second City.-Biography:...

 in the 1960s. Guest directors included Paul Sills, Gene Hackman, Diane Paulus, Shira Piven, David Turner, Lester Thomas Shane, K Tanzer, Carol Sills

Notable alumni

• Diane Paulus
  Diane Paulus
  Diane Paulus is an American director of theater and opera who became Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University in 2009. Paulus was nominated for the Best Director Tony Award for her revival of Hair...
  
  , director Hair (musical)
  Hair (musical)
  Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...