WVU Teen Academy

The Teen Academy seeks to teach your teens professional work habits and acting skills. Teens learn to analyze and perform both, contemporary and heightened text, and explore established acting methods and movement styles.  The Teen Academy is geared towards preparing your kids for a future BFA Theatre program.

A primary approach to our Teen Academy is theatre pedagogy, and this includes learning to tell diverse stories.  This is an essential component of the theatre: the ability to see different perspectives and analyze them in order to present issues in informed ways. Our past performances have included a one hour adaptation of Shakespeare’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM a steam punk version of Sophocles’ ancient Greek tragedy, ANTIGONE,  as well as Kate Hamill’s new adaptation of LITTLE WOMEN, which took a feminist at the character of Jo and hercoming of age as a gender non-conforming woman. 

                                                                                                     (ANTIGONE 2018/2019, Photo Credit: Natalie Turkevich)

One of our goals is to provide as much individualized training as possible.  As such, we divide our students based on age and work with them in small groups. This allows our younger teens with an easier transition from song and dance to text-based work. Younger teens will begin exploring established acting methods and movement styles while working on developmentally appropriate material. Through work on a play, or showcase (either with the older teens or on their own) they study different actor-based areas such as movement, voice and acting, and develop the techniques necessary for more challenging and mature themes and texts.