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Drama students benefit from the department's Wednesday Lab and the expertise of the many guest artists and industry professionals who visit the department and Syracuse Stage each year. And if you like to share your passion for drama with others, check out All Star C.A.S.T. (Community Actors and Students’ Theater) workshops.

A person stands on a stage and talks to two people who are seated at a table on the stage.

Actor and Department of Drama alumnus Reid Scott '00 (also pictured in photo at top of page) visited Wednesday Lab and worked with drama students.

Wednesday Lab

Wednesday Lab is the “living room” of the artistic home that is the Department of Drama.

Each Wednesday at 4 p.m. during the academic year, the drama department comes together in a forum that presents a variety of events and guest lectures. Through “Wed Lab,” drama students informally learn about creating theater.

Lab programs may include presentations from directors and designers for both Syracuse Stage and Department of Drama that explore the approach to current productions and provide the opportunity for students to understand and contextualize the productions they see in the complex. Guests often include successful alumni as well as theater artists who are performing or working at Syracuse cultural venues, including Syracuse Stage. Alumni who share their stories include recent graduates who successfully entered the business as well as those who found a different path for their lives.

Lab events have also included material from various classes, workshops and productions.

Guest Artists

Each year, the Department of Drama brings a distinguished roster of nationally and internationally renowned industry professionals—many of whom are drama alumni—to Syracuse. Often, these guest artists are in residence for one to four weeks, and many of them return to Syracuse annually.

Additionally, many of the artists who are here performing at Syracuse Stage or in other Syracuse cultural venues are invited to work with drama students. The workshops, master classes and discussions that these artists lead provide experiences that both broaden and deepen the classroom and experiential learning provided by department faculty.

All Star C.A.S.T.

All Star C.A.S.T. (Community Actors & Students’ Theater) is a program for Department of Drama students and people from the community who have special needs, all of whom have a love of acting and the wish to come together to create theater.

Our mission is to provide a safe, non-judgmental space for community actors and drama students to explore their creativity; to encourage communication, group awareness, sensitivity, sharing, confidence and personal affirmation; and to re-awaken a sense of “play” and joy in acting, when out of the competitive arena.

The group—originally called the Young Actors Workshop—was formed in 1991. Today, All Star C.A.S.T. includes four groups: a young group with actors aged 8-12 years, a middle group with actors aged 18-30 years and two senior groups. The groups meet for workshops once a week to explore theater games that go toward creating a script, rehearsals, and a production at the end of the semester. The drama students, or facilitators, design the program for the term, guiding the exercises and producing and acting in the show with the community actors.

The workshops have a faculty adviser who meets with the facilitators each week and who oversees the classes and the productions. Drama faculty members also offer important input to guide the students in exercises, and in the first three weeks of the semester, there are workshops for the students to explore different approaches and techniques.

All Star C.A.S.T. serves many purposes.

For the actors:

  • The group provides a safe, non-judgmental space to come together to explore creativity.
  • It allows the actors to exercise and strengthen their bodies and voices, exploring freedom of breath, expression and range.
  • It encourages communication, group awareness, sensitivity, sharing, confidence and personal affirmation.
  • It gives confidence in performance, and the support of the group.
  • The process of performing helps the actors explore different situations and characters using their imaginations and drawing on many different sources.
  • The actors discover they can also be leaders.
  • This is a place where ideas are always important and creative.
  • The workshop gives all the members a lot of fun! It is a place to make friends and feel accepted.

For the facilitators:

  • The group provides the drama students with an opportunity to use the work they have explored in their drama classes in a workshop setting. By guiding others, they find that they have a deeper understanding of their own development and needs as actors.
  • The facilitators develop a sensitivity to other people—the ability to listen and receive information and to have a sense of observation without criticism.
  • The group helps develop clear thinking and speaking.
  • It re-awakens their sense of “play” and their joy in creativity, when out of a competitive arena.
  • The group provides valuable experience for the young actors, opening up possibilities for future training in drama therapy or drama in education when they graduate.

Some of All Star C.A.S.T.’s past productions include:

"A Midsummer Night’s Dream"
"Beauty and the Beast"
"Greased!"
"The Phantom of the Opera"
"Romeo and Juliet"
"The White Snake"
"The Wizard of Oz"

Several productions of the group also came out of the actors’ writings and improvisations.

"People Like Me" is a 2010 documentary film about All Star C.A.S.T. (then known as the Young Actors Workshop).

The documentary was created by Larry Elin ’73, Steve Davis, and Douglas Quin, professors in Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. They were awarded a grant from the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) to hire Sujeet Desai, an accomplished musician with Down syndrome and former member of All Star C.A.S.T, to perform new music for the film. Working closely with composer and musician Nathaniel Stein, a senior in VPA, Desai played a variety of instruments for the soundtrack. The film had its red-carpet premiere in Syracuse as part of the University’s Orange Central celebration.

Acknowledgements

The Taishoff Family Foundation for a generous grant allowing us to expand the program at Syracuse University and beyond.

Larry Elin, Doug Quin and Steve Davis for their direction of the documentary film "People Like Me."

Contact

For more information about All Star C.A.S.T., contact:

Ralph Zito, Professor and Chair
Department of Drama
rzito@syr.edu