Freehold’s Studio is a theatrical training program.
From introductory courses for the beginner to master classes for working professionals, our Studio offers comprehensive training which aims to develop an actor’s greatest gift – a sense of truth – while developing the means to express that gift specifically and viscerally.
Through rigorous instruction in a range of disciplines, Freehold’s students are encouraged to move the art form forward – to transform it, deepen it, clarify it, and create new ways of working.
This is done through individual class offerings, performance opportunities like the Studio Series, the Ensemble Training Intensive, and master training workshops.
The work we do here strives to integrate organic, truthful roots and an empathic connection to the life around you with extraordinary expression – physically, vocally, and imagistically.
There has long been the conflict between inside out and outside in – as though one must choose one over the other.
We believe that you must develop both. That work can originate from a clear, extreme form; but must then be rooted in organic truth, or filled. Or that work can originate in the organic, inner truth; but then it must weave out into specific, clear, extraordinary expression.
Inner life does not mean vague, self-indulgent emotionality; nor does outer form mean empty technical execution. Form and content must both be developed for any given performance and then integrated – a tall order.
The training for such work is focused on developing in each artist an open heart, a sense of astonishment, an expanded imagination, a rigorous sense of truth, a resonant and expressive voice and body, compassion, and the intention to serve the community and the larger mission of the Theatre and the play, and not self-glorification.
It is in the integration of these several aptitudes that one’s contribution is realized. It takes dedication, determination, humor, insight, and guts to keep working toward an end that will never be all the way there – and to have faith that you are contributing to an Art where,
“Everything eternal triumphs here and all that is usual melts away.”
