American Academy of Dramatic Arts

The American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) is a two-year performing arts conservatory with facilities located in Manhattan, New York City – at 120 Madison Avenue, and in Hollywood, California – at 1336 North La Brea Avenue.

History

The oldest acting school in the English speaking world, the Academy in New York was founded in 1884 to train actors for the stage. Its first home was the original Lyceum Theatre on what is now Park Avenue South. In 1963, the school moved to its current home, a landmark building designed by noted architect Stanford White as the original Colony Club.

In 1974, the Academy opened another campus in Pasadena, California, which made it the only professional actor training school in both major centers of American theatrical activity. The Los Angeles campus moved from Pasadena to Hollywood in 2001 in a new building next to the site of the former studios of Charlie Chaplin.

Program

The Academy remains dedicated to training professional actors. It offers a two-year program in which students have to be invited back for the second year. Auditions are held at the end of the second year for the third year company. As well as training for the theatre, it now offers courses in film and television, providing a structured, professionally oriented program that stresses self-discovery, self-discipline and individuality. Students who graduate in New York receive an Associate of Occupational Studies degree; students who graduate in Hollywood receive a Certificate of Completion or an Associate of Arts degree in Acting. Students from New York and Los Angeles can get a Bachelor of Arts degree from selected universities.

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of narrative, typically fictional, represented in performance. The term comes from the Greek word δρᾶμα, drama, meaning action, which is derived from the verb δράω, draō, meaning to do or to act. The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception. The early modern tragedy Hamlet (1601) by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus the King (c. 429 BC) by Sophocles are among the masterpieces of the art of drama. A modern example is Long Day's Journey into Night (1956) by Eugene O’Neill.

The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy. They are symbols of the ancient Greek Muses, Thalia and Melpomene, the Muse of comedy represented by the laughing face, and the Muse of tragedy represented by the weeping face, respectively. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BC)—the earliest work of dramatic theory.