<p>Help, does anyone have any experience with either program??</p>
<p>I went to NYSSSA, phenomenal experience. I’m now going to SUNY New Paltz, a lot of other students who go here also went to NYSSSA. Not the same kind of program, here isn’t more wide open for you to try and experiment with different things, and it’s mostly independently student-run, while there are also mainstage shows put on by professors and of course acting classes.</p>
<p>iwhitt, </p>
<p>Your usually descriptive posts are missing here! There are others on CC looking into NYSSSA right now. If you went and it was phenomenal, do tell! :)</p>
<p>Alright, NYSSSA was a once in a lifetime experience for me. I’ve never encountered a program like it. I could write for hours about it (which is why I did not go into detail before, I wouldn’t know where to start!)</p>
<p>NYSSSA is a selective acting training conservatory. Along with teaching me very important and widely accepted skills in acting, movement, and speech, it was a very spiritually awakening experience in a very safe environment with people I now trust entirely. It’s a 4-week summer intensive, with 6 hours of classes each day, as well as 2 hours of workshops every night. This is a 24-7 conservatory, our schedules were packed for a month and we had no days off (all though we did have a lovely trip into NYC to see a show, take workshops, meet people in the business, and take a lovely bike ride!) </p>
<p>The environment that was created for this program, in my opinion, is ideal for anyone starting out and looking to enter the arts. This program is not about the business, it’s not about networking or making contacts, it is about the art and craft of acting. It’s a spiritual experience, and a creatively liberating one. I’ve taken other intensives, and have friends who have done both NYSSSA and other programs (such as RSAC at Rutgers and Stella Adler Conservatory and Rochester Broadway Theater League’s Summer Stars), nothing compares to NYSSSA. NYSSSA only costs 1500, and they offer financial aid, which is an unheard of price for the caliber of training it offers. I wish I could go back and retake the classes again. A lot of other programs create a more competetive environment, especially ones in bigger cities, where students tend to feel very self-conscious, and can’t control their tendency to judge others. That is a bad habit that you need to break early on. NYSSSA, I can say, was the safest environment I have ever encountered in my entire life that I have been able to open up 100%, and that was due to the atmosphere that the teachers created for us. We really bonded as a group, and I feel that short month of my life was crucial for me to becoming an artist. Even something as simple as my ability to think up new ideas and get into a more creative mood improved so much, and my return to my senior year of high school liberated me to bring that healthy and creative energy back to my peers at home.</p>
<p>Also, I have kept in very close contact with my fellow classmates and with the professors. They are a constant reminder to me of how I feel acting really should be, when I strip away the business and agents and headshots and resumes. At the base of it, that’s what you really need to remember in order to know you really want to do this. Sometimes when you are applying for these big programs and the competition is big and you want to look good and put the big names on your resume and meet people, you forget about the art itself. That’s not why you want to be in this business, and it’s programs like NYSSSA that give you that artistic base, from which you can build your sense of professionalism. I would recommend NYSSSA for anybody, I think it’s an amazing experience that should not be dismissed.</p>
<p>Now THAT’s a post! Beautiful! :)</p>