The National Theatre School of Canada (NTS, french: École nationale de théâtre du Canada) is a private institution of professional

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

studies in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

. Established in 1960, the NTS receives its principal funding from grants awarded by the

Government of Canada The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown ...

and from cultural ministries in each of the provinces, with added financial support from private and corporate donors.

Buildings and features

The National Theatre School occupies a historic landmark in Montreal, the

Monument-National The Monument-National is a historic Canadian theatre located at 1182 Saint Laurent Boulevard in Montreal, Quebec. With a capacity of over 1,600 seats, the venue was erected between 1891 and 1894 and was originally the cultural centre of the Sai ...

on Saint Lawrence Boulevard, as well as a building in

The Plateau ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

district, at the corner of

Saint Denis Street Saint Denis Street (officially in french: Rue Saint-Denis) is a major north–south thoroughfare in Montreal, Quebec. It extends from the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel on Saint Paul Street in Old Montreal to the bank of the Rivière des Pra ...

and Laurier Street.

Monument-National

The campus of the National Theatre School stretches all the way to the Monument-National in the core of downtown Montreal. This hundred-year-old theatre, owned and operated by the NTS, has been classified as a heritage building. Recently restored and renovated, the Monument-National is composed of three performance halls.

Michel and Suria Saint-Denis Pavilion

Once a juvenile courthouse, the school’s main home, the Michel and Suria Saint-Denis Pavilion, sits on the border between the Plateau Mont-Royal and Mile End neighbourhoods. The Pavilion houses rehearsal halls, classrooms (including specially converted spaces for voice, dance, movement, set and costume design and writing), the André-Pagé Studio (a flexible studio space with a 150-seat capacity), the Pauline McGibbon Studio (80-seat capacity), a small costume shop, a sound studio, a lighting laboratory, a projection room, a computer room, a school supplies store, a cafeteria, and a common space equipped with refrigerators and microwaves for the students.

The Bleviss Family Library

The Pavilion also houses Canada's largest collection of theatre related books and manuscripts, both published and unpublished, and audio visual materials available in both official languages. This outstanding collection was founded by Alan Bleviss, a graduate of NTS.

History

The notion of a national theatre school first received focused attention as an indirect result of the "Massey Report" (the report of the Massey-Levesque

Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences The Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, otherwise known as the Massey Commission, chaired by Vincent Massey, was founded in 1949. The Massey Commission examined Canada's cultural needs. Massey had long belie ...

of 1951).

Robertson Davies William Robertson Davies (28 August 1913 – 2 December 1995) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished " men of letters" ...

, writing the section of the report devoted to theatre, complained that "facilities for advanced training in the arts of the theatre are non-existent in Canada," and that, consequently, "young actors, producers and technicians ..must leave the country for advanced training, and only rarely return." Notwithstanding widespread acknowledgement of the validity of Davies' complaint, not until 1958-59 was a committee of 16 of the leading members of the Canadian theatrical community formed through the Canadian Theatre Centre / Centre du théâtre Canadien (CTC). Actor and CBC television producer, David Gardner chaired the committee that included Colonel Yves Bourassa, Donald Davis,

Jean Gascon Jean Gascon (December 21, 1920 – April 13, 1988) was a Canadian opera director, actor, and administrator. Career Originally bent on a career in medicine, Gascon abandoned it for the stage after considerable work with amateur groups in Mont ...

Gratien Gélinas Gratien Gélinas, (December 8, 1909 – March 16, 1999) was a Canadian writer, playwright, actor, director, producer and administrator who is considered one of the founders of modern Canadian theatre and film. His major works include ''Tit ...

Michael Langham Michael Seymour Langham (22 August 1919 – 15 January 2011) was an English director and actor, who spent much of his career living and working in Canada and the United States. He was educated at Radley College and studied law at the Universi ...

Pauline McGibbon Pauline Mills McGibbon (21 October 1910 – 14 December 2001) served as the 22nd Lieutenant Governor of Ontario from 1974 to 1980. In addition to being the first woman to occupy that position, she was also the first woman to serve as a vi ...

Mavor Moore James Mavor Moore (March 8, 1919 – December 18, 2006) was a Canadian writer, producer, actor, public servant, critic, and educator. He notably appeared as Nero Wolfe in the CBC radio production in 1982. Life and work Moore was born in Tor ...

David Onley David Charles Onley (born June 12, 1950) is a former Canadian journalist who served as the 28th Lieutenant Governor of OntarioTom Patterson,

Jean Pelletier Jean Pelletier, (; February 21, 1935 – January 10, 2009) was a Canadian politician who served as the 37th mayor of Quebec City, Chief of Staff in the Prime Minister's Office, and chairman of Via Rail. He was a leading organizer of the Liber ...

Jean-Louis Roux Jean-Louis Roux, (May 18, 1923 – November 28, 2013) was a Canadian politician, entertainer and playwright who was briefly the 26th Lieutenant Governor of Quebec. Biography Born in Montreal, Quebec, he originally studied medicine at the Unive ...

Roy Stewart Roy Stewart (15 May 1925 – 27 October 2008) was a Jamaican-born British actor. He began his career as a stuntman and went on to work in film and television. In 1954 he founded Roy Stewart's Gym in Powis Square, North Kensington, and ran t ...

Powys Thomas Powys Thomas (25 December 1925 – 22 June 1977) was a British-born actor who played an important role in the development of theatre in Canada. History He was born in Wales in December 1925. His early education was at Rendcomb College, Cirence ...

, Vincent Tovell and Herbert Whittaker. Director-teacher

Michel Saint-Denis Michel Jacques Saint-Denis (13 September 1897 – 31 July 1971), ''dit'' Jacques Duchesne, was a French actor, theatre director, and drama theorist whose ideas on actor training have had a profound influence on the development of European th ...

was brought in from Britain to act as senior advisor. He was a leading authority on theatre training who had created the

Bristol Old Vic Theatre School The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School is a drama school in Bristol, England. The institution provides training in acting and production for careers in film, television and theatre. BOVTS is an affiliate of the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama. ...

and later co-founded the

Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most elit ...

Drama Division in New York City. In fact, French-born Saint-Denis had what many regarded as an ideal background to offer guidance to Canada's national co-lingual theatre school project (he gives details of his employment as a consultant for this project, and the involvement of his wife Suria, in their co-authored book "Training for the Theatre: Premises and Promises"). In the 1920s, he worked closely with his uncle, the remarkable French theatre director Jacques Copeau, to revolutionize theatrical practice and training in France through the Vieux-Colombier troupe. In the 1930s, Saint-Denis moved to London, England, where he became one of the most highly regarded stage directors of the decade, being responsible for a series of landmark productions featuring such stars of the British stage as John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and Alec Guinness. The CTC committee had been formed with a mandate to create a "truly bilingual school, located in Toronto." The committee decided that Montréal, as a more "truly bilingual" city, was a better location and the National Theatre School of Canada / École nationale de théâtre du Canada officially opened on 2 Nov 1960 in premises owned by the Canadian Legion at 1191 Mountain Street in Montréal. The school changed locations several times over the next decade until in 1970 it settled at 5030 rue Saint-Denis. Beginning in 1965, it also rented performing space in the Monument-National, which it purchased outright in 1978. This historic theatre (built 1891-94) was then in a dilapidated state; a major renovation in the early 1990s restored the beauty of the old Monument-National and introduced many modernizations, resulting in 2 theatres- the 804-seat Ludger-Duvernay theatre and a smaller flexible Studio theatre, which seats as many as 180 spectators. Founding principals,

was the first Director-General (Principal) at the NTS and head of the school's Francophone programs while

headed up the English programming section. James de Beaujeu Domville took over the role of Director-General from 1964 until 1968. In 1960, the first year of its operation, the National Theatre School only offered classes in acting for its Francophone and English students. They had been selected from hundreds of auditions conducted in every province and territory across the country to participate in thirty months of rigorous training conducted over three years, with eight months annually spent in Montreal and the two summer months in Stratford, Ontario, where students were afforded access to the facilities and professional influences of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. In 1961, a bilingual production program was inaugurated. In 1978, a French program in playwriting was added to the French acting section of the school and in 1980, an equivalent English playwriting program was added to its English acting section. Directing has been the most changeable program at the school. Beginning in the early 1980s, various attempts were made to create programs in English and French for the instruction of directing; but for both financial and pedagogical reasons, these programs have not always succeeded, and the English and French sections of the school have apparently abandoned the pursuit of synchronized objectives in this area. Indeed, while the integration of anglophone and francophone students has been fairly thorough in the production program, in other programs it has been more usual to see the English and French sections of the school operating autonomously. While the history of the National Theatre School has generally been prestigious, the institution has not been without controversy. For example, in 1968, which was dubbed "the year of the barricades" because of the many student protests that swept across Europe and North America, the National Theatre School experienced its own uprising. The 8 graduating acting students in the French section resigned en masse in protest against the school's disregard of Québécois playwrights, particularly as exemplified in statements made by the director of the French acting section, André Muller. As a result of the protest, the school pointedly reversed its neglect of Québécois plays. In 1971, Muller's successor, André Pagé, had the students perform a selection of work from various Québécois writers and began a program of commissioning work for the school from prominent Québécois playwrights. In 1998, the 8 students who had resigned were sent a letter from the school declaring that they had been reinstated as alumni and recognizing that their protest had resulted in progressive change in school policy.

Programs

It offers professional training in all the major theatre arts in both

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

and French, making it one of the only co-lingual theatre schools in the world. The programs include Acting, Directing, Production, Playwriting and Scenography.

Intake

Students are auditioned and/or interviewed from all across the country, and NTS accepts international students as well. Placements at the school are highly competitive; for example, the Acting program auditions around six hundred students annually but only twelve are accepted.

Notable alumni

The National Theatre School typically graduates approx. 60 students a year from its combined programs and English and French sections, and its alumni include Canada's prominent theatre artists with an influence that extends deep into the US and European worlds of theatre, television and film. The following is a list of notable students and the year they graduated.

References

Saint-Denis, Michel (1982) Training for the Theatre: Premises & Promises. (Suria Saint-Denis, ed.) New York: Theatre Arts Books.

External links

National Theatre School of Canada website
{{authority control 1960 establishments in Quebec Drama schools in Canada Universities and colleges in Montreal Private colleges in Quebec Le Plateau-Mont-Royal