Kyle Conner, a Centenary College Theatre major from Newark, Delaware, is completing an acting apprenticeship program with the Delaware Shakespeare Festival in Wilmington, Delaware, this summer.
Conner, who has been acting since the age of 8 at the Three Little Bakers Dinner Theatre in Delaware, has just completed his first year at Centenary College. His many theatre credits include the Church Hill Theatre in Maryland, Mainstage Center for the Arts in Blackwell, New Jersey, and the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia under the direction of Barrymore Award Winner Bruce Lumpkin. He was also featured in a commercial for MTV’s A Thin Line campaign, which was designed to stop the spread of digital abuse and was featured in the 2008 film Wrestling.
His apprenticeship will include playing three parts in The Winter’s Tale (Cleomenes, Mariner and First Servant) and being the understudy of the part of Autolycus. In addition, he will be taking master acting classes and will be participating in festival setup and technical work. This will be his first experience performing outdoors.
“Kyle’s background is extremely impressive and I am pleased that he is going to be working with the Delaware Shakespeare Festival this summer,” says Lauren W. Cahill, General Manager at the Delaware Shakespeare Festival. “This experience will help broaden and strengthen his skills and will serve him well in the future.”
Conner chose to study Theatre at Centenary College because of the small professor-to-student ratio and the fact that Centenary College also has a Professional Equity theater called the Centenary Stage Company (CSC), which is a member of the New Jersey Theater Alliance. The Centenary College theatre program is one of the few in the country that affords students the opportunity to earn points toward membership in the Actors Equity Association (the professional union of actors) during their academic career, based on accumulated experiences from accredited professional productions both on campus and at other professional equity theaters. In addition, Centenary College recently opened the David and Carol Lackland Center, which is the new home for Centenary Stage Company. Widely considered to be one of the most sophisticated performance venues in the Skylands region, the state-of-the-art facility features a 485-seat proscenium theater named the Sitnik Theater and the Edith Bolte Kutz’42 Theater, which is a “black box” experimental theater, as well as one the largest dance studios in the state, adjacent to the main stage.
“It has been a positive experience studying at Centenary College,” says Conner. “During my first year, I appeared in Oliver! and A Year with Frog and Toad. I am confident that my experiences at Centenary and opportunities such as the apprenticeship with the Delaware Shakespeare Festival will help propel me toward my goal of working professionally in regional theatre and becoming an artistic director.”
The Delaware Shakespeare Festival College Apprentice Program
The Delaware Shakespeare Festival offers apprenticeships for college students who wish to start their careers before graduation. Apprentices work with the Festival’s professional directors, actors, designers, and staff to gain hands-on experience both on and off the stage.
Performance apprentices appear in small roles in the mainstage production, understudy larger roles, and are members of “The Festival Fools,” the apprentice acting company. The Festival Fools perform a short comedic show on-stage each night before the mainstage performance.
They are offered a series of Master Classes with possible topics ranging from administration, unions, technical instruction, voice and movement technique, and how to get a job. All apprentices will work side-by-side with the professional Delaware Shakespeare Festival technical staff to perform set-up and strike duties each day of tech and performances.
About Centenary College
Founded in 1867 by the Newark Conference of the United Methodist Church, Centenary
College is an independent, coeducational liberal arts and career studies college
distinguished by an accomplished faculty, small class size and diverse student body. Centenary is the only baccalaureate and master’s degree granting institution in northwest
New Jersey.
Centenary College’s main campus is located in Hackettstown, N.J., with its equestrian facility in Washington Township (Morris County). Centenary’s Adult and Professional Studies (CAPS) offers accelerated degree completion programs in Parsippany, with an additional facility in Iselin, and at corporate sites throughout New Jersey.
For more information please visit: http://www.centenarycollege.edu/
