CCM expands global network with more opportunites for faculty and students

Acting professor D’Arcy Smith was invited to teach classes at the Royal Center School of Speech and Drama (RCSSD) in London, England in May 2019. For the past five years, Smith has recruited MFA voice students from RCSSD to come to Cincinnati to finish their training at CCM. The students spend their first year in London and their second year of training is spent entirely under CCM guidance and mentorship as they work with students in CCM’s Acting, Opera, Voice and Musical Theatre programs. This summer while at RCSSD, Smith worked to expand CCM’s partnership with the school to create a new study abroad experience in May 2020. CCM students will spend 12 days at RCSSD to learn voice, dialects and acting for Shakespeare. “While there, they will have a truly immersive experience as they interact with both teachers and students,” Smith says. Two CCM faculty members will also travel with the students to lead workshops in voice, dialects, acting, movement and/or stage combat. Smith adds: “This is a major professional development opportunity and will provide an exchange of ideas and allow for that exchange to be brought back to UC.”

CCM student Rin Wallace attended the 2019 Dublin Summer Intensive Acting workshop at the National Theatre School of Ireland Gaiety School of Acting thanks to a scholarship offered through CCM Acting. The program is taught in partnership with the Institute for the International Education of Students, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing world-class study abroad opportunities for college students. The six-week program, which ran from June 5-July 20, 2019, focused on the literary traditions of Ireland and contemporary Irish theatre. This opportunity is supported by the Andrew Huyler Ramsey CCM Acting Summer Scholarship, which covers the full tuition of the study abroad workshop. The scholarship is in memory of Ramsey, a CCM Acting student who passed away due to complications from an epileptic seizure while he studied abroad in 2017. This is the second year CCM Acting has offered the scholarship. The program will continue with another scholarship-driven study abroad opportunity in the summer of 2020.

Associate Professor of Music Education Eva Floyd and Professor of Musicology and Theory Jonathan Kregor are leading a study abroad trip that will take students in an undergraduate honors seminar to Budapest, Hungary and Vienna, Austria in December 2020. The classroom experience will focus on reading, discussing and writing about aspects of Austro-Hungarian music, literature and art. Students will learn how political, economic, artistic and other cultural forces established Budapest and Vienna as unique centers of artistic creation. During the 10-day trip, students will attend concerts and visit historic sites to deepen their appreciation and understanding of the rich cultural identity of these two cities.