During the school year

Our main goal as educators is to introduce basic acting techniques, but more importantly to express and explain the significance of working together as a group. We want to demonstrate that everyone is important to making a show or a class a success. For us, it’s not about the product, it's about the process. Using well-known books as a vehicle to introduce theater games and exercises, each class will come up with their interpretation of the stories.

Storytelling Classes: For students in 1st through 5th grades. These classes offer very young actors opportunities to work in the theater with stories they know, and stories they make up themselves. They learn how to turn these stories into short plays. Our emphasis in these classes is on process and socializing, not on a finished product. These very young actors learn how to work together, how to use their imaginations together to make a favorite story into a play, and how to use their inclination to pretend to act out a story. We often informally show what we’ve been working on to  family and friends at the end of the class.

Production Classes: For students in 6th through 8th grades. Our production classes start with an introduction to improvisational techniques for "making theater”. We then apply these techniques to a story to create a production. At the end of six weeks with three meetings a week, production class participants present a short production that is costumed and performed on a simple set. Again, the emphasis is on process, but there is a product. Students learn to work together, to take responsibility for their work, to problem solve together, to use their imaginations creatively, and to take pride in their work.

Other Classes: On a less regular schedule, we offer classes in mime, clowning, theater and foreign languages.

Adult Classes: For adults, we offer an eight week Introduction to Acting class that meets one evening a week. Members of the class are introduced to improvisation and other theater techniques, and then work on scenes and monologues to present to the class.

During the Summer

Morning Classes for Young Actors: For children from six to eight years old, we offer a one week class. For children from eight to twelve years old, we offer a two week class. These classes meet only in the morning. The two week class focuses on a topic such as personal stories or humorous incidents and develops short theater pieces based on the topic.

Teen Theater Camp: For students twelve to eighteen yeas old. This camp hosts local and international students for a four week theater experience. These young actors produce a show at the end of three weeks that plays for two weekends. The class is comprised of young people from across mid-coast Maine.

The Vitelli Scholarship Program

Several years ago, the Vitelli family set up a scholarship to honor Mr. and Mrs. Vitelli, Sr. The Vitelli scholarships enable young people to take classes at The Theater Project and receive financial aid for tuition. Funds available for scholarships for each class are limited and will be awarded equally to students who are approved for scholarship aid.

For more information about classes and scholarships, please CONTACT us.