Class acts

Three University B.F.A. students learn about life and theater on the Guthrie stage

University B.F.A. students on stage at Minneapolis's Guthrie Theater. Leah Curney, with book; Ryan Lindberg, sitting to her left; and Santino Fontana, kneeling behind Lindberg.

Photo by Michal Daniel

by Martha Coventry

From M, spring 2003

Leah Curney, Santino Fontana, and Ryan Lindberg played unloved and unlovable, spoiled, lost, and angry twenty-somethings in the Minneapolis Guthrie Theater's recent production of Six Degrees of Separation.

They were not typecast.

Off stage, these three young people are kind, humble, and gracious. What else they have in common, besides undeniable talent, is that they are students in the Department of Theatre Art and Dance's bachelor of fine arts actor-training program--unique in the country because of its working partnership with an internationally recognized theater, the Guthrie.

But this partnership does not guarantee a place on the Guthrie stage, and Curney, Fontana, and Lindberg had to audition alongside other hopeful actors to win the first speaking parts awarded to students in the U's undergraduate program. (The Guthrie had to negotiate a special contract with the actors' union that allows four students each year to have speaking parts in Guthrie performances. Another student joined the cast of Three Sisters in April.)

"The Guthrie experience was great," says Fontana, who is from Richland, Washington. "We were treated like actors first, not students. We were expected to rise to the level of the other professionals. And we were taken in as part of the theater's family."

In Six Degrees of Separation, they were able to watch and learn about all aspects of a professional performance. And in the process, the veteran Guthrie actors became mentors, ready and willing to guide the students in their careers.

A new turn for an old friendship

The University and Guthrie collaboration builds on a decades-old relationship. One of the reasons Tyrone Guthrie chose Minneapolis for his flagship theater 37 years ago was because of the exciting artistic and academic influence of the University. And Frank Whiting, then head of the U's theater department, worked hard to get Guthrie to build his theater in Minneapolis.

Now three years old, the B.F.A. program auditions 400 to 500 people each year in Minnesota as well as cities including New York, Houston, Chicago, and San Francisco for 20 coveted spots in the freshman class, the only point at which one can enter the program. Once chosen, each person must then be accepted to the College of Liberal Arts.

Curney, Lindberg, and Fontana were in the first B.F.A. class and none of them intended to come to the University when they looked around for places to further develop their acting talent.

"The reason I'm here," says Fontana, who was headed for the University of Michigan to study musical theater, "is because there's no other school in the country that has a program for undergraduates where you can do what we just did at the Guthrie and have that kind of connection to American theater. John Guare (who wrote Six Degrees of Separation) came to our opening and Arthur Miller was here last summer."

That kind of opportunity exists because of a real hands-on partnership between the University and the Guthrie, and the passion of those involved with making this program work is what attracted Lindberg, from Apple Valley, Minnesota, away from plans to go to East Coast schools. Both the U and the Guthrie devote staff time to the health and success of the rigorous program, which combines a solid liberal arts curriculum with specific training in text analysis, voice, dialects, movement, and other performance skills.

Curney, from St. Paul, took a year off between high school and college. "I had friends who went to conservatories at 18 and got burned out really fast," she says, "and I had friends who went to liberal arts colleges that had nothing for theater departments. I didn't know what I wanted." She worked--and still works--at the Guthrie box office and that's where she heard about the B.F.A. program. "I was sure that I didn't want to stay in the Twin Cities, but this program had everything I wanted when it comes to liberal arts and conservatory-style training."

Learning about life from the stage

The opportunity to work on the Guthrie stage has given these three students an understanding of theater life and of themselves that they could not have realized without that chance.

Lindberg originally thought he'd like to be a local actor and do commercial work. Trying to make it in New York used to scare him. "The Guthrie experience made me not so afraid of New York," he says. "It made me see that I have bigger dreams in me than I thought I had, and it has given me the courage to try to realize them."

"In addition to it being an honor to work on that stage, it taught me that there isn't a 'right' way to do things," says Curney. "In school, it's easy to get bogged down in the idea that you're not 'doing it right.' The Guthrie experience reminded me that when you abandon the need to control everything--and the need for people to think you're good--you go out there and you play."

"There was an actress in the show, who I thought was really smart," Fontana adds. "She said, 'People can worry about being on stage and get really stressed, but you know, at the end of a day, you're just doing a play.'"

All three of them feel the pressure of a fast-paced and increasingly younger acting world where television networks like the WB regularly make stars of people just barely in their teens. Curney says that "teen boom" has made her generation feel like it's "crunch time."

But being around the older, experienced Guthrie actors made them see "that there's no time limit, no finish line," says Curney. Life unfolds as it will if you give it a chance.

And that life holds great promise for these three young people. Thanks to the University's commitment to the Guthrie partnership and the opportunities the Guthrie offered these students, they now know that the acting life is the path they want to follow--wherever it may take them.

To find out more about the University's B.F.A. actor-training program, see http://cla.umn.edu/theatre/theatre_program/bfa.html, call 612-625-6699, or write theatre@umn.edu.