Click here for a slide show of the Resident Ensemble Players.

2:38 p.m., June 19, 2008--A new professional acting company will join the University of Delaware's Professional Theatre Training Program (PTTP) this fall, inaugurating a bold new dimension to the nationally acclaimed graduate conservatory, Sanford Robbins, chairperson of the Department of Theatre and artistic director of the PTTP, has announced. In conjunction with the incoming PTTP class, the program will add the Resident Ensemble Players (REP), a resident professional acting company consisting of some of America's most experienced and respected regional theatre actors

With the establishment of the PTTP REP, the University of Delaware joins the many universities that have resident professional acting companies, including Yale, Harvard, the University of California-San Diego, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Brown University, among others.

The Resident Ensemble Players will be composed of 10 professional actors, including two PTTP faculty, and one professional Actors Equity Association stage manager. One actor will join the REP in 2009 after completing a contract at another theatre.

“The particulars of our plan for implementing a resident professional acting company alongside our Master of Fine Arts training program grow out of a conviction that ensembles working together over time are a necessary component of artistic excellence in the theatre,” Robbins says. “Our intention is that our resident company provides to our students a model of artistic achievement and professional conduct.”

The combination of the new resident professional acting company, in conjunction with the nationally respected conservatory, is designed to

• Establish UD as a nationally important force in the performing arts;
• Establish the Roselle Center for the Arts as a vital regional cultural asset;
• Dramatically increase the PTTP's national reputation and ability to recruit top graduate students;
• Significantly expand and upgrade undergraduate theatre classes at UD, as well as build theatre audiences for the future; and
• Provide UD students, faculty, staff and the surrounding community and region with frequent, outstanding professional productions of a wide variety of classic, modern and contemporary plays, emphasizing those works that are studied in the UD undergraduate curriculum. The PTTP, a graduate conservatory training program in acting, stage management and technical production, admits only one class each four years. Students train and perform together for three years, and in the fourth year the faculty selects a new class through nationally conducted auditions.

“We believe this model, with its emphasis on the continuity of an ensemble, is most likely to achieve sustained artistic excellence both in performance and in training,” Robbins says.

During the first three semesters of the MFA training cycle, the Resident Ensemble Players will perform in the University of Delaware's Roselle Center for the Arts, as well as play minor and supporting roles in the MFA students' productions in the flexible-stage Hartshorn Theatre.

The REP actors will provide both mentoring and support to the MFA actors in this important early phase of their training. Rep company members also will teach an undergraduate course each semester, which will dramatically increase both the number and quality of undergraduate courses in theatre and enable the Department of Theatre to inaugurate three new undergraduate minors in performance, theatre production and theatre studies.

Beginning in the fourth semester of the MFA training in February 2010, the MFA actors join the Resident Ensemble Players and all productions from that point will be cast with a mix of MFA and professional actors, with performances in both the Roselle Center for the Arts and in Hartshorn Theatre.

The professional actors of the new resident acting company are graduates or faculty of the PTTP and they bring with them a distinguished list of credits:

Stephen Pelinski has been a leading actor at the Guthrie Theatre for 17 seasons, as well as performing leading roles at many of America's outstanding regional theatres, including Yale Repertory Theatre and Harvard's American Repertory Theatre.

Mark Corkins is currently a leading actor in the resident company of the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, where he has been a member for 12 years and has played a wide variety of roles ranging from Dracula to King Lear.

Kathleen Pirkl Tague has played leading roles at the Great Lakes Theatre Festival, American Players Theatre and the Idaho Shakespeare Festival.

Carine Montbertrand recently played Emilia in Othello for the Cincinnati Playhouse and has appeared in leading roles at St. Louis Repertory Theatre, Pioneer Theatre Company, and The Acting Company.

Michael Gotch played the leading role in Amadeus at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Richard II for Milwaukee Shakespeare Company and Cassius in Julius Caesar for the American Players Theatre.

Steve Tague has played the title roles in Titus Andronicus at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle, Hamlet and Tartuffe at the Great Lakes Theatre Festival and Malvolio in Twelfth Night at the Arden Theatre in Philadelphia. Last year, audiences applauded his performance in the title role in the PTTP production of Cyrano De Bergerac.

Deena Burke has played major roles at the Old Globe, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ACT and the Group Theater.

Cameron Knight is a 2007 PTTP graduate who is currently playing a leading role in August Wilson's Fences at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This summer he will appear at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter.

Mic Matarrese is also a 2007 graduate and is currently playing Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Actors Repertory Theatre in Portland.

“We believe,” Robbins says, “that the implementation of our resident professional acting company, along with the exciting revisions that we are making to our graduate and undergraduate programs, will prove significant milestones in the University of Delaware's Path to Prominence.”

In the 2008-2009 season, the Resident Ensemble Players will present the following productions in the Roselle Center for the Arts Thompson Theatre:

The Hostage by Brendan Behan, Oct. 22 - Nov. 8
The Imaginary Invalid by Moliere, Jan. 14 - Feb. 14
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Feb. 27 - March 15
Hay Fever by Noel Coward, April 15 - May 16

The graduate students of the Professional Theatre Training Program will present the four productions in the Hartshorn Theatre:

As You Like It by William Shakespeare, Nov. 20 - Dec. 6
The Long Christmas Dinner by Thornton Wilder, Feb. 4 - Feb. 21
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, April 22 - 25
Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen, April 29 - May 2

The PTTP box office will be moving to the Roselle Center for the Arts and will open for the season on Tuesday, Sept. 2.