Not only do students study with the theater's actors and specialists, but they also have an opportunity to audition for parts in the ART's productions. Actors like Marty Lodge, who plays a roughnecker working on an oil rig in Gillette, can then practice their lines during class.

"In the show I'm trying to raise the pitch of my voice," Lodge says. "So Bonnie's been trying to help me get rid of my nasality in class. You work on it during the day and you use it at night." And movement coach Annie Loui says, "The students take things they're learning in class and use it in the Cabaret."

Students and faculty at the school say the successful relationship between the Institute and the theater company makes the Institute different from other schools, like the Yale School of Drama, which do not work as closely with professional companies.

"At the Yale School there was a feeling of separation from the Yale Repertory Theater," says Alvin Epstein, a former Associate Director of the Yale theater who currently teaches an acting class on Shakespeare at the Institute. "There was a gap at Yale," Epstein says. "I don't feel that gap here."

Students and faculty also note that while other schools take students right out of college, the Institute requires prior professional experience (the average age of the students is 26).

"We take people who already have experience in the field," says Riddell, who won a Tony Award for outstanding lighting design in the Broadway production of William Hauptman's Big River. "It really is a very selective program, for people who have cut their track in the profession."

Acting student Ed Schloth agrees. "There's a big difference between coming out of college and coming out of the front lines of New York City after working there for five years," he says. And Lodge says the Institute wanted "actors who were professional and not kids who thought they wanted to be actors when they grow up."

Institute faculty and students say the Institute's curriculum is not rigidly structured but constantly adapts to the needs of the company.

"It's an institute as opposed to a school," says Senior Actor Jeremy Geidt, a founding member of both the Yale Repertory Theater and the ART. "The training can change from year to year to accommodate the company."

As acting student John Lathen says, "They put so much in front of us that it is like a theatrical smorgasbord."

Visiting artists at the ART are often incorporated into the Institute's ever-changing curriculum. When Richard Foreman comes to Cambridge this spring to direct The Fall of the House of Usher, a musical by composer Philip Glass which is based on Edgar Allan Poe's classic horror tale, he will also hold an intensive workshop on acting at the Institute, says registrar Barbara Akiba. And European director Andrei Serban has already taught a class on acting using bamboo poles during one visit.

"You get a mixed bag of everything," concurred Stuart Zamsky, also an acting student.

Undergraduates Squeezed Out

But not everyone praises the Institute program. Some students see the unstructured curriculum as a problem. "I don't think the instruction is very good," says one student, who asked not to be identified. And several Harvard undergraduates suggested that the new Institute was merely taking up more space in the Loeb Theatre, denying undergraduate drama rehearsal and production time at the Loeb.

"In fairness, the ART helps students see shows, avant-garde directors, and great actors," says Chad H. Raphael '88, who has performed in both student and ART productions. But "there are far too many people in the Loeb, between the ART, the Institute, and the undergraduates," he adds. "Harvard has to do more building. I think since the ART has gotten here there has been an inevitable squeezing out of students."