Broadway dreams start to become reality at Circle in the Square Theatre School
NEW YORK -- Dreams of a life in the theater start to become reality at a prestigious acting school located right in the heart of Times Square.
Beneath Broadway's famed Circle in the Square Theatre on West 50th Street is where the next generation of actors are honing their craft.
"Coming here is literally the best thing that's ever happened to me," student Daniel Oakley said.
Circle in the Square Theatre School has been cultivating artists for 60 years. It's the only accredited conservatory on Broadway.
CBS2's Ali Bauman spoke to administrative director Erica Moore and artistic director Jeanne Slater.
"How does that make this school stand out from the others?" Bauman asked.
"Being able to use the space. I mean, it's so cool as a student to be able to work and have your class on a Broadway stage, especially for voice work," Moore said. "You're here and you're working to be here and get a job on Broadway."
Alumni include Lady Gaga, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Kevin Bacon.
Currently, the production above the school is "American Buffalo," starring Laurence Fishburne, Sam Rockwell and Darren Criss.
READ MORE: Laurence Fishburne, Sam Rockwell and Darren Criss return to Broadway in "American Buffalo"
"Generally speaking, the students get to see how it works, from load-in to load out. They get to see the process happen. They always get to see the shows," Slater said.
"We're literally already here. It's upstairs, so that feels really special always, to, like, have half your faculty actively working on Broadway shows," Oakley said.
Oakley and fellow student Maria Limon are in their second year of the two-year program. They had a rocky start as the pandemic forced their entire first year at the acting school to be completely on Zoom.
"You have to, like, work twice as hard to connect with the person that is not even there," Limon said.
"It made us want it more. It made us have to push harder to cross that boundary, and now that we're here ... we're just so grateful to be here working with each other every day," Oakley said.
The remote semesters allowed faculty to update its curriculum.
"We learned adapting to Zoom that the education can't be stagnant, education can't be lost in time, it has to evolve," creative director Taylor Joseph Rivera said.
Broadway too is still adapting to a post-COVID world, and with more than a dozen Broadway shows opening in April alone, these students are graduating at an exciting and unprecedented time for theater.
"There's a lot of change occurring right now in theater. It's evolving, it's more inclusive, and so we want the students to be empowered to have a say in who they are as an artist," Moore said.
"They really are stepping where nobody has stepped. The path is brand new in terms of what happens when you're graduating from a program right now. What does that look like?" Slater said. "I'm just really proud of them, and I'm really excited to see what they do next."
