BADA STUDIO

For over 40 years, BADA has provided opportunities to engage with the finest professional theatre training in the UK, US and elsewhere in the world.

The BADA Studio is designed to offer such opportunities on an ongoing basis to our alumni family. The BADA Studio isn’t a physical location; it’s wherever members of the BADA community come together creatively or pedagogically to explore and refine their craft. Workshops, masterclasses and ongoing classes will take place in various locations in the USA as well as in London and are open to all BADA alumni. Leading the sessions will be members of BADA’s brilliant Faculty, friends from some of the top theatre training institutions in the US, UK and Europe, and members of the alumni community who are active in the theatre and performance industries.

Upcoming Studio Sessions

We are pleased to announce our next round of in-person BADA Studio events in Chicago in February and New York City in March!

Q&A with Mark Rosenblatt – Playwright of Broadway’s “Giant”

10:30am – Doors Open. Bagels and Coffee will be provided.
11:00am – Discussion between Mark Rosenblatt and Ben Naylor
12:00pm – Audience Q&A
12:30pm – Wrap-up discussion
Session Limit: 45
FEE: $20 for BADA alums ($25 General Admission)

BADA Dean Ben Naylor sits down for a Q&A with award-winning playwright of the West End and Broadway play “Giant” starring John Lithgow.

Award-winning playwright Mark Rosenblatt of Broadway’s “Giant” starring John Lithgow sits down for a conversation with BADA’s Dean Ben Naylor to discuss Giant, the process of writing, tackling giants, and his career.

Waitlist Available for this Session. If there is enough interest, we will attempt to move to a larger venue.

Register

Mark Rosenblatt is a writer and director for theatre and screen. He was Associate Director at Leeds Playhouse from 2013–16

and Associate Artist there until 2020. He was Associate at the UK’s National Theatre Studio from 2011 to 2013. He founded Dumbfounded Theatre in 2001 and won the JMK Award for Young Directors in 1999.

Giant is his first play. It premiered at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2024 and transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre in the West End the following year, winning three Olivier Awards including Best New Play, Best Actor for John Lithgow and Best Supporting Actor for Elliot Levey as well as the 2025 Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Play. For Giant. Mark also won the Critics Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright and the Stage Award for Best Creative West End Debut. Giant opens on Broadway for a 16-week run at the Music Box Theater from March this year.

Mark’s extensive freelance directing work includes productions at Shakespeare’s Globe, London, the UK’s National Theatre, across the UK at major regional houses including Sheffield Theatres, Leeds Playhouse, Northampton Theatres, as well as several productions off-Broadway and in Tokyo.

His screen work includes the award-winning, Oscar-qualified short film Ganef (as writer-director), co-writing Making Noise Quietly (Open Palm Films) and the screenplay of an upcoming thriller for Good Chaos, Film 4 and MUBI.

Headshot Photo Credit: Luke Bryant

Studio Social NYC

Where: NYC (Details to follow)
Date/Time: Sunday, March 22nd. 2pm-4pm
FEE: Free

Come and have a drink on us while you reconnect with the BADA Community. Please RSVP below so we know how big of a space to reserve.

RSVP

Acting the Song with Adam Kantor (MIO ’06)

Where: NYC
Date/Time: Monday, March 23rd. Evening
CLASS LIMIT: 15
FEE: $50

Broadway’s Adam Kantor works with participants on acting through song.

Broadway’s Adam Kantor (MIO ‘06) leads a masterclass focused on acting through song! Adam will work with participants on creating a scene and finding specific circumstances to help with grounding and storytelling using the music.

Register

Adam Kantor (MIO ’06) won an Emmy and a Grammy for his performance in the Tony-winning Broadway production of The Band’s Visit, as well as an Outer Critics Circle honor for his performance in Darling Grenadine at Roundabout Theatre Company. Previously, on Broadway, Adam starred in Fiddler on the Roof, Next to Normal, and Rent (final cast, filmed live for Sony Pictures). Off-Broadway, he starred in The Last Five Years at Second Stage Theater and Avenue Q at New World Stages. Regional credits include Duncan Sheik and Kyle Jarrow’s Noir at Alley Theater, as well as Barry Levinson and Sheryl Crow’s Diner at the Signature Theare. On TV he was in Billions on Showtime as “Pununzio”, and The Good Wife on CBS as “Ezra.” He recently starred in the feature film Either Side of Midnight, directed by Roger Spottiswoode. Adam is a graduate of Northwestern University and the British American Dramatic Academy. @AdamJKantor on social.

Upcoming: BADA Symposium in London

‘Why don’t you just try acting?’: The Theatre of Marginalised Communities and the Encounter between US and UK Actor Training

Sunday 15^th March – Monday 16^th March in London (at the British American Drama Academy and Shakespeare’s Globe)

Registration is now open

BADA alumni and community members are invited to join us in person in London or online for two days of timely conversations, performance, and reflection.

On the set of Marathon Man, Dustin Hoffman admitted to not having slept for 72 hours. His sleep deprivation was an acting technique – a tool that would allow him to accurately portray his character. In response, his costar Laurence Olivier asked him, ‘why don’t you just try acting?’ This possibly apocryphal story encapsulates the supposedly oppositional attitudes taken by Americans and Brits – method acting for the Americans and highly technical approaches developed for classical texts for the Brits.

Bringing together scholars and practitioners, the symposium will challenge such simplistic binary narratives and explore how encounters between acting systems and theatre cultures have been enriched by the transatlantic movement of marginalised communities. Through interviews, panels, workshops and performance, we will explore how innovation and identity intersect across borders.
- Stonewall to Soho: Transatlantic Exchanges in Queer Theatre and Performance
  - The Art of the Culture War: Lessons from the Battlefields
    - Speaker: Phoebe Patey-Ferguson
  - Queer Practice, Queer Pedagogy: A Transatlantic Conversation on Voice and Actor Training
    - Speakers: Becca Barret and Richard Delaney, moderated by Jay Paul Skelton
  - Surviving the Crossing: A Queer Migrant Dialogue Between London and New York
    - Speakers: Alejandro Postigo and Edu Diaz
- Jewish Methods: How Jewish-American Practitioners Influenced Contemporary British Actor Training
  - Title tbc
    - Speaker: Conrad Cohen
  - Doreen Cannon Changed My Life (and the nature of actor training in London drama schools)
    - Speaker: Margaret Coldiron
  - The Heart of the Method
    - Workshop with Lola Cohen
- Beyond the Hollywood Ten: ‘Un-American’ Americans and the British Theatre Industry
  - Title tbc
    - Speaker: Paul Prescott
  - “More English than the Brits”: Hollywood’s Exiles in 1950s Britain
    - Spealer: Rebecca Prime
  - Paul Robeson – the artist must choose
    - Speaker: Hakim Adi
  - “A guest in your country”: Bertolt Brecht between Europe and America
    - Speaker: Tom Kuhn
- ‘Lifting it Up’: Shakespeare, Hip Hop and the Poetics of Black Speech
  - Speakers: Sideeq Heard (MIO ’14), Jonzi D, Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu, and Miriam A. Hyman/Robyn Hood (MIO’ 10)
- Phylicia Rashad and BADA Patron Joseph Mydell (MIO ’84) in conversation.
- Zoë Wanamaker and Patrick Spottiswoode (Founder, Globe Education, Shakespeare’s Globe)
- Simon Godwin, Drew Lichtenberg and Deborah C. Payne
- Deep Azure by Chadwick Boseman (MIO ’98) (at Shakespeare’s Globe)
Online participation will be available for sessions taking place on Sunday 15^th March and some sessions on Monday 16th March, including:
- Stonewall to Soho: Transatlantic Exchanges in Queer Theatre and Performance
- Jewish Acting Methods: How Jewish-American Practitioners Influenced Contemporary British Actor Training
- Zoë Wanamaker and Patrick Spottiswoode (Founder, Globe Education, Shakespeare’s Globe)