Photo/ Nancy Brumback
New acting training school opens in Northborough
By Nancy Brumback, Contributing Writer
Business name: Dramatic Arts Youth Academy of Massachusetts
Address: 243 West Main St., Northborough
Owners: Susan Robison and Crystal Gould
Contact information: 508-688-2735
What is the Dramatic Arts Youth Academy?
“DAYA is an acting training school, an after-school and Saturday theater program, for youths ages 8 to 18. We are about teaching the art of acting, so it is not performance-based,” said Crystal Gould, who opened the school in the Northborough Shopping Center with her mother, Susan Robison, in October.
Gould, artistic director, teaches the classes. A member of the Screen Actors Guild, her background is in theater and the performing arts. She has taught children’s theater for years. Robison, producing director, has a background in theater, teaches violin, and for over 30 years was business manager of Robison Art Glass in partnership with her husband, glass artist Peet Robison.
“For younger kids, we have both thematic and technique classes; for older kids, it’s all about technique because they are interested in learning the art of acting,” said Gould. “Theme classes might be based on a book or characters. Technique classes are acting foundations, scene study, audition labs, monologues, working with the actual terminology and objectives of acting.”
How is the program set up?
“Our sessions run once a week for six weeks. Our ultimate goal is to have 10 classes per session, depending on demand. We are taking registrations for the winter session now, then we’ll have two spring sessions and two summer sessions,” Gould said. A complete class schedule is on the website, www.dayacademy.org.
“We keep class sizes small, no more than 10 and ideally eight, because it’s important to provide individual attention,” Robison said. “We group by age, 8 to 12, and 13 to 18, with both boys and girls in a class.”
“No previous experience is necessary, though some kids have had some theater experience. They will always learn something new. Our program is about learning the basics and then applying them,” Gould said. The theme classes for the younger age group often end with performances for the parents.
What classes do you offer?
“We teach everything from a basic skills class—how to approach theater and acting skills, to theme classes. As an example of a theme, we have a class for the younger group called ‘James and the Giant Peach.’ The kids create scenes inspired by themes from the book. Or we might take a certain character and imagine how that character would react in different situations. The kids create everything from scratch,” Gould said. “We want to get them off their iPads and creatively working together.”
Winter session classes for younger kids also include Reporting Live!, creating and acting out news scenes, while classes for older kids include acting foundations and scene study. Technique classes involve both scripted and non-scripted material. Students learn acting terminology and how to apply that terminology to their work.
Why did you start DAYA?
“We’ve lived in Massachusetts for a year and a half, and we saw there was nothing like this in central Massachusetts,” said Robison. “We’ve always known we’d do something together.”
“This project makes the most of my background in education and hers in business,” Gould added. “My husband is originally from Northborough, born and raised. We decided to relocate from the Kansas City area for all the grandparents to be available to our daughter. When we arrived here, we quickly realized the perfect opportunity that DAYA could provide the youth in our community—a place to have fun exploring their untapped imaginations while developing vital acting skills.”
