Summer Theatre Workshop for Teenagers in Cap d'Ail

A masterclass-style theatre course for teenagers, combining an introduction for newcomers with advanced training for those who already act. The group works on a classic text shared with participants before arrival: reading aloud, analysis and a staged approach, then theatrical acting and rehearsal, improvisation sessions, verbal duels and eloquence games. Basic tools covered are body awareness and use of space, breathing and voice projection, reading and performing a text on stage, and improvising within a group. The course is led by Eric Sautonie, director of the theatre company Art'Venture, an actor trained at the Agen Conservatory and the Michel Galabru course.

The course fee is all-inclusive and covers tuition, accommodation on campus, meals and the activities of the international summer campus. Travel to and from Cap d'Ail is not included.

Participants are accommodated on the campus of the Mediterranean Centre for French Studies, in multi-bed rooms, together with the other international teenagers of the summer campus. Arrival is on Sunday before 5 pm and departure on Saturday after breakfast.

Full board on campus is part of the all-inclusive fee.

Afternoons are partly free for the activities of the Mediterranean Centre, where international teenagers meet through artistic, linguistic and sports activities. The course itself ends with a public performance at the Jean Cocteau Theatre, staged together with the International Orchestra Academy in front of an audience.

The centre stands in a three-hectare park of flowers and woodland on the mountainside overlooking the Mediterranean, at the gates of the Principality of Monaco and half an hour from Nice and from Italy. Its open-air theatre was decorated in antique style by the poet Jean Cocteau and was designed as a space of expression for young people from around the world.

The aim is for teenagers to understand what the actor's profession involves and to find their own theatrical expression alongside a theatre professional. Participants work on expressiveness, keep their freedom and imagination while building a character, try out different stage proposals and take an active part in a collective creation in the spirit of a theatre troupe.