The National Music Theater Institute (NMTI) will kick off in the fall of 2014. 

The NTMI is a 14-week program geared for high school graduates, undergraduates and post-graduates seeking extensive training in musical theatre. The curriculum, designed with a conservatory-like schedule, offers classes and workshops in acting, dance, movement, singing, writing for musicals and directing. The program also includes two weeks of training in New York City through NMTI’s series of workshops and master classes.

"I am beyond delighted to welcome Jonathan Bernstein as artistic associate for NMTI during this important moment of expansion and growth,” Rachel Jett, artistic director of the National Theater Institute, said in a statement. “He is a total theater artist and a great educator. His previous contributions to NTI have furthered our artistic and educational mission to not only prepare young artists to work in the theatrical landscape, but to also invigorate and electrify that landscape.”

Bernstein has been a member of the National Theater Institute (NTI) since 2012 and is an adjunct professor of Playwriting and Script Analysis in the MFA Musical Theater Writing Program at New York University. He has also served as the artistic director of The Performing Arts Project and has directed for the Atlantic Theater Company, Williamstown Theater Festival and New York Stage & Film. Bernstein has Broadway/London supervising director credits for Private Lives, The Iceman Cometh, Who’s Afraid of the Virginia Woolf? and the 1996 Broadway revival and its national/international companies production of Chicago.

He most recently wrote and directed the world premiere of The Shape She Makes (in collaboration with Susan Misner) for the A.R.T. The play had its developmental residency with NTI at the O'Neill in 2013. "I'm thrilled to be joining the National Theater Institute. The O'Neill has been a beacon of light in this industry for the last half-century,” Bernstein said in a statement. “I have every confidence that our new musical theater program (NMTI), with its dozens of faculty, will become an innovative breeding ground for the next generation of curious, courageous, risk-inclined artists. I look forward to teaching them and learning from them."

Dozens of musicals, including Tony Award-winning Avenue Q and In the Heights and Violet had their start at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. 

Visit theoneill.org/nti for more information.