[2] School Directors have included Carlo Mazzone-Clementi, Jon’Paul Cook, Alain Schons, Ralph Hall, Peter Buckley, Jane Hill, Daniel Stein, Joan Schirle, Ronlin Foreman, and Lauren Wilson[1] Since 1976, the company has trained and influenced hundreds of performing artists and ensembles from around the world, including Daniel O. Smith and W. Stuart McDowell, who subsequently founded the Riverside Shakespeare Company in New York City, which incorporated a "Green Show" of commedia-like elements and utilized a performance style greatly influenced by Carlo Mazzone-Clementi in his first years at Blue Lake, 1971-1972.
The PTP includes training in the FM Alexander Technique, physical awareness and responsiveness, vocal and movement improvisation, as well as the study of mask, clown, melodrama, and commedia dell'arte, with ongoing research into the process of making theatre.
Investigation of theatre dynamics, the actor and the space, character and relationship takes place through assignments presented weekly in Performance Lab.
[7] The DAI Summer Intensive is a three-week immersion in the actor-training methodology of the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre.
The training aims toward the creation of a dynamic theatre, in which the embodied actor plays with freedom, authenticity and visceral power within the vibrant and poetic space of the stage.
[1] The Dell’Arte Company's first touring production in 1977, The Loon’s Rage, pioneered ‘theatre of place,” a concept based on local themes, issues and characters.
[5] "Behind its original songs and humor, the play about marijuana cultivation is a bittersweet, multi-generational tale that celebrates the plant while laying bare the industry's dark side."
- Los Angeles Times[10] In 2011, Dell’Arte International staged the world premiere of Mary Jane: The Musical at its annual Mad River Festival.
Mary Jane sought to examine at all aspects of the local pot culture, from its regional economic importance to the grim particulars of violence and environmental degradation.
[12] In 2012, DAI was awarded a 3-year, $225,000 grant from the James Irvine Foundation to support the expansion of rural arts programs and increase participation opportunities for communities throughout the northcoast region of California.
[5] From serving breakfast at the local Mad River Grange hall, to clowning for children at an elementary school fundraiser, to planting native flora in a marsh restoration project, students fulfill required community service hours in a variety of ways.
In 2010 the students assisted Yurok tribal member Willard Carlson in developing an off-the-grid site for traditional healing at Ah-Pah Creek.