The need to combine natural talent with solid training and thoughtful guidance toward professional activity has been a defining element of the TST’s cultural activity since the late 1960s, when a cycle of Actor Training courses and a Seminar for Theater Animators was inaugurated. The program at the time largely reflected the climate of the era: stage language methodology, modern performance forms and techniques, entertainment psychology and sociology, group cultural animation, festival practices and organization, as well as in-depth seminars held by personalities such as Frozi Whitman, Giuseppe Bartolucci, Oskar Schindler, and Egisto Volterrani. A fundamental role in training during that historical phase was played with great competence and passion by Franco Passatore. However, it was under Luca Ronconi, appointed Director of the Stabile in 1989, that the project of a professional training body was consolidated and came to fruition two years later.

“When I arrived in Turin as director of the Stabile, one of the goals I cared about most was founding a theater school. I am convinced that every institutionalized theater should have its own school, since, by moving away from any abstraction, it can live and benefit from the daily experience offered by the life of a public theater.”

In the autumn of 1991, the first two-year training course for young actors thus began, involving 28 regular students and 9 auditors selected from over 270 admission applications. Luca Ronconi was appointed director of the School, assisted by Mauro Avogadro, and the subjects making up the curriculum were theater history, voice training, Italian language and phonetics, psychology, acting, interpretation, and body training. Among the collaborators even then were numerous university professors, as well as actors such as Marisa Fabbri, Franca Nuti, and Umberto Orsini.

“The actor’s craft,” declared Ronconi, “is one of the most risky, and it is not our intention to delude these youngsters. Even less do we want to create people in perpetual search of an artistic placement: young people wandering from one theater to another, perhaps gifted with talent, but unusable because they lack technical skills. It is useless to complain that Italian theater is in crisis if we do not care about teaching the young: the effort of the Teatro Stabile di Torino is directed toward the careful training of new generations, who we hope will make theater better than it is today.”

In 1997, when Luca Ronconi left Turin, Mauro Avogadro replaced him, transforming the course from a two-year to a three-year program and consolidating it as one of the sector’s educational benchmarks. The educational offer was progressively expanded to include courses based on improvisation, featuring some of Peter Brook’s actors such as Mamadou Dioume and Bruce Meyers, sung theater curated by Davide Livermore, and film acting entrusted to Daniele Segre.

In 2008, the School moved from its historical headquarters in the center of Turin to the renovated Fonderie Limone complex in Moncalieri, thus taking on the appearance of a true campus immersed in the productive heart of the Stabile.

From 2010 to 2017, the school was directed by director Valter Malosti, and the program focused on word-based theater while also opening up to dance and body movement courses, with the aim of broadening training to encompass everything that research had experimented with, especially during the 20th century. Among the recurring teachers of this period are actors, directors, and educators of national and international significance, such as Antonio Latella, Mario Martone, Declan Donnellan, Massimo Popolizio, Eugenio Allegri, Thomas Richards, and Alessio Romano.

After Malosti, the baton passed to Gabriele Vacis, co-directing with Valerio Binasco for the 2018–2021 academic three-year period, which involved Laura Curino, Filippo Dini, Silvio Peroni, Serena Sinigaglia, and Fausto Paravidino in teaching.

With the aim of strengthening the consistency of the Teatro Stabile’s artistic identity between educational offerings and professional integration, the direction of the School for Actors was entrusted in autumn 2021 to Valerio Binasco, Artistic Director of the Teatro Stabile since 2018. In ideal continuity with the origins of the training body, Binasco was joined in the role of Deputy Director and educational coordinator by Leonardo Lidi, who graduated precisely from the TST School for Actors before embarking on a career as a film and theater performer and theater director.

Beginning with the 2024 three-year period, the Direction of the School finally passed to Leonardo Lidi, who decided to work on training a new generation of actors, who are asked to acquire skills based on solid technical fundamentals, interdisciplinary flexibility, and the ability to face professional challenges in a highly competitive job market.