BA Honours in Acting

Undergraduate Programme Description

Years 1 and 2

The first two years are training years, when you concentrate on acquiring the skills you need as professional actors. The time is divided between classwork and rehearsal projects, when you work on a playtext. During the first two terms you spend most of your time in classes but, as you proceed, you spend proportionately more time on projects. Both classwork and rehearsal projects focus on developing and integrating four main areas of study: acting, voice, movement and playtexts.

The training is based on working both individually and as an ensemble. For much of the work, the year-group is divided into half or quarter groups, allowing each student the maximum individual attention. There are also some individual tutorials and many opportunities for one-to-one consultation and feedback. The groups are rearranged, usually each term, so that by the end of the second year you have worked closely with every other member of the year. From time to time, elements of the curriculum change as the teaching staff continuously assess the content of the course to judge whether it remains appropriate to those who are training.

For several years now, second-year acting students have participated in an international summer school in Italy, with teachers and students from Italy, Spain, Russia, France, Denmark, Germany and the UK.

Classes

Acting studies include stagecraft, improvisation, games and story-telling, mime, circus and physical theatre. As the training progresses, classes in radio and television work are added, using the School's own equipment and radio studio. There are also classes in stage-makeup.

Voice studies cover voice and speech classes, poetry and prose, singing, phonetics, dialects and a great deal of work on language, including Shakespeare.

Movement studies cover pure movement, movement improvisation, including animal studies and mask work, period dance and 20th-century dance, showdance, acrobatics and stage combat.

Theatre background introduces a wide range of plays in their historical context.

Rehearsal Projects

Rehearsal projects give you the opportunity to apply the skills learnt in classes to a wide variety of plays. These usually include: early English drama, Shakespeare, Restoration or 18th-century comedy, Chekhov and other 19th-century drama, 20th-century political plays, devised work, musical theatre and other modern drama. You take part in an in-house radio production directed by a well known producer and record a play.

Methods of rehearsal and preparation include research into the world and characters of the play, analysis of the text and different approaches to it, building on, and developing from, many of the principles formulated by major practitioners such as Stanislavski. The programme also embraces other cultural traditions and more innovative approaches.

Year 3

By the third year, you should be technically proficient vocally and physically, and have developed your own working processes. You should know how to approach a part and do the research and preparation necessary.

Most of your time is spent rehearsing and performing to the public and to potential employers. There are also sessions to prepare you for the acting profession. It is still, however, a learning year, with classes in voice and movement and an independent study leading to either a solo performance or to a research project.

Productions and Casting

In the final year the entire year-group forms a company which performs in about eight public productions in the School's theatre and in other professional theatres, in a TV project and in audition showcases, regularly attended by agents, theatre and casting directors.

Sometimes you all take part in the same production; sometimes the company is split, so as to rehearse more than one production simultaneously. You usually work with six directors, some of whom will be staff directors, others visitors.

You play a wide variety of roles in plays of varying styles. The particular qualities of the group help to determine the choice of plays, but the repertoire usually includes: a major classical play, usually one by Shakespeare; a musical; a contemporary play, often recently written and where possible with the involvement of the author; translations; adaptations.

You play as cast in public performances. Where your progress justifies it in the view of the senior staff, you may be given a role central to the development of a play, but the School does not guarantee major protagonist casting to any student.

A selected team of students enters the competition for the BBC Radio Carleton Hobbs Award. Students also perform in occasional outside events.