Acting - 3

Acting Course

Overview

The three year Acting course is aimed at giving you the adaptability, flexibility and openness needed to sustain a career in the stage, screen and audio industries. Throughout the programme you explore your creative, vocal and physical potential and are shown current operational methods and practices enabling effective and professional work.

The 3 Year Acting Course ensures you are well practised in the core areas of acting, movement and voice and throughout the course these skills are integrated in a series of focused projects including Shakespeare, Chekhov, TV and radio.

During the course you will enhance your capacity to learn in a disciplined, organised manner and develop skills leading to self-reliant learning. The course is fully based in the practice of performance, delivered within a leading drama school, thus benefiting from the high levels of expertise of the practicing professionals who make up ALRA's teaching and directing staff.

Learning to be an actor is an ongoing process. It never ends. There are always new depths to reach, new skills to acquire, new information to take in to help you play a character. This course is the beginning of that process.

Course Content

The programme consists of five courses:

• Building Performance:
  • Devised theatre projects
  • Performances based on a variety of texts
  • Recorded Performances based on a variety of texts.

• Acting Studies:
  • Acting Technique
  • Acting for Camera
  • Improvisations
  • Acting for Radio.

• Voice Studies:
  • Voicing text
  • Articulation and RP
  • Technical voice
  • Singing.

• Movement Studies:
  • Creative movement
  • Movement fundamentals
  • Alexander technique
  • Social dance
  • Stage combat.

• Contextual Studies:
  • Research Methodologies
  • Critiquing and reviewing
  • Preparation for entry into the industry.

Year 1

The focus on the first three terms is on discovery; with special emphasis on the self. You are encouraged to play and experiment with voice, physical ability and creativity, discovering what personal resources they have and how best to use them, and how to make connections between the three. You find approaches to script and text - questioning, analysing and researching - to transform the written word into the imaginative visual world of the play. Throughout this year you explore in the live performance space and in front of the camera. Over six projects, some devised, others based on existing scripts, you discover the ethos of the creative ensemble; learning to accept, give and take responsibility for their own and other's ideas to find a productive way of working together.

Year 2

This year's emphasis is on putting into practice the skills you are acquiring. You work on six challenging plays at a deeper level and are expected to work privately, away from rehearsal, using the approaches and techniques they have discovered in the previous year. Texts include Modern British, 19th Century Realism, Stylised Text and Shakespeare and American Classic. Voice and Movement become more concentrated and new skills are added to the timetable. You use your developing vocal skills for recorded performance in the Radio Studio and your work in front of the camera becomes more technically demanding.

Year 3

The final three terms are about facing the public. You perform in three public productions in the ALRA Theatre, participate in a radio project, record a short film drama and undergo a TV presenter's course - both are recorded to DVD for students to use as a show reel. Before graduation, you appear in a Showcase at a West End theatre and a Film Viewing at a West End cinema before an invited audience of casting directors, agents and directors. Throughout the year you attend industry workshops and lectures, led by professional practitioners, to prepare you for the practical business of being an Actor; from marketing yourself and auditioning through to keeping accounts and Tax returns.

Other Activities

• Carlton Hobbs Competition: Further to the study of Radio Technique, a team of third year students is selected to be entered for the Carlton Hobbs BBC Radio Competition, the winners of which are offered a six-month contract with the BBC Radio Drama Company.
• Sam Wanamaker Festival: In the third year you also have an opportunity to audition for the Sam Wanamaker Festival. This is an annual festival organised by the Conference of Drama Schools (CDS) in association with Globe Education which offers selected students from Britain's leading drama schools the chance to perform scenes from Elizabethan and Jacobean drama at a major London theatre.
• Christmas Cabaret: this is an annual event organised in-house and open to all students
• Stand-Up Night: This is an annual event organised in-house and open to all students.
• The Five Minute Play Festival: A yearly play writing competition performed at ALRA and open to all students.
• Verse Speaking Competition: Open to Acting students in years one and two.
• Student Summer Ball: to celebrate the end of another academic year.
• Short Film Project: A collaboration between second year Acting students, Film Directing students from the London College of Communication and ALRA technical students.
• Workshops and seminars
• Theatre Trips.

Teaching

You are taught mainly by practical methods, such as technique classes, workshops, exercises, rehearsal and informal presentations. You participate in group discussions, seminars, lectures, as well as tutor feedback and review. All tutors and directors involved in the delivery of the course are practising professionals.

ALRA requires constant attendance at all timetabled classes, rehearsals, seminars and other events.

Qualifications

Upon successful completion of the course you are awarded:

• National Diploma in Professional Acting (validated by Trinity College London).
• BA (Hons) in Acting (validated by University of Greenwich)
• In addition to this, you will gain full Equity membership through NCDT accreditation.