Masters degrees in Acting train postgraduates in the art of creating and producing effective performances, conveying naturalistic human feelings and behaviour in invented circumstances.
Taught MA and MFA courses are typical for the field. Entry requirements normally include an appropriate undergraduate degree such as Performing Arts. Sufficient work experience is also an essential requirement in some cases.
MA Acting is an intensive 45 week conservatoire Actor training course. Eight weeks of the course are spent studying in Moscow. Skills classes in Voice, Movement, Neutral Mask, Ballet, Period Dance, Speech and Acting underpin a programme embracing the Greeks to Contemporary drama, with particular emphasis on Shakespeare and Chekhov.
MA Acting is primarily a stage acting course which focuses on the techniques developed to address the demands posed by the great European classics.
MA Acting is a rewarding route to the general training of actors, offering a solid grounding in acting technique, rooted in the long-established traditions of England and Russia, which are widely considered to be the foremost exponents of the art of the actor.
Throughout, the postgraduate course emphasises theatrical approaches, in particular those relating to narrative structures, movement expression and the conveyance of complex texts by means of a rich, well-trained voice. Questions of text and subtext are explored in detail.
MA Acting approaches performance in ways specifically addressing the needs of the Jacobean stage: focusing on vocal accuracy with speed, expressivity on a large scale, engagement with the audience. In addition, the postgraduate course encourages you to develop skills required by the realist style: multi-layered characterisation, recognising the subtle rapport between text and sub-text, being ‘private in public’.
MA Acting is structured in 2 units over 45 weeks:
Unit 1 (weeks 1-15) "Skills and techniques of Acting"
Unit 2 (weeks 16-45) "The practice of Acting".
8 weeks are spent at the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute, known as the Vakhtangov Institute, in Moscow - one of the foremost conservatoire Drama schools in Russia.
A typical week for MA Acting students will be:
3 hours Voice
3 hours Movement
1.5 hours Ballet
1.5 hours Speech
1.5 hours Period Dance
3 hours Neutral Mask
7 hours Acting Technique
12 hours Rehearsal.
Our new and innovative MFA Acting will train future generations of internationally renowned performers and teachers.
Delivered by Guildford School of Acting (GSA), one of the most highly regarded theatre schools in the UK, this programme provides world-class training alongside a sterling reputation and excellent industry links.
Our new and innovative MFA Acting builds on the success of GSA’s current postgraduate programme by extending the high-quality, intensive training currently offered on our one year MA Acting programme. The MFA Acting programme is highly selective and intensive: students train for four semesters over two years, taking classes in acting, voice, movement and professional development, exploring a wide range of theatre traditions and performance styles in rehearsal projects and public productions.
This unique programme is delivered by expert teachers with extensive first-hand experience in the professional theatre sector in both the UK and the US.
Our beautiful campus boasts strong transport links to London, meaning our students can easily benefit from GSA’s proximity to the heart of UK theatre; London’s West End. This means our students not only receive world-class training, but are also heavily exposed to London theatre, cultural activities and highly beneficial industry networks.
This programme is studied full-time over four consecutive semesters and two academic years.
Example module listing
The following modules are indicative, reflecting the information available at the time of publication. Please note that not all modules described are compulsory and may be subject to teaching availability and/or student demand.
Our MFA in Acting will provide graduates with:
The programme provides opportunities for students to develop and demonstrate knowledge and understanding, skills, qualities and other attributes in the following areas:
Knowledge and understanding
Intellectual / cognitive skills
Professional practical skills
Key / transferable skills
We often give our students the opportunity to acquire international experience during their degrees by taking advantage of our exchange agreements with overseas universities.
In addition to the hugely enjoyable and satisfying experience, time spent abroad adds a distinctive element to your CV.
This Guildford School of Acting (GSA) programme emphasises practical actor training, delivered via a series of project workshops and rehearsals supported by extensive classes in relevant technical skills.
GSA is one of the UK’s leading accredited drama schools, providing dedicated conservatoire training within a purpose built environment on the University of Surrey campus.
The MA Acting programme is specifically designed for those seeking a career in the performing arts, and who already have an undergraduate degree or have a minimum of five years’ professional experience.
This intensive programme offers practical training which focusses on the acquisition of technical skills in acting, voice and movement.
These support a range of rehearsal projects, screen acting projects and public performances. Students also take professional development workshops and classes in audition technique.
Cohorts are kept small to ensure that students receive the maximum amount of personal attention and contact.
Performance opportunities include a devised project, a final public production led by a production team of industry professionals, and a West End Showcase.
This programme is studied full-time over one academic year. It consists of eight taught modules and a compulsory Advanced Practice module.
Example module listing
The following modules are indicative, reflecting the information available at the time of publication. Please note that not all modules described are compulsory and may be subject to teaching availability and/or student demand.
The programme provides opportunities for students to develop and demonstrate knowledge and understanding, skills, qualities and other attributes in the following areas:
Knowledge and understanding
Intellectual / cognitive skills
Professional practical skills
Key / transferable skills
We often give our students the opportunity to acquire international experience during their degrees by taking advantage of our exchange agreements with overseas universities.
In addition to the hugely enjoyable and satisfying experience, time spent abroad adds a distinctive element to your CV.
This 18-month full time MA in Screen Acting offers students professional training in acting for a range of screen based industries.
Students are taught by working industry professionals and great emphasis is placed upon working to ‘real-world’ briefs, to ‘real-world’ deadlines and in a professional environment within a state of the art media technology facility.
For the first 12 months (24 for P/T) students will engage with lectures, research, analysis and skills development classes as they enhance their specialist and collaborative understanding. With a focus on story craft and character development you will continually engage with traditional acting and devising classes as you progress a fuller understanding of screen based narratives and the demands of the numerous forms of screen acting you may be required to collaborate in.
Underpinned by a company mentality and traditional visceral acting methodology classes, students will also be trained in Motion Capture Performance, Combat for the Screen and Voice for the Screen, as they gain a deep applied knowledge of the opportunities for the contemporary screen actor. Working closely with other Masters students they will gain valuable on-set experience through the numerous film production projects produced within the department each year.
This programme recognises the significant place the performer has in MoCap for cinema and gaming, the demands for combat and armoury awareness and the opportunities offered for voicing animated characters, voice overs for advertising and ADR.
Collaborating with students studying Film Production, 3D Animation and Screenwriting, students are encouraged to devise and produce their own work as they prepare to enter this highly competitive professional field.
Analysis and reflection will play a significant role in your training throughout as you learn about the dynamic between Director and Actor, the importance of the ‘frame’ and shot composition and the professional expectations of the screen based professional industries.
Intense and physically dynamic workshops will cover an extended understanding of the implementation in Motion Capture environments that includes using head rigs to capture facial expression and performance. Combat training sessions will introduce actors to the safe use of a range firearms from muskets to automatic rifles, and weapons such as swords and axes. Highly qualified specialist armourers and combat coordinators, with a wealth of experience in film and television drama and re-enactments, lead these training sessions and will introduce students to risk assessment and health and safety, as expected within this highly specialised area.
Audio work related to screen based content can range from voice over for advertising, automated dialogue replacement and voicing characters for animation. You will be specifically skilled within a professional recording environment in these crafts, which will be complimented by vocal lessons and dialect training provided by experienced tutors from this field.
Students will enter into a collaborative practice programme, engaging with industry professionals and drawing on teaching expertise within the Creative & Digital Technologies Department. Important elements of the programme will be supported by external experience at the BFI, International Film Festivals and Conventions.
During the final 6 months of the programme students will engage with self-directed independent study as they create and produce their major research project.
This project will be supported through mentoring and staged draft submissions and can be a combination of artefacts, a single large-scale specialist production supported by critical reflective analysis or a significant and appropriate dissertation piece.
This MA programme will enable you to start your career across a number of industries utilising acting and performance for the moving image in their content.
The creative industries of gaming, TV, film and advertising all require well trained and professionally aware performers for the numerous hours of content produced.
You will also have the opportunity to consider further study and enter the academic research environment through a Professional Doctorate pathway.
Our established relationships with a number of commercial companies engaged with, or commissioning, content will allow for you to gain work placement opportunities.
Working collaboratively with both commercial and non commercial partners within the Engineering and Digital Technology Park, students will have direct access to industry on a regular basis.
You will be taught by a range of experts in the fields of acting, voice, motion capture, combat and weaponry. You will also have access to award winning filmmakers covering a range of craft areas such as screenwriting, animation, directing and producing. Students will get access to industry experts providing mentoring and master classes.
Class sizes are expected to range from 1-2-1 sessions with mentors, 20 in taught sessions, 20-30 in collaborative and research sessions shared with other MA students.
Summative assessment will take the form of written and practical coursework, presentations & screenings, portfolio and project work.
Students must achieve 90 credits in year 1 to progress to year 2. A total of 180 credits are required to be awarded the MA.
Formative assessment in the Creative & Digital Technologies Department is carried out through peer to peer and tutor feedback on work either through submission, workshops or tutorials. Regularly across all modules.
Feedback on submitted work can be accessed through our VLE digitally or by collected hard copies of work from the Administration Office.
We endeavour to complete marking and feedback on all assessed work within a 3 week period though some modules, due to complexity of assessment, may take slightly longer.
The MA Acting is an intensive one-year, advanced level conservatoire acting course. In keeping with Central’s tradition of innovation in actor training, it offers two specialist strands taught over an extended 42 weeks, with up to 35 hours per week of classes, rehearsals, seminars and tutorials. Successful applicants will be offered a place on one of the two strands.
The Classical strand follows the development of the theatrical art from its earliest ritual roots to the birth of naturalism:
> Greek Tragedy, Chorus and the Neutral Mask
> Clowning and Commedia dell’arte
> Shakespeare and the English Renaissance
> Stanislavski, the Method and ‘Realist’ Theatre.
The Classical strand draws on the hugely influential theories and techniques of the great French acting teacher Michel Saint-Denis, training the expressive body, voice and imagination. Working with some of the greatest dramatic texts ever written, students are asked to consider what they mean now, and how their 21st century reinterpretation and re-imagining still holds a ‘mirror up to nature’. Students are encouraged to understand the demands of both art and craft, as participants in, and practitioners of, the western theatrical tradition, through a course structure that examines, in chronological order, four key periods of innovation and transition.
All staff are well connected to industry. In the past few years, students have participated in a research symposium and worked on the stage
of Shakespeare’s Globe, performed at the Brighton Festival, made a film with Sir Donald Sinden at the Garrick Club, taken part in workshops with Hannah Miller (Head of Casting, Royal Shakespeare Company) and attended public lectures by Judi Dench, Vanessa
Redgrave, Michael Boyd and Declan Donnellan. Students from Canada and the USA have participated in the Conference of Drama Schools
Showcase in New York and LA, and all students participate in Central’s MA Acting showcase.
Through a combination of practical and written assessments, including a Sustained Independent Project and research presentation.
This taught Master's explores physical training for actors and performance practice. Based on an intensive, sustained and sophisticated engagement with this specialist aspect of theatre practice, the programme gives you the opportunity to work as individual practitioners and as an ensemble.
The programme explores:
It also equips you with the ability to document research practices in an appropriate form that is viewed as an integral part of the process and outcomes of this MA.
You have the opportunity to work with internationally respected physical theatre and training specialists, including Professor Paul Allain and Kent colleagues, as well as participate in a professional workshop on actor training by a visiting practitioner working within the tradition of European experimental theatre. You can participate fully in the activities of the Department’s very active research centre, the ‘European Theatre Research Network’.
Postgraduate Drama and Theatre studies at Kent has a very strong reputation for research and supervision in contemporary performance processes, applied performance and European theatre.
The wide-ranging interests of our international team of leading and emerging researchers (from the UK, Australia, Greece, Germany and other countries) also include research strengths in Shakespeare, 18th-century theatre, multimedia performance, and in the history of comedy and popular performance.
Our distinctive focus at Kent is on theatre as practice, whatever the topic, area, mode and methodology of research, and we encourage postgraduate students to make use of our close links and contacts with local, national and international (especially European) theatre companies, venues, schools and artists, both for research and to encourage professional postgraduate development.
This programme will require you to study a combination of compulsory and optional modules. You may also have the option to take modules from other programmes so that you may customise your programme and explore other subject areas that interest you.
Possible modules may include:
Assessment is by coursework, including practical and written components for each of the modules, and by the final term project with its option of a conference paper and dissertation or mixed practice and dissertation.
Find out how to apply here - https://www.kent.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/apply/
Visit the MA Physical Acting page on the University of Kent website for more details!
This new MA provides each student with an opportunity to develop or reinvigorate themselves as an actor and create work for touring. Working in companies, students learn how to take charge of their professional journey and become self-sustaining, by creating public performances adaptable to different venues and circumstances.
This course provides a thorough one-year professional experience of working in and developing work for touring and finding audiences. LIPA aims to give students the means and the confidence, by the end of the year, to create, find an audience and present a captivating show. Along the way, students work, as a year group, to produce two performances, before, possibly, becoming a smaller company. Each student’s acting craft skills will increase, as will the thinking needed to create shows that attract audiences.
Students experiment, innovate and get to grips with contemporary approaches, including digital possibilities to extend their range of presentational skills. LIPA also puts students together with emerging directors and practitioners. Finally, students become part of a company to find out, if what they imagined might work, actually does.
This course is studied over 12 months and supports each student’s further development as an actor and advances their professional practice. Practical modules enhance technical capabilities in body, movement and voice. Students work as part of a company and continue to refine their individual methodology to engage with advanced texts and originate new and adapted work for public audiences. Students develop an advanced understanding of the complex ideas and economies that surround the making of theatre and apply this understanding to their own work.
The year culminates with students applying the knowledge and skills gained to create and present a new touring production as a graduate company, with the backing of a £1,000 grant per company member to do so. Students have 12 to 15 contact hours per week outside of the professional practice / rehearsal periods when they will be working full-time on these. Students are expected to work autonomously in the third semester but with supervision.
General information on fees and funding is available here.
The modules offered are:
· Professional Development
· Inquiry & Critique I
· The Actor’s Practice: Advanced Technique I
· The Actor’s Practice: Professional Performance I
· Professional Development, Inquiry & Critique II
· The Actor’s Practice: Advanced Technique II
· The Actor’s Practice: Professional Performance II,
· Dissertation (Option),
· Practice Dissertation (Option)
LIPA’s teaching team is made up of an international team of professionals, who have worked as actors, directors, musical directors, producers, writers and expert movement, voice and acting coaches.
In their various capacities, the team have collaborated with such actors as Anna Friel and Tim Roth, writers and producers (who include Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Terry Johnson and Phil Redmond) and have directed TV dramas, such as Coronation Street, Emmerdale and Brookside.
LIPA has links with leading acting companies, which mean that they are able to contribute essential skills. Students Also have access to regular Q&As, masterclasses and workshops with household-name actors, casting directors, reviewers and producers.
Find out more about LIPA here.
