BFA Acting

Structured as a one-year acting intensive, the first year is about exploration - not only of the craft of acting, but more importantly, the self exploration of each actor's imagination, impulses, voice and physicality. Acting course work is focused on improvisation and truth in action. Actors learn to communicate a theatrical reality both with and without a text. The year culminates in a showing allowing the actors to synthesize and demonstrate their developing technique. Movement courses focus on helping actors explore their bodies and expand their range of movement through yoga-based and impulse and expression-based movement. The focus in the voice and speech curriculum is on freeing the natural voice toward greater psycho-physical connection and improved self-awareness, imagination, expressiveness and embodiment.

BFA Acting students, like all first year students at The Theatre School, complete three crew assignments as part of our public season. BFA Acting students will audition and learn of their casting assignment for the upcoming fall quarter at the end of their first year.

The second year acting curriculum focuses on helping actors build solid technique. Acting course work emphasizes contemporary scene study and text analysis - the given circumstances of the playwright's theatrical reality and how to embody and communicate it. Movement work focuses on greater awareness and understanding of how actors use their body through Feldenkrais®-based and contemporary style exploration. The focus of the voice and speech curriculum is to work on refining the actors' use of their voices through deepening their experience of resonance and its placement in the body along with clarifying vowel and consonant articulation for the purpose of experiencing language as a physical act of expression. Students also take courses in stage combat and stage makeup to prepare them for their production work.

Second year actors each receive three casting assignments (one each academic quarter) through the Introduction to Performance Series ("Intros"). "Intros" are full-length productions mounted in our black box studio spaces and directed by the faculty or professional guest directors.

The third year of training emphasizes working with classical texts and heighten language. Using plays by Shakespeare and other classical playwrights, third-year actors join the emotional, physical and imaginative life of the role with the technical skills needed to express that character to its fullest. This is achieved through rigorous foundation work and applying the basic tenets of acting to the acting of plays in verse: making strong choices that are grounded in the text, establishing a connection to the scene partner, listening and responding to the given circumstances and to what is happening in the scene. Students work closely with the instructors to develop their physical and vocal instruments to meet the demands of the material and integrate the work done in all classes, bringing transformative performance energy to inhabit the scope and size of classical text. Movement continues to refine actors' technique but also focuses on inhabiting the world of the play. Work in the voice and speech curriculum is linked to the work on heightened language and includes increasing the range of the actors' capacity to embody and clarify action through their speaking. Actors are encouraged to use tools including phonetics and dialects to increase self-sufficiency and personal practice of their work.

Third and fourth year BFA Acting students, alongside our MFA Acting students, make up the casting pool for our public season. Each BFA Acting student in the casting pool will perform in 4-5 productions over the course of the last two years of the program. Our public season is a mix of contemporary, classical, children's theatre, and new works mounted in a variety of spaces including the Merle Reskin Theatre (1,300-seat proscenium stage), Watts Theatre (250-seat partial thrust stage), and Healy Theatre (120-seat black box).

The final year of the program focuses on preparing actors for the transition to the profession with a wider variety of coursework focused on helping actors integrate what they have been learning in the three previous years. Acting coursework involves advanced scene study, ensemble development and creation, solo performance (an elective), film and television acting and audition preparation. Movement coursework includes a return to impulse and expression-based movement and African dance. Voice and speech coursework explores singing for musical theatre and voiceover technique. Students also take courses focused on the business aspects of the profession which include marketing themselves as actors and working with talent agents and casting directors.

Fourth year actors continue in the casting pool and receive casting assignments in our public season. In the spring quarter under the guidance of faculty, graduating actors prepare the Graduate Showcase production - usually a series of scenes and monologues - which is presented in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles for casting directors, talent agents, producers and directors from theatre, film and television. The Graduate Showcase also includes a series of alumni networking events in each city to introduce and connect our graduates to our large alumni network.