The Theatre School ’s Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in Acting is a highly truthful, yet expressive, physical acting program which prepares actors to work on both stage and screen. Informed by our Chicago roots, our program is a “toolbox” approach to actor training. The first year experience is about expanding the size of the actor’s toolbox. The subsequent three years focus on providing actors the tools – skills and technique - while helping each actor discover and apply those which work best for him or her.
Students learn from a distinguished and award-winning faculty of working professionals who possess a wide variety of backgrounds and expertise. Our faculty has spent many years developing successful, personal and powerful curricula that mine a diversity of ideas from Stanislavski, Spolin, Grotowski, Suzuki, Lessac, Linklater, Yoga, Tai Chi, Feldenkrais ®, Laban, mask work, and more. Students are inspired through unique points-of-view within a comprehensive four-year progression of acting, movement, and voice and speech curriculum.
Equally important to the training students receive in the classroom is the opportunity they have to synthesize that learning in the production process, with each student completing 9 production assignments – one each quarter – over their three years in the Production Phase of the program.
First Year. Structured as a one-year acting intensive, the first year is about exploration – not only of the craft of acting but more importantly self exploration by each actor of his or her tools – imagination, impulses, voice and physicality. Acting course work is primarily focused on Spolin-based improvisation work to increase and refine actors’ access to their imagination and how to apply their imagination to a theatrical reality both with and without text. Movement courses focus on helping actors explore their bodies and expand their range of movement through yoga-based and impulse and expression-based movement. Voice and speech curriculum focus on helping actors better understand and access their voice through breath support, pitch, tone and resonance. In support of the exploration focus, students also participate in three production crew assignments outside of their focus.
Second Year. Once students have a greater understanding of what is possible, the second year focuses on helping students build solid technique as actors. Acting course work focuses on contemporary scene study and text analysis – the theatrical reality of a playwright’s given circumstances and how to embody it. Movement work focuses on greater awareness and understanding of how actors use their body through Feldenkrais-based and contemporary style exploration. Voice and speech work focuses on refining actors’ use of their voice through Linklater-based technique. Students also take courses in stage combat and stage make up to prepare them for their production work. Second year actors are cast into their own production season called Introduction to Performance – full-length productions mounted in studio spaces and cast only from second year actors. Students are cast by the faculty in three productions during the year based each student’s individual needs.
Third Year. Advanced technique work and classical style is the focus of the third year. Acting course work focuses on classical scene study and heightened language – Shakespeare and first folio technique and text founded in poetic forms. Movement and voice and speech work continues to refine actors’ technique but also focuses on period style, period movement and dialect work. Third year actors enter the Casting Pool for their production work. Each student in the Casting Pool auditions each quarter for that quarter’s shows in our public production season and every student is cast each quarter in one of these shows. Our public season is a mix of contemporary, classical, children’s theatre, musicals and new works mounted in a variety of spaces from the Merle Reskin Theatre, our large proscenium stage, to very intimate studio spaces.
Fourth Year. 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 but also to prepare them for the profession. Acting coursework involves synthesis work in improvisation and scene study, film and television acting, audition preparation and voiceover. Movement coursework includes a return to impulse and expression-based movement and African dance. Voice and speech coursework includes musical theatre voice work and voiceover technique. Students also take courses focused on the business aspects of the profession which include marketing themselves as actors and working with casting agents and casting directors. Fourth year actors continue in the Casting Pool and are cast in three more productions in our public season.
Graduate Showcase. At the end of each year, The Theatre School hosts a series of events to showcase the work of our graduating actors. Under the guidance of the faculty, graduating actors prepare a showcase production – usually a series of scenes and monologues – which is presented in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles for casting directors, casting agents, producers and directors from theatre, film and television. The Graduate Showcase includes a series of alumni networking events in each city to introduce and connect our graduates to our large alumni network.
Liberal Studies. In addition to the acting training curriculum, actors complete 52 quarterly credit hours (13 courses) in liberal studies. Courses are taken in theatre history, English composition and rhetoric, quantitative reasoning, philosophy, religion, lab or quantitative sciences, world history, multiculturalism and electives. These liberal studies courses are scheduled during the first three years of the program.
Evaluation. Every student receives quarterly evaluation and feedback from the faculty each year. Students’ evaluations are based on discipline, collaboration, professional potential and progress in the program. The acting program is divided into two phases – the Probationary Phase (first year) and Production Phase (second, third and fourth years). First year acting students receive an Invitation to Return into the Production Phase of the program. The first year of the acting program has a capacity of 47 students. At the end of the first year, 26 students receive an Invitation to Return into the Production Phase.
