By their senior year, students will:

  1. demonstrate technical and artistic proficiency in acting, voice and speech, and movement
  2. demonstrate technical and artistic proficiency through successful performance in a variety of theatrical productions
  3. attain a sufficient level of skill in the BFA professional actor training program to be ready for employment in the field of acting
  4. demonstrate proficiency in modes of critical/historical inquiry necessary for the exploration/realization of character and for a broad understanding of the history and aesthetics of theatre

First through Third Years:

  1. The Acting Department faculty meets with each student every six weeks for a thorough and complete evaluation of progress and personal challenges in all the student’s courses.
  2. The students are made aware of the work they need to do to maintain their status in the acting BFA program. If they are in jeopardy of falling below a professional level of development in any of their courses, they are notified in writing, with notes from their entire professional teaching faculty, regarding what needs to be accomplished to maintain acceptable status in the program.
  3. Students meet with the Department Chairs and their program professors on an ongoing basis.

Fourth Year: 

  1. For BFA acting students, the equivalent of a senior project is the Consortium presentations in Los Angeles and New York City for an audience of invited industry professionals.
  2. The successful outcome of these presentations is demonstrated by the students’ ability to present themselves as mature, sophisticated, skilled, and professional actors.
  3. Their performances will demonstrate the successful integration of four years of sequential training.

Year-by-Year Training

First-year students will:

  1. experience a heightened sense of discovery
  2. develop and expand imagination and expression
  3. reduce self-consciousness and inhibition
  4. discover and break down blocks and barriers while exploring facets of his or her personality that were previously subdued
  5. combat anticipation
  6. work within an ensemble
  7. work on the whole body/mind of an actor
  8. start to become aware of unconscious limiting habits and behaviors

Year two develops a craft that allows actors to turn their ideas into actable actions and thoughts. Actors build on the first year and begin refining:

  1. creative skills that show active as well as intellectual imagination
  2. ability to speak in the actor’s vocabulary of behavior and action
  3. strong supple bodies that are capable of playing a variety of characters with various physical demands
  4. powerful, well-placed voices that carry expression and are capable of filling a house
  5. speech patterns that go beyond the actor’s neighborhood of origin
  6. an ability to distinguish the difference between the story of the script and what the story is about
  7. intellectual awareness of important theatre titles so that they can both make and understand references to those plays

Year three is the first year in which the students begin to bring skills to the stage. They are expected to be further refining and building on previous skill sets. Students should demonstrate:

  1. a full understanding of the organizing principles of narrative storytelling, both in verse and in prose
  2. an ability to investigate character, not only from words, thoughts, and ideas, but also through the playwright’s grammatical and rhetorical devices
  3. a successful coordination of imagination and craft to clearly and persuasively deliver the text
  4. a willingness to make brave and unapologetic choices onstage: acting, vocally and physically, that shows a clear integration of the first two years of work

Year four is truly the bridge between academic and professional work. Actors will achieve the student learning outcomes as stated above.