Acting for Stage and Screen MA

This course is in clearing

Overview

Course options

Select year

MA

Acting for Stage and Screen MA, home applicant, full time

  • Home Applicant
  • Full time, 1 year
  • Pound 10680 per year

Acting for Stage and Screen MA, home applicant, part time

  • Home Applicant
  • Part time, 2 years
  • Pound 1780 per 30 credit module

Acting for Stage and Screen MA, international applicant, full time

  • International Applicant
  • Full time, 1 year
  • Pound 16140 per year

MFA

Acting for Stage and Screen MA, home applicant, full time (mfa)

  • Home Applicant
  • Full time (MFA), 2 years
  • Year 1 fees: £10680 (180 credits). Year 2 fees: £7120 (120 credits).

Acting for Stage and Screen MA, home applicant, part time

  • Home Applicant
  • Part time, 4 years
  • Pound 1780 per 30 credit module

Acting for Stage and Screen MA, international applicant, full time (mfa)

  • International Applicant
  • Full time (MFA), 2 years
  • Year 1 fees: £16140 (180 credits). Year 2 fees: £10760 (120 credits).

Performing Arts postgraduate courses at UEL

What makes this course different

Ideas focused

This acting course supports your development as a creative actor-preneur, providing opportunities for you to originate and apply skills and ideas across a wide range of professional contexts.

Inclusive approach

We value diversity and a richness of skills and ideas from across a spectrum of social, cultural, creative and professional practices. We recognise all work for its potential to create an impact.

Adaptable across disciplines and professional contexts

Develop professional techniques in acting for stage and screen. Gain cross-disciplinary skills and competencies. Originate, adapt and apply your skills across many different professional contexts.

Course modules

The MA Acting for Stage and Screen course takes a theory-through-practice-based approach as we explore different approaches to acting across a range of different media. From acting to the camera to acting on stage, or acting across digital media, you will develop a personal interdisciplinary acting toolkit. You'll develop the necessary industry-facing materials needed for a career in the twenty-first-century theatre industry.

NOTE: Modules are subject to change. For those studying part time courses the modules may vary.

Download course specification

What we're researching

The results of the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF), a six-yearly national review of higher education research, underlined the quality and impact of our work. An impressive 92 per cent of UEL's overall research was recognised as world-leading, internationally excellent or internationally recognised (REF 2021).

Dr Tom Drayton’s research into metamodern theatre, for instance, is world-leading and he is the author of the first book about metamodern theatre; Dr Evi Stamatiou’s influential work on actor training and inclusive pedagogies is built on two decades of international experience as an actor and creative; Carrie Mueller’s research focuses on participatory performance practice with a focus on dissensus and transgression; and Dr Claudia Brazalle’s scholarship and ongoing bodily/movement practice are deeply influenced by her cross-cultural dance and performance training.

Our arts department fosters a vibrant and collaborative research community, including our Centre for Inclusion and Creative Practice, Centre for Creative and Cultural Practice and Centre for Social Change and Justice. Additionally, we place importance on the development from postgraduate study to further research for those interested in continuing their academic journeys – postgraduate students contribute to our cross-institutional Research Roundtables and public student-led conferences, too.

Find out more about ACI research and our postgraduate research.

Your future career

We offer dedicated career support, and further opportunities to thrive, such as volunteering and industry networking. Our courses are created in collaboration with employers and industry to ensure they accurately reflect the real-life practices of your future career and provide you with the essential skills needed. You can focus on building interpersonal skills through group work and benefit from our investment in state-of-the-art facilities.

Industry links

Our academic staff are professionals in the acting field. As such, the course is built upon current industry experience through the network of industry links within the London theatre scene and beyond. 

Previous collaborations over the past few years have included work with Camden People’s Theatre, The V&A, The Space, Applecart Arts, Ardent Theatre Company, The Old Church, The Bread & Roses Theatre and more. 

Graduate employers

London’s theatre scene is like nowhere else in the world, and our acting postgraduate course sets you up to take your own place in the contemporary creative industries. Graduates of this course have joined theatre companies and collectives, worked in London theatres, taught drama at various levels and gone on to further postgraduate study. 

Job roles

Graduates of this course have gone on to become professional stage actors, professional screen actors, and actor-entrepreneurs with their own solo performance works.

Explore the different career options you can pursue with this degree and see the median salaries of the sector on our Career Coach portal.

Further study

After studying your Master's or MFA in Acting for Stage and Screen, you could go on to further study with our postgraduate research courses:

Acting for stage and screen students in class ACI
It’s allowed me to develop because it’s enabled me to work with people from all different walks of life.
Graduate

MA Acting for Stage and Screen, 2022

How we support your career ambitions

We offer dedicated careers support, further opportunities to thrive, such as volunteering and industry networking. Our courses are created in collaboration with employers and industry to ensure they accurately reflect the real-life practices of your future career and provide you with the essential skills needed. You can focus on building interpersonal skills through group work and benefit from our investment in the latest cutting edge technologies and facilities.

Career Zone

Our dedicated and award-winning team provide you with careers and employability resources, including:

  • Online jobs board for internships, placements, graduate opportunities, flexible part-time work.
  • Mentoring programmes for insight with industry experts 
  • 1-2-1 career coaching services
  • Careers workshops and employer events 
  • Learning pathways to gain new skills and industry insight

Mental Wealth programme

Our Professional Fitness and Mental Wealth programme which issues you with a Careers Passport to track the skills you’ve mastered. Some of these are externally validated by corporations like Amazon and Microsoft.

Our Mental Wealth programme

We are careers first

Our teaching methods and geographical location put us right up top

  • Enterprise and entrepreneurship support 
  • We are ranked 6th for graduate start-ups 
  • Networking and visits to leading organisations 
  • Support in starting a new business, freelancing and self-employment 
  • London on our doorstep

How you'll learn

This acting course will develop dynamic and adaptable actors for stage and screen, who can work across traditional and non-traditional contexts. If you pursue a Master’s in acting for stage and screen, you'll learn advanced technical and creative skills relevant to your specialist focus within professional practice. Core skills will be developed through collaboration and application across all programme pathways.

Study will be practice-led, with a focus on developing a range of research skills and models for creative practice, applied in diverse professional contexts. You'll also practice contextual awareness and responsiveness, examining the influence and impact of your acting work in social, cultural, and ethical contexts.

Guided independent study

When not attending timetabled lectures or workshops, you will be expected to continue learning independently through self-study. This will typically involve skills development through online study, reading journal articles and books, working on individual and group acting projects and preparing coursework assignments and presentations. Your independent learning is supported by a range of excellent facilities including online resources, and specialist facilities, such as game labs, the library, the full Microsoft Office software, including MS Teams, and Moodle: our Virtual Learning Environment.

Academic support

Our academic support team provides help in a range of areas - including learning and disability support.

You'll learn from, and work with, staff who are both academics and professional actors with industry knowledge.

Dedicated personal tutor

When you arrive, we'll introduce you to your personal tutor. This is the member of staff who will provide academic guidance, be a support throughout your time at UEL and who will show you how to make the best use of all the help and resources that we offer.

Workload

Project development, outcomes, and impact will be captured by:

  • Interactive portfolios
  • Literature reviews
  • Critical evaluation
  • Research and development repositories
  • Presentation, workshops, and seminars
  • Reflective journals
  • Collaborative practice-led research 

Details of the requirements and content for portfolios and assessments will be provided in guides for each module.

Portfolios will take the form of digital and physical documents presented online using web publishing tools and or physical portfolios that have been printed and curated into a portable portfolio. From this practice, you will demonstrate and reflect upon the process of creating and preparing a body of acting work for professional display, and further development in production and or industry.

Your timetable

Your individualised timetable is normally available to students within 48 hours of enrolment. Whilst we make every effort to ensure timetables are as student-friendly as possible. For our Postgraduate performing arts courses, seminars are scheduled in the evenings between 17:30 and 21:30 to enable study alongside work. Timetables for part-time students will depend on the modules selected.

Class sizes

To give you an indication of class sizes, we usually recruit around 15 students per year. You will attend lectures and seminars together and regularly work in smaller groups and individually in workshops and practical sessions. 

How you'll be assessed

This is a practice-based and industry-focused postgraduate acting programme with a weighting of roughly: 

  • 70% process, performance and production 
  • 30% critical reflective writing

Depending on your course modules, your assessments may include coursework essays, collaborative and individual presentations, professional placements, reports, portfolios, other creative work and, of course – most importantly – performances.

Campus and facilities

University Square Stratford

What our students and staff say

Dominic Hingorani
I can't think of a more exciting place to start your career, build your networks and access world-class professional theatre than in East London.

Professor Dominic Hingorani

I have really enjoyed sharing some modules with students from other programmes; it allows us to foster collaborations both for the final project but also for the future.

MA Acting for Stage and Screen student, 2023