Acting for Stage and Screen MA

This course is in clearing

Overview

Course options

Select year

MA

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

    • Home Applicant
    • Full time, 1 year
    • Pound 10200 per year
  • MA Acting for Stage and Screen, home applicant, part time

    • Home Applicant
    • Part time, 2 years
    • Pound 1700 per 30 credit module
  • MA Acting for Stage and Screen, international applicant, full time

    • International Applicant
    • Full time, 1 year
    • Pound 15420 per year
    International applications are closed for 2024

MFA

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

    • Home Applicant
    • Full time (MFA), 2 years
    • Pound 10200 year 1 fees: £10,200 (180 credits). Year 2 fees: £6,800 (120 credits).
  • MA Acting for Stage and Screen, home applicant, part time

    • Home Applicant
    • Part time, 4 years
    • Pound 1700 per 30 credit module
  • MA Acting for Stage and Screen, international applicant, full time (mfa)

    • International Applicant
    • Full time (MFA), 2 years
    • Pound 15420 year 1 fees: £15,420 (180 credits). Year 2 fees: £10,280 (120 credits).
    International applications are closed for 2024

What makes this course different

Ideas focussed

The 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

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

Download course specification

Your future career

Your future career

Future careers may include:

  • Professional Stage Actor
  • Professional Screen Actor
  • Director: Media and/or Stage
  • Creative Producer: Media and/or Stage Production
  • Interdisciplinary Arts Project Leadership

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

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

What you'll learn

Acting for Stage

The aim of this module is to develop advanced integrated creative and technical skills in the context of Acting for Stage:

  • Adaptive Capacity: Acting Skills Development for Stage-based performance practice
  • Practice and Enhancement: Skills Development in Context 
  • Interdisciplinary Practice and Skills 
  • Applied Skills and Techniques 
  • Research, Contextualisation and Impact 


Acting for Screen
The aim of this module is to develop advanced integrated creative and technical skills in the context of Acting for Screen:

  • Adaptive Capacity: Acting Skills Development for Screen-based performance practice
  • Practice and Enhancement: Skills Development in Context 
  • Interdisciplinary Practice and Skills 
  • Applied Skills and Techniques 
  • Research, Contextualisation and Impact 


Creative Technologies
Developing and applying technologies to innovate, narrate, capture and disseminate interdisciplinary praxis and its impact:

  • Technology as a collaborator: e.g. presentation and narration tools, AR, and media formats.
  • Enhancing learning with technology: e.g. communication, networking, Augmented Reality (AR), and social platforms.
  • Interaction Design: tools, skills and techniques
  • Narrating Practice: Digital Storytelling, content capture and representation

Interdisciplinary Intersections

Developing Cross-Disciplinary Coherence:

  • Distribution and leverage of hard skills and soft skills for professional industrial contexts
  • Disciplinary rigour: skills, knowledge, and understanding about area/s of student specialism (e.g. Sound and Music for Media, Games and Theatre, Production and Performance, Acting for Stage and Screen)

Cross-disciplinary Competences and Capabilities:

  • e.g. Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Critical Thinking, personal and social capabilities, problem-solving, digital proficiency, cultural, social, emotional, and physical intelligence.
  • Integrative modes, models and frameworks for interdisciplinary praxis, collaboration and research


Creative Project Design

Models, methods and modes for creative project design:

  • Models of creativity and design: disciplinary and interdisciplinary models, transferring expertise between disciplines, design thinking, 
  • Applied models: e.g. hypothesis-driven, experimental, staged, design thinking, iterative, emergent design, innovation practice, prototyping
  • Creative Innovation Project: conceptualisation and design, implementation and leadership models, collaboration methodologies
  • Project design: design principles, design thinking, (rationale, aims, objectives, methodologies, resources, tools, collaborators, timescale, scope)
  • Leadership and Facilitation: Change processes, innovation processes
  • Organisational Context: distribution of expertise, climate, culture


Dissertation / Final Project

  • Research and development
  • Research Methodologies and Project Proposal
  • Contextual and Ethical Awareness
  • Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinary intersections
  • Literature Review
  • Project Review and Evaluation
  • Interactive Portfolio Development and Digital Storytelling

 

Additional Modules of the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) Degree

Research Praxis

  • Applied Praxis and Research Methodologies – Distributed Expertise: Distributed Learning
  • Research Base: Establishing context, sources and parameters for research
  • Research Skills: methodologies, processes and frameworks
  • Contextual Awareness: distribution of expertise, climate and culture
  • Research Capture and Dissemination
  • Research Ethics: Establishing ethical research practices and processes


Meta-Praxis

  • Context and Student-specific live applied project
  • Project Design Implementation, Facilitation and Leadership
  • Interdisciplinary Interface and Interaction
  • Modelling Reflexive Practice
  • Modelling Transversal Skills Development
  • Evaluative Case Study
  • Research Capture and Dissemination: Interactive Portfolio and Presentation of Praxis

How you'll learn

This course suite will develop knowledge, cognitive and practical skills and experience to develop dynamic and adaptable actors for stage and screen, who can work across traditional and non-traditional contexts.

You will develop advanced technical and creative skills relevant to your specialist focus within professional practice.

Core skills will be developed through collaboration and in-context application across all programme pathways, and industry-specific skills will be developed and applied within the industrial context of your workplace, placement context, or chosen community / professional setting.

The course focuses on leading creative and collaborative projects that are designed and implemented by you, supported by teaching staff and industry mentors, to create an impact for you and the public, communities and collaborators with which you are working.

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 will also develop contextual awareness and responsiveness, examining the influence and impact of your work for and upon the many contextual layers interconnected with it, including but not limited to the social, cultural, historical, economic, technological, environmental, and ethical.

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

  • Interactive Portfolios
  • Literature Reviews
  • Critical Evaluation
  • Research and Development Repositories
  • Presentation, workshops, and seminars
  • Reflective Journals
  • Collaborative practice-led research 

Assessment Tasks and Portfolios

Assessment frequently includes the creation of portfolios, comprising production reports, written reports, extended essays, and live practical assessments relevant to disciplinary and interdisciplinary practice.

Portfolio content will depend on the module assessment task in which the portfolio features, consisting of a wide variety of mediums from digital content, such as video and audio recordings, or digital images, which capture the production and performance/ media of practical work and technical outcomes. Portfolios will be digital documents presented online using web publishing tools.

Details of the requirements and content for portfolios and assessment tasks will be provided in module guides for each module. To allow for diversity and inclusivity across course clusters, it will be appropriate, based on the relevant course subject, to further stipulate the form of assessment required i.e. artefacts and performance/ media pieces captured as evidence digitally and or non-digital formats (e.g. published printed book), which may subsequently be documented digitally (i.e. coursework portfolio).

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 final professional body of work for professional display, and further development in production and or industry.

How you will be assessed

You will be assessed through the development and delivery of live projects, applied in professional contexts appropriate to your area of specialism.

All assessment is a combination of:

  • 60% Practical
  • 40% Coursework

Ongoing formative feedback will provide you with continuous support and opportunities for development and growth. For formal assessment, we aim to provide feedback in 20 working days.

Campus and facilities

University Square Stratford