OVERVIEW

Program Overview

The Theatre Arts – Performance program offers you vigorously concentrated, career-oriented training in the fundamental skills, practicalities, traditions and professionalism needed to work as a professional actor in theatre, television and film.

Students can explore the artistic and technical facets through practical and hands-on training at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto’s Distillery District. Learn more about the Theatre Learning Environment and on-stage productions.

Disclaimer: This program has expectations of professionalism, group work, intimacy between actors, whispering, consensual touching, combat training, expressions of physicality, deep exploration of self, personal psychological examination, conflict, and successful failure.  This program is meant to train a student to be a professional actor which includes all of these aspects listed here.

FULL DESCRIPTION

The Theatre Arts – Performance program at George Brown's School of Media and Performing Arts offers you vigorously concentrated, career-oriented training in the fundamental skills, practicalities, traditions and professionalism needed to work as a professional actor in theatre, television and film.

The conservatory, hands-on training is an integrated curriculum in which almost all subjects are related directly to the acting profession. Five skill courses form the core of our classical approach to training the actor: voice, speech, movement, music and dance. The acting curriculum features improvisation, contact improvisation, storytelling, poetry, text analysis, contemporary and classical scene studies, neutral mask, character mask, clowning, commedia dell’arte, television and film technique, and audition preparation. Further classes include: stage combat, dialectology, theatre history, the business of acting and 00.

Besides great partnerships with Soulpepper Theatre Company, Tarragon Theatre and Theatre by the Bay, George Brown has run a successful mentorship program for a number of years. In the final year, students will be paired with a successful theatre practitioner. This partnership starts in the students’ final semester and continues for roughly a year-long period. Mentors will meet with the student for a minimum three times as the student graduates and begins to transition into the field. This program has been not only a success for the students, but mentors have also expressed how great the experience has been and how rewarding it is to be there for the students as they graduate.

Program Learning Outcomes

The graduate demonstrates the ability to:

1. Perform in a variety of theatrical contexts by applying acting, movement and voice techniques as required.
2. Develop and present strategies for personal, career and professional development within the performing arts industry.
3. Apply and analyze theatre traditions and current trends from a variety of historical and cultural contexts to enhance personal creativity and theatrical performance.
4. Investigate and articulate personal reasons for pursuing creative work in the theatre.
5. Complete all work in compliance with industry standards and policies and professional ethics.
6. Use entrepreneurial and project-planning skills to develop production and administrative aspects of professional theatre.
7. Perform vocal material – solo and choral – and execute staging and choreography as required by a theatrical performance.
8. Create and devise original works of theatre individually and collectively to perform in front of an audience.