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LOCATION
University Square Stratford
Location Fees and Funding
Here's the fees and funding information for each year of this course
Overview
You can apply for this course as an MA (1 year course) or an MFA (2 year course). The MFA takes one extra year and you can apply by choosing the MFA option when you click 'apply'.
The MA Acting for Stage and Screen is an innovative professional training in stage and screen acting.
Through practice-led learning and research alongside leading industry professionals, you will be immersed in developing and enhancing professional techniques in acting, text, voice, movement and performance for stage and screen.
Our goal is to develop flexible and versatile actor-entrepreneurs who are empowered through mastery of their craft across diverse mediums, spaces and platforms.
From initial idea through to performance or screening we will encourage and support you in finessing your craft and deepening understanding of your creative, collaboration, performance and research processes.
You will be supported to direct your development and research process to leverage your own personal creative toolkit of skills for a wide range of professional contexts.
What makes this course different
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 collaborator: e.g. presentation and narration tools, AR, media formats.
- Enhancing learning with technology:
- e.g. communication, networking, Augmented Reality (AR), 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, understanding pertaining to 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, 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
DOWNLOAD COURSE SPECIFICATIONS
This course is subject to validation. You can still apply for this course while it is being approved.
MODULES
- Core Modules
Interdisciplinary Intersections CloseInterdisciplinary Intersections
Developing Cross-Disciplinary Coherence
- To enable you to develop advanced understanding of interdisciplinary learning methodologies through research and applied practice
- To enable you to design and evaluate a methodological framework for interdisciplinary interaction
- To enable you to develop and evaluate opportunities for progression within interdisciplinary learning frameworks
- To enable you to develop reflexive capability in the transfer and leveraging of existing and newly acquired skills between domains of disciplinary expertise
- To model interdisciplinary collaboration across networks of practice and through the development of artefacts that contribute to a shared stock of meanings and concepts
Acting for Stage CloseActing 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 CloseActing 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
- Core Modules
Research Praxis CloseResearch Praxis
Applied Praxis and Research Methodologies Distributed Expertise: Distributed Learning
- To enable you to develop advanced understanding and critical awareness of seminal and emergent theories and practices, relative to the specific context of their learning innovation research
- To enable you to develop and apply effective research methodologies: propose, implement, and evaluate impact applying quantitative and qualitative approaches as appropriate
- To enable you to develop reflexive capability by evaluating you sphere of influence and impact, collaboration and research skills
- To enable you to develop and apply understanding and critical awareness of the distribution of expertise, organisational climate and culture of the context of their learning design and innovation projects at different levels of impact scale.
- To enable you to present research finding in a digital interactive research repository
Meta-Praxis CloseMeta-Praxis
Context and Student-specific live applied project
- To enable and facilitate you in designing, implementing, facilitating and leading a learning design and innovation project in your professional context.
- To enable you to develop and apply coherent frameworks for reflexive interdisciplinary learning
- To enable you to model transversal skills development and reflexive practice within a learning design and innovation project in your professional context.
- To enable you to conduct and present an evaluative case study, in the form of an 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 the student's workplace, placement context, or chosen community / professional setting.
The course focuses upon leading creative and collaborative projects that are designed and implemented by students, supported by teaching staff and industry mentors, to create impact for students and the publics, communities and collaborators with which they 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 and 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 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, further development in production and or industry.
HOW YOU'LL 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, University Square Stratford
WHO TEACHES THIS COURSE
The teaching team includes qualified academics, practitioners and industry experts as guest speakers. Full details of the academics will be provided in the student handbook and module guides.
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At the University of East London we are working on the some of the big issues that will define our future; from sustainable architecture and ethical AI, to health inequality and breaking down barriers in the creative industries.
Our students and academics are more critically engaged and socially conscious than ever before. Discover some of the positive changes our students, alumni and academics are making in the world.
Performing arts at UEL
At The University of East London we offer a range of postgraduate degrees in our Performing Arts department - designed to help you become a skilled, reflective practitioner in your chosen field.
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.