About the Program

Every three years eight actors will be invited into the program based on artistic potential, demonstrated acting ability, vocal/physical flexibility, and respect for a collaborative ensemble engaged in the creative process. The program's goal is to foster inspired, informed, articulate, and versatile artist-actors

Actors become artists when their mastery of performance skills shapes and guides an original and personal point of view of the world, communicating this vision through the characters and compositions they create. Actors require expressive, sensitive voices, flexible, responsive bodies, and lively, agile imaginations. Actors must be ready and willing to transform into character with inventive consistency. The UVa Drama Department approach to training offers an actor a range and depth of classroom and on-stage experience to establish and maintain a fluid, integrated acting process. This approach challenges an actor to adapt and thrive under a variety of coaching and directing styles, design philosophies and performance conditions. It provides an actor with an advanced understanding of theater history, literature, and performance theory as tools for practical character research. It encourages an actor to produce original work vitally connected to community concerns.

The first year is devoted to basic skills acquisition. The emphasis is on truthfulness, simplicity, and freedom. Acting work focuses on impulse-to-action exercises, culminating in the study of relationship. The voice and movement studios concentrate on identifying and eliminating non-productive habits and developing performance strengths with year-long explorations in breath, sound production, speech, alignment, release and equilibrium.

The second year's work focuses on the demands of technical mastery, with an emphasis on precision, power, and expressiveness. Textual analysis and examination of various verse forms will be integrated with a study of Period Styles, Shakespeare, character mask work and stage combat.

Although career preparation is at the heart of all three years of study, the third year especially focuses on professional transition and is often tailored to the individual actor. A required thesis role, documented through a DVD narrative, is the culmination of program study.  In addition, opportunities exist to develop original pieces, initiate community outreach projects, and serve in professional internships. The third year also includes guidance in navigating the business of theatre, with faculty and guest artists creating a link to the profession.

The UVa M.F.A. actor is encouraged to practice theater as a collaborative art, looking for parallels to and connections with the work of the playwright, the director, the dramaturge, the designers, and the voice and movement coaches.

Application Process

Quick Facts

The Students
Every three years, a company of 19 graduate students is accepted into the program. In 2011-14 the graduate company will be comprised of:
• 2 Lighting Designers
• 2 Scenic Designers
• 3 Costume Designers
• 4 Technical Directors
• 8 Actors

There are also 80-100 undergraduate Drama majors and Drama and/or Dance minors.

Faculty/Staff
• 22 Faculty
• 6 Staff

Financial Package
Graduate students in the 2011-2014 cycle received the following financial package:
• $23,876 of annual full tuition remission for out of state students
• $17,600 annual 9 month Graduate Teaching Assistantship
• $2,151 annual health insurance coverage susidy

As part of this program, all students will be expected to work an equivalent of 20 hours per week each semester. Actors will be assigned in the following areas: teaching, assistant to faculty, publicity and promotion, or assistant business manager. Designers will be offered assistantships as technicians in the respective shops producing the main season with opportunities each term to assist area professors. Opportunities for designers to teach may be available on an individual basis.

Production Season
We produce 6 mainstage productions in each academic year in two theatres: The Culbreth Theatre (600 seat proscenium) and the Helms Theatre (200 seat black box). We also produce a series of short plays in our lab season in the Helms. In 2010 a ceremonial ground-breaking was held at the future site of the Ruth Caplin Theatre, a three hundred-seat, 20,500 square-foot “thrust stage” theater that will rise beside the Culbreth Theater. The Department of Drama is the summer home of Heritage Theatre Festival, a professional repertory theatre.

The University
The University of Virginia founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson is consistently the top-ranked public university in the nation. It is located in Charlottesville, Virginia, recently ranked by Frommer’s Cities Ranked and Rated as the best place to live in America. Charlottesville is located in the rolling hills of central Virginia 100 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.