Why study here?

Whatever your discipline, your training is designed to be rigorous, allowing your skills to develop and for you to achieve your full potential. 

Whether you’re just starting to explore your talents through our Foundation Course in Acting, or enhancing your professional skills through a specialised postgraduate qualification, your training with us will be intensive, challenging and professionally-relevant. 

To help you reach your potential, your training will draw you out of your comfort zone within the context of our supportive environment. You will be expected to give your all and to meet demanding standards. As you do so, you will establish friendships and contacts that will serve you for the rest of your career. 

Our approach is contemporary, collaborative and focused on your individual development. You will learn in a small group; sometimes, through one-to-one tuition; always, from experienced and respected practitioners. Your assessments will be linked to your practical, personal and professional progress, and will give you a chance to identify your own strengths and development needs. 

Actors explore a great variety of performance methods, techniques and repertoire, working in our own theatre, professional venues and public spaces, in front of diverse audiences. Our Acting courses introduce you to stage, radio and screen techniques and to working with classical and contemporary texts, including musical theatre. At the end of your training, you’ll have the chance to demonstrate your talents to agents and casting directors, either in our Birmingham and London Showcases, or in the USA Showcases. 

Stage Managers are integral to the School, working on every internal and external production alongside our Production Department, with increasing responsibility. You will undertake at least one professional placement – recent destinations include London’s Royal Opera House and Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre – and create a final project to showcase your skills. 

Applied Theatre students are immediately immersed in one of the most exciting areas of contemporary theatre practice through frequent project work. During your training, you’ll work with a diverse range of clients – including Birmingham REP, West Midlands Police, the city’s Adoption and Fostering, and Women’s Aid services, and local primary schools – sometimes on a paid professional basis. 

Our unique MA Professional Voice Practice course offers intensive professional development, as do a range of short and summer courses.