Our BA Musical Theatre course will develop your professional and collaborative sensibilities through a rigorous programme of training. You’ll gain individual technical, critical and evaluative skills, with practical classes in a range of core disciplines.
On this course, your skills are continually developed through integration exercises, scene work, project rehearsals and productions of classic and contemporary musicals. Classes in dance and singing are highly-prioritised alongside acting classes and projects, which will enable you to become multi-skilled and highly versatile, ensuring your appeal to the industry and a flying start to your career.
We want to produce versatile and creative technicians, stage managers and designers capable of working across the whole performing arts sector.
In your first year, you get a thorough grounding in a range of production skills in lighting, sound, stage management and design and construction. From the second year onwards you can specialise in areas that include Stage Management, Lighting, AV, Sound or Set and Prop Construction or continue building a broad skill set. Your training is highly practical. You initially learn the ropes in our performance spaces and in addition to working on our acting shows, you can work on dance performances, music gigs and outside events.
We want to produce technically-strong, versatile dancers through training which is responsive to the trends and demands of professional dance.
Our course provides the technique, creativity, understanding and professional awareness to sustain a career as a professional. Classes cover a broad range of dance styles and complementary skills to make you an employable performer. We give you specific critique and guidance in your development, as well as offering the experience of being part of a company. You collaborate with students from other courses, giving you invaluable insight into the creative process from other perspectives and realities.
This course was previously titled BA/MArts Creative Technologies & Performance. Through this course, we want to facilitate innovative storytellers, filmmakers, creatives and technicians, who use new audio visual technologies to deliver exceptional content for film, tv, theatre, concert, and online audiences.
There are three pathways on this course:
- Film and TV Production
- Story, Script and Development
- Emerging Technology and Digital Performance
In your first year, you study all of the pathways and then from your second year you specialise (selecting a major and a minor from the pathways) to build the right set of multiple skills and knowledge to achieve a sustainable career. You can collaborate with other students (performers and those who make performance possible) to produce a portfolio of quality outputs, whether that’s films, animations, live or recorded performances or scripts. Your studies are underpinned by essential professional skills such as project management, financial planning and team work. You can either undertake this programme as a three-year BA or as a four-year integrated Masters.
We want you to be able to create meaningful drama and theatre for, with and by different communities.
Recognising that theatre can be more than entertainment, you focus on the potential of drama to educate and bring about social change. You develop core skills as a theatre practitioner, while gaining practical experience of working with people from diverse backgrounds and understanding the social issues that affect them. You leave as a confident and innovative facilitator and director with the knowledge and skills to work across the spectrum of applied theatre and community drama.
We want you to be a versatile, creative and innovative actor, capable of creating your own opportunities.
We offer training that prepares actors for rehearsal, performance, production, interdisciplinary creation and industry engagement. Working in challenging scenarios with traditional and innovative practitioner approaches, you expand your psychological and physical processes to hone your acting methodology. You experience classic and contemporary works, alongside commissioned new writing, giving you the chance to bring characters to life for the first time.
You collaborate with external professionals and students from other disciplines to realise full, professional-scale productions. You also develop self-employment, enterprise and interpersonal skills.
Validated by the University of Portsmouth
This innovative, one-year programme has been designed to enable committed performers to extend their understanding of musical theatre production. The course offers students and practitioners the opportunity to explore aspects of musical theatre not usually addressed in vocational training and provides access to further HE study and enhanced employment opportunity when considering career progression.
The course programme is flexible and adaptable and has been designed to accommodate professional working patterns. Following a two-day Induction at LTA’s Performing Arts Centre, students meet with tutors on one Sunday a month at a Campus Study Day (CSD) for a day of workshops, seminars, lectures and one-to-one tutorials. A comprehensive, online tutorial system ensures students receive full support and guidance from Personal tutors as they work on written research projects in the periods between CSDs.
Running from September to May each year, the course comprises three units: Research and Development in Musical Theatre Practice; Critical Analysis of Musical Theatre in Production and Production in Musical Theatre Practice.
Much of your work on the programme will be devoted to vocal and physical training, to the exploration of a range of techniques for creating and developing character and to working responsively within the space.
The modern actor is not a puppet who regurgitates words and movements for an audience, but a creative artist who uses their inner resources to create truthful fictions and constantly seeks new ways to communicate. Part of the programme will teach you to be original and individual in your work, to reinvent old techniques and to develop new ones.
Italia Conti's BA (Hons) Acting Programme does not seek to mould actors to any one method or system of Acting, rather, it makes available to its students a wide range of ideas and training methods, so that each student can construct a personal ‘tool box’ of methods of working.
The programme aims to produce versatile performers who can work in as wide a range of styles and media as possible.
The programme has clear theories about training and performance and upholds philosophies about the role of Theatre in society which permeates the teaching.
Training to be a professional performer in Musical Theatre requires many things:
- Dedication and determination
- Skills in Acting, Singing and Dancing
- The ability to think, to research, to analyse and to critique your own work
- Bravery: emotional and physical
That said, training to be a professional Musical Theatre performer is one of the most exciting and rewarding journeys that you will ever take and, if you want to take that journey, then we believe that there is nowhere better to take it, than here at Italia Conti.
There is a reason why Italia Conti is one of the most recognised names in performing arts training. For over a century we have helped students to fulfil their potential as performers and as people and to work at the very highest level in every aspect of the performing arts industry. We provide a programme of training that takes account of industry needs and current teaching and learning trends.
Italia Conti graduates can be seen on stage and screen in the UK and internationally. We have graduates working in the West End and on Broadway in musicals and in plays, in national and international tours, in cabarets and on cruise ships. We have graduates working in Film and in Television. We have produced some of the UK’s top recording artists - solo artists and band members.
Italia Conti has a proven track record of nurturing talent at the very highest level. Italia Conti will help you to be the best version of you that you can be.
Let’s prepare you to step into the performing arts industry.
Actively create, make and perform your own work, as well as collaborate with students from other courses across the arts school – these are all things you will get to do whilst in the process of improving and building your techniques and skills to a high standard on our Performing Arts course.
The practical nature of the course ensures that you will be on your feet, doing what you love and working on live performances in theatre, site-specific venues, and festivals. You will be given recorded performance experience too, as you create films, audio dramas, animations, as well as immersive and multi-media events.
Your learning journey with us will be unique to you. Our small group sizes and high contact hours mean that you will be mentored by our experienced tutors to become the creative professional you want to be.
You may graduate to become a performer, actor (for stage or screen), professional dancer or physical actor, writer, director, choreographer, deviser, applied theatre practitioner, film-maker or digital artist. Or you may decide to go into postgraduate study or work in education, marketing, creative administration, or run your own company.
As part of your learning journey, you will have the opportunity to undertake work placements as well as work in multiple collaborations across other disciplines and with external industry professionals, giving you the ideal opportunity to meet and network with potential future collaborators or employers.
