As a Live and Recorded Performance student, you will experience an exciting range of projects designed to develop skills, including: musical theatre, stage acting, choreography, movement for performers, acting for screen, audio acting, aerial circus, and other forms of dynamic performance.
There are regular opportunities throughout the course to perform in front of audiences and to be part of full-scale productions.
Each term you have a choice to work on either a ‘live’ performance such as a live theatre piece, or a ‘recorded’ project, such as choreographing and dancing in a music video.You will get the chance to explore diverse forms of live and recorded performance over three projects per year, where you could go from performing in a music video, to a Shakespeare play, to a piece of musical theatre.
Collaboration is a key focus of the course, and students are also encouraged to develop into ‘thinking’ performers. Both these collaborative and research skills are essential for a smooth transition into higher education, and continued growth as performers with successful careers.
You can choose to specialise in either Performance or Dance, or take the opportunity to combine both throughout the course. In the first year all students also study singing skills.
Develop your performance talents in a friendly and inspiring atmosphere.
This course provides students with a strong grounding in performing arts and introduces a broad range of topics that support progression to further study.
Our aim is to encourage you to develop a knowledge and understanding of performing arts, and to grow in confidence across a range of disciplines. Students will build upon existing skills, and learn new acting and dance techniques for rehearsals and performances – all within a highly creative arts college environment.
Our performing arts students benefit from the College’s partnerships and links to:
- Hay Festival
- Pentabus Theatre
- The Courtyard Centre for the Arts
- Dancefest
- Aerial Dance Hereford Performing Arts
Key Areas
Acting skills and techniques.
Employment opportunities and skills.
Dance skills and techniques.
Production roles and opportunities.
Musical theatre performance.
Studying Composition at Guildhall Artist Masters level prepares you for professional life as a composer. It allows you to explore and refine your individual artistic voice within the collaborative atmosphere of a busy, modern conservatoire, while also giving you the space for self-reflection. The MMus/MComp can also be studied as a purely electronic specialism.
Guildhall School offers some of the most stimulating and creative training for composers in the UK. Studying Composition at Guildhall Artist Masters level prepares you for professional life as a composer. It allows you to explore and refine your individual artistic voice within the collaborative atmosphere of a busy, modern conservatoire, while also giving you the space for self-reflection.
The programme centres around weekly one-to-one Principal Study lessons. You will be allocated to one of the Department’s distinguished Faculty of composers, who will guide your creative participation on core projects across the year. The outcomes of core projects are all workshopped, rehearsed, publicly performed and recorded. Weekly composition seminars and open sessions support technical, aesthetic and professional development, and a choice of elective modules support specific aspects of your development.
This programme is for advanced students with exceptional aptitude in their specialism, and strong professional and artistic ambitions. It provides specialist, professional training if you are looking to embark on a national and international career.
The Artist Diploma represents post-Masters progression, and is designed to meet the specialised needs and aspirations of outstanding performance students, and to support them with the competence and sensitivity required.
Get ready for an exhilarating and challenging journey to prepare you for life as an independent, creative professional actor.
You’ll be encouraged to take an independent and imaginative approach to the craft, as you build a full range of relevant movement, voice, musical and acting skills.
The skills you’ll learn will draw on the latest developments in the industry, enhanced by your teachers’ knowledge and experience and supported by the advanced performance technologies which we have in our cutting-edge facilities.
The Ensemble is at the heart of how we’ll train you. Drama is a collaborative art form and we place great emphasis on the individual’s responsibility to the group and the group’s responsibility to the individual. This creates an atmosphere of mutual respect where creativity can flourish.
You’ll gain confidence during your training, learning that an authentic and enthusiastic approach is the best preparation for a life in a dynamic profession. You’ll learn how to meet challenges head-on from the new knowledge and skills you’ll develop in your training.
In association with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
This Masters programme allows composers and writers to focus on how new opera is created, developed and performed. Part of an exciting partnership between Guildhall School and the Royal Opera House, the programme centres around the creation of a 25-minute chamber opera which is fully staged in Milton Court Studio Theatre.
The programme admits three composers and three writers each year. During an initial induction module, students pair up into composer-writer teams. Each team develops a short opera scene, before going on to create full chamber operas. Two smaller projects allow you to follow your own creative pathway: in poetry, prose, dramatic or film script (writers), and in vocal or instrumental/ electronic works (composers).
The programme focuses on the collaborative nature of opera making, and each composerwriter team is supported by collaborative mentoring. Students also take part in one-to-one tutorials, production seminars and creative development workshops.
Led by Julian Philips, Head of Composition, Stephen Plaice, Writer-in-Residence, and Laura Bowler, composition professor, teaching is enriched through regular seminars with visiting professionals from the opera world including conductors and directors, singers and instrumentalists, designers and stage managers.
The programme collaborates closely with Guildhall’s award-winning Opera Department, led by Dominic Wheeler, with Guildhall opera singers forming the cast for the chamber operas created by composer-writer teams.
Practical experience of opera during the year is hugely augmented by the programme’s association with the Royal Opera House, which provides opportunities to see productions in rehearsal and performance, and to meet and network with key resident and visiting practitioners.
We want you to be a multi-skilled practitioner able to work in all areas of sound to build a sustained career in the audio industry. This course develops your skills in recorded sound, live sound and post-production.
We teach you why as well as how, so that you have a strong theoretical base to draw on and help you be adaptable to change. You learn and practice using industry-standard equipment in our studios and performance spaces (24/7 access to our studios during term-time).
Through projects with students on performance and making performance possible courses, you develop essential interpersonal and collaborative skills.
The Masters in Music Therapy aims to develop students’ musicianship and personal potential, and equip them with the knowledge and skills to work as a registered music therapist.
On this programme, students gain experience working with adults and children alongside qualified music therapists on placements in a variety of settings including special and mainstream schools, and with people who experience:
- Mental health problems
- Dementia
- Learning disabilities
- School exclusion
- Communication delay
- Autism
- Acquired brain injury or stroke
- Social, emotional and behavioural difficulties
During the programme, students must undertake a minimum of 40 hours of individual personal therapy as a requirement from the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). This is an additional cost not covered by the tuition fees (funding support is available - see our Postgraduate Funding page for more information).
This Musical Direction course has a 1-year MA or 2-year MFA option, offering students a more in-depth training experience. The course is an intensive for skilled musicians with ambitions to work in music leadership roles within theatre and beyond.
We have a strong reputation in the industry for rigour and quality, and previous students on the course can be found working on a diverse range of musical theatre productions across the West End, UK and internationally. The course is suited to experienced pianists, accompanists and conductors who have worked with singers, actors and instrumentalists, or would like to develop their skills in this area.
Mountview has developed an internationally renowned reputation for its commitment to musical theatre. Our state-of-the-art facilities in South London and the network of industry professionals who contribute to the teaching provide the ideal springboard for a career in music direction.
COURSE CONTENT AND DELIVERY
Teaching and contact time vary at different times of the year and depending on assignments. Each student has a bespoke timetable typically receiving between 15 and 25 hours each week. These comprise of core components and cross-course classes combined with allocated roles on projects and productions.
Across the year students will attend classes and seminars with leading practitioners and industry specialists; receive individual tutorials; assist professional musical directors on in-house and public productions; and lead musically on selected projects.
Assessment is ongoing and based on work throughout the course, culminating in summative assessment points in the second and third terms.
For over 25 years Mountview has been internationally renowned for the quality of its musical theatre tuition and our alumni continue to influence and shape the industry.
Our intensive 1-year MA programme delivers focused, culturally engaged, practical performer training. The course enables graduates to confidently enter the industry, fully prepared with the skillset to assuredly navigate the demands of any performance space.
COURSE CONTENT AND DELIVERY
Students receive over 30 hours of direct teaching time each week, with a maximum of 17 students per class.
Over the first two terms you will undertake skills training split equally between the three essential musical theatre skills – acting, singing and dance – including one-to-one singing lessons and classes in acting for camera in term two. In each term, the skills work is then applied to performance projects. These projects include work on non-musical contemporary texts, and classic and contemporary book musicals.
There will be additional lectures and seminars on devising, autobiographical and solo performance, as well as on concepts such as intersectional feminist, post dramatic, queer and critical race theories, socio/political theatre practices and the performance of knowledge.
Through the first and second term, all students undertake the Creative Project, creating an original piece of theatre or film, performed at the end of term two. The Creative Project is supported and developed by one-to-one tutorials and influenced by the concepts discussed in the seminar/lecture programme.
