- Practical studio and rehearsal-based training in professional working conditions
- Small class sizes
- Established teaching team made up of experienced theatre professionals
- Regular opportunities to work with visiting actors and directors
- Core acting skills workshops exploring approaches to working with texts, building a character, improvisation and performing Shakespeare
- Vocal skills classes focusing on effective physical techniques for performance as well as vocal physiology, dialect and accents
- Specialist classes in singing technique, repertoire and musical theatre performance
- Movement skills classes including Alexander Technique and stage combat
- Training in the specialist techniques and requirements of acting for screen
- Roles in public performances selected from a wide and challenging repertoire
- Practical workshops to prepare students for professional auditions for theatre and TV
- Mentoring and support in the initiation, production and performance of an original piece of work
- London Performance Week
- Showcase presentations to an invited audience of agents, casting directors and potential employers in Cardiff, London and New York (for American students)

Gain practical experience in 11 production roles with our specialist training that opens up a diverse range of career paths in the entertainment industry.

This specialist programme offers you hands-on training in stage management, stagecraft, technical theatre, event production and event management.

It provides opportunities for you to gain practical experience in a variety of production roles within a working environment that closely reflects that of the professional theatre and its related industries.

You’ll start by learning all the core skills needed to work on productions. Training in stage management – which revolves around organising and coordinating a live performance – includes a series of practical sessions. These will deepen your knowledge and understanding of the roles of assistant stage manager (ASM) and deputy stage manager (DSM) and include projects in prop making and sourcing.

Your stagecraft sessions will explore the skills you need to mark out rehearsal rooms and stages, construct and fit-up basic scenery, and operate stage machinery such as hemp and counterweight flying systems. You’ll also gain technical knowledge of lighting, sound, video and electrical systems. Health and safety training is embedded throughout the course as well.

But it’s using your skills in a range of real-world experiences that forms the foundation of your training. Throughout your course, you’ll take part in 11 production placements – predominantly with the Richard Burton Company, our in-house theatre company – however, three of those could be within professional UK theatre production companies.

The MA Musical Directing pathway is designed to support the development of skills and creative thought for musicians with a passion for theatre. As a Masters student, you will study the musical landscape, engage in practice-based-research and explore your own potential as a contributor to the future of the art form.

The programme is closely linked with the industry and this ensures that you acquire the practical skills to support a sustained and varied career. Through specialised and focused conservatoire-level training, specific attention will be paid to:

- Keyboard skills
- Conducting skills
- Scoring and arranging techniques
- Vocal technique and repertoire coaching, Programming and Sound

These one-to-one classes are designed to build your skill and experience as a musical director in the varying areas relevant to the form. You will have the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects matched to your specific interests and goals. Projects could include:

- Musical Director, arranger and orchestrator of the RCS Christmas Concert
- Musical Director of our BA Musical Theatre Glasgow and London Showcases
- Musical Director on the development of new and commissioned work
- Assistant Musical Director across fully produced BA Musical Theatre and Actor Muso shows
- Musical Director of a Cabaret season, Musical Directing roles on a season of work produced for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Through intensive practical and performance-based training, this course enables you to develop the skills, knowledge and experience required to sustain a career in professional theatre and its related industries. The training develops students’ physical resources – voice and movement – enabling them to respond to the wide range of demands made upon the modern actor. Rather than adhering to any single philosophy of actor training, the course seeks to bring many influences to bear on your work, encouraging you to be able to make informed choices about various approaches.

First year modules introduce professional rehearsal practice and explore fundamental approaches to acting through daily classes and rehearsals. You will receive a thorough introduction to voice and text work, movement skills and singing. You will also begin to investigate the specific practices and demands of the film and television industry. Through Reflective Practice, you will build a toolkit for survival as an actor in industry.

Through second year modules, you will explore accent and dialect work, develop your individual song repertoire, explore physical theatre and learn a series of dance sequences. Performance-based projects introduce the world and language of Shakespeare, approaches to comedy, musical theatre and radio acting. Further training in acting for screen culminates in the realisation of short films. A collaboration project will give you the opportunity to work with musicians and create a piece of theatre that engages with the community.

In the third year, you will be given the opportunity to assimilate, develop and integrate the skills acquired in the first two years, through rehearsal and performance of a series of full-length plays under professional working conditions, as part of the Richard Burton Company. Each student will undertake five consecutive performance modules, encountering a variety of roles, styles and venues. One of the performances will be part of the RWCMD's NEW season. You’ll work with a professional writer, dramaturge, and director within the process of a commissioned play. Students will interrogate and workshop the writing over the course of the year before, entering an intensive five-week rehearsal process where the piece is rehearsed and staged. NEW season performances will take place in Cardiff before touring to a London venue.

The new Self-led module introduces you to the process of devising and creating your own work. In the first and second years, you will have the opportunity to perform your work as part of an internal festival. In the final year, you can continue to develop your work and realise this into a fully stage production which will run alongside the NEW season (available to four students).

Throughout the course, you will take part in a series of practical classes and seminars designed to orientate you towards the world of professional acting and offer strategies for finding employment, with particular emphasis on audition technique.

During the third year, you will perform in Actors Showcases in Cardiff and London to an invited audience of industry professionals, including agents and casting directors. North American students also have a US Showcase in New York City.

The BA Production Technology and Management programme is a very practical course that will see you take on industry-standard roles from the very start. With a timetable that is also reflective of industry practice, you will build the stamina and resilience to withstand a challenging yet rewarding career.

Production consists of both the BA Production Technology and Management and the BA Production Arts and Design programmes. Production students will work very closely with each other in the classroom and on RCS productions.

This is the only conservatoire-based technical theatre degree in Scotland. Through the programme we aim to produce production technicians, stage managers and lighting designers who can turn their hands to any related role, making them employable in a range of contexts, whilst also being specialists in career pathways, i.e. stage management, stage technology, sound design, sound engineering, lighting technology and lighting design.

We’ll help you to create your own pathway through the programme, focusing on your areas of interest. You will learn to work creatively, as an individual artist, as part of a production team and in collaboration with other students of all disciplines.

RCS is a major public performance venue with world-class facilities. The combination of professional venues, extensive workshops, construction spaces, design studios, and the latest stage and workshop technologies provide a fantastic learning environment.

We work closely with industry to ensure our curriculum is current, competitive, and of the highest professional standard, so you will gain all of the skills and knowledge needed for your future career. We have very close relationships with key Scottish national companies, such as Scottish Opera, the National Theatre of Scotland and Scottish Ballet as well as companies across Scotland, such as the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, Pitlochry Festival Theatre, the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, Blue Parrot Production and Events in Edinburgh and Warehouse Sound in Glasgow.

Further afield we have well-established relationships with national and international organisations such as the Association of British Theatre Technician (ABTT), the Association of Stage Pyrotechnicians (ASP) the Production Lighting and Sound Association (PLASA), United States Institute for Theatre Technology, Inc. (USITT), Cirque du Soleil, TAIT, Just FX and the National Theatre in London.

Our graduates will aspire to become the creative leaders and innovators of the future and will be encouraged to push accepted boundaries and create new standards of practice in the industry at large.

Become a multi-disciplinary artist with outstanding abilities in acting, singing, dance and music

The BA Musical Theatre programme is for exceptionally talented students who are dedicated to developing their skills in acting, singing, dance and music. We are looking for the next cohort of students who want to train with us alongside industry professionals, and who aspire towards a career in the competitive musical theatre industry.

Now more than ever, artists who can showcase musicianship as an integrated part of their acting, singing, and dancing are in demand both creatively and commercially.

This programme is distinctive in that it offers conservatoire-level tuition in acting, singing, dance and music. We want to work with the most talented and committed actors, so we ask that students are multi- disciplined in the performing arts.

Perform
Your education here will centre on performance and you will have numerous opportunities to perform on stage both within RCS and at external venues around Scotland. During your final year, you will participate in fully- produced musicals, including an actor-musician show, as well as perform in a final showcase. Our aim is that you will graduate from this programme as a confident, versatile artist ready to work in the profession.

Collaborate
RCS is the only conservatoire in Europe to offer programmes in dance, drama, music, production and film. We encourage collaboration between all art forms, therefore as a musical theatre student here, you could regularly work with your peers to create new and engaging work.

Opportunities for collaboration include Options modules and the annual Bridge Week festival, where students can come together from across the conservatoire to bid for project money to create new pieces of performance. You may also have the opportunity to collaborate and learn from industry professionals during your studies, benefiting from the Royal Conservatoire’s close relationships with Scotland’s national artistic companies.

Our graduates consistently gain industry representation and continue to work across the arts and entertainment sectors. Graduates can currently be seen performing in the West End, on Broadway, in national and international tours, with national companies, regional theatres, and in a variety of television and film projects.

MGA offers performers who have already completed a full-time training course but have realised that they are not adequately prepared to compete for work opportunities within the industry the opportunity to join current MGA third-year students on the degree courses and ‘top-up’ their training to the BA (Hons) qualification.

MGA currently offers three courses for students at this level:

- Musical Theatre
- Acting
- Dance for Commercial Performance

The three-year BA (Hons) degree in Musical Theatre is designed to provide individuals with the skills, knowledge, and creative ability to gain and maintain lasting careers as musical theatre professional performers.

This linked with our extensive industry contacts ensures our graduates are set to thrive in the Musical Theatre world.

At the MGA Academy of Performing Arts, we prepare our students for sustainable successful careers within the Musical Theatre industry through hands on, vocational based training.

Successful completion of a course can open doors to many amazing progression routes with previous graduates finding employment opportunities in areas including

- West End Musicals
- UK Touring Shows
- Cruise Contracts
- Rep Theatre companies
- Writing and Directing
- Film and TV
- International Performance Contracts
- Education
Students have also progressed onto Postgraduate study upon completion of this course

The Foundation Programme in Musical Theatre is designed for aspiring musical theatre artists who wish to develop their skills and techniques through a dedicated programme of practical and contextual study. It is an opportunity for students to access high-quality conservatoire training and may provide an entry route to further specialist/vocational training (e.g. undergraduate degree programmes within the conservatoire or wider higher education sectors, particularly within the UK) or a platform for a dedicated period of personal study.

Key Features:

- Individual singing lessons and group classes in acting, dance (ballet, tap and jazz), singing, voice and acting through song.
- Regular performance workshops and auditions preparation training, including the opportunity to have mock auditions.
- There will also be the chance to work with Music and Dance students during CoLab, our two-week festival of creativity and innovation.

After completing the programme, many students successfully move on to undergraduate study.

The BA (Hons) Musical Theatre Performance programme is designed to enable you to develop the skills, attributes and knowledge necessary for a career as a creative entrepreneur and artist (singer-actor-dancer) in the Musical Theatre industry.

Key Features:
- Support and guide your development in preparation for a career in the professional musical theatre industry
- Empower students to operate as creative entrepreneurs
- Foster the development of graduates able to make and perform musical theatre works that reflect, interrogate and/or enrich society
- Enable you to value, have confidence in, articulate and execute your own artistic choices
- Support your development as an independent learner able to recognise and realise your own intellectual, creative and practical potential
- Facilitate your learning from professional musical theatre practitioners
- Enable you to understand the range of creative roles within musical theatre and how these might inform future employability
- Nurture your collaborative and leadership skills.