Theatre Performance, BFA

The performance program builds specific skills in production from a strong foundation of using the body as the artist’s instrument through acting styles, voice, and stage movement. Students choose from a range of courses, both introductory and advanced, from writing and dancing, to stage and screen.

To help students prepare for future employment or graduate school, all students are strongly encouraged to pursue practical experience through TH 490: Cooperative Education (Internship), as well as the production application courses, designed to put theory into practice as part of Central Theatre Ensemble’s regular on-campus season.

Admission Requirements
Admission to the program is by audition/interview only. Auditions/interviews begins with an online screening process that culminates in program admission being offered in early spring for the fall cohort.

See the Auditions Procedures Page www.cwu.edu/theatre/auditions.

Program Requirements
In addition to the department core courses requirements, Performance BFA candidates must maintain a cumulative GPA of 3.0 in Theatre Arts with a minimum grade of “B-” (2.7) in each course within the Performance core courses. 

Meeting this standard is reviewed as part of the annual jury.

Program Learner Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this program, students will be able to:

• Thoroughly understand and consistently exhibit high standards of professional conduct in stage and film work: respect for collaborators, teachers and supervisors; meticulous preparation of materials for audition, rehearsals and performances; responsible and professional behavior in all facets of auditioning, rehearsing, networking or performing as well as demonstrating the ability to function effectively as members of a collaborative team in the preparation and realization (implementation) of a public performance.
• Students’ physical work/body on stage and in exercises will be responsive to impulses, move with  variety, nuance, strength, flexibility, grace, with excellent posture; they will be interesting to watch, and have full commitment to physical impulses
• Student voices on stage and in exercises will be resonant, clearly articulated and properly executed, pleasant to listen to, truthful and appropriate to the character, action and style required of stage or film work–close to or at the level needed for professional work.
• Have working knowledge of IPA and familiarity with learning and using dialects in acting work.
• Students performances and performance exercises will consistently exhibit focus and concentration; their imaginations will be developed and honed, resulting in honest and believable acting with a strong sense of objective, point of view, action and subtext while listening and responding to partners, either imagined or real.
• Demonstrate proficiency in actor script analysis process, and will be able to articulate, demonstrate and practice beats, actions, through lines, points of view, given circumstances
• Under supervision, students will demonstrate accepted industry techniques for acting for film and television.
• Be familiar with the history and literature of theatre in the West, from ancient Greece to the present, and be able to identify playwrights, styles and theatre innovations from most of the major movements in Western theatre, including Shakespeare.
• Have a working familiarity with at least one non-Western or non-traditional theatrical form.  Students will be well versed in the acting concepts and vocabulary of Stanislavski, and have an understanding of the major acting schools since Stanislavski, including Strasberg, Adler, Meisner, Chekhov, Spolin and Suzuki.