Acting

Reach your potential on this practice-based course designed to build your creative skills including live performance, screen acting and motion capture.

Grow into a confident and versatile performer. Focus on fundamental acting skills, voice and movement, screen acting, and how to rehearse for a full production.

Work with experienced directors, experiment with Physical Theatre, learn about new performance technologies, and extend your experience with screen acting and classical text.

This course is recognised by Spotlight - as an ARU Acting student you'll be eligible for graduate support, including preferential rates for advertising on the industry-standard Spotlight website.

In your final year, our Immersive Performance module and Showcase will allow you to demonstrate your high-level skills in acting.

Train in professional-standard facilities including our professional 260 seater Mumford Theatre.

Gain experience with new technologies and alternative platforms to become a dynamic and responsive actor.

Develop your technical and production skills in specialist facilities for recorded and live performance.

Graduate with a professional CV, headshots and showreel.

Collaborate with other creative students, experienced tutors, community partners and industry professionals.

Get involved with Cambridge's many acting troupes and events.

Careers

Throughout your degree, you’ll develop creativity and technical competence in a range of acting media, including both live and recorded performance.

You’ll develop transferable skills such as research, teamwork, communication, problem solving, and resourcefulness – invaluable in all areas of the creative industries as well as other sectors.

You’ll also have opportunities to take part in collaborative work, like our HMS Belfast project with the Imperial War Museum, commemorating D-Day, and 60 Second Shakespeare with the Globe theatre, London.

By the time you graduate, you’ll have built up a professional portfolio of your acting projects, which will act as an enhanced CV for you to present to agents, employers and clients – whether you want to act in live performance, on screen, or even be a voice or motion-capture artist for games and other new media.

Teaching

In your first year, you’ll be introduced to effective working methodologies in both performance and production, producing a studio-based collaborative live performance, developing core physical and vocal skills and being introduced to acting for the camera.

In your second year, you’ll work with an experienced theatre director as a member of a production company, creating a theatre piece for live performance.

Finally, our Immersive Performance module, Showcase and Major Project will allow you to demonstrate your high-level skills in acting and focus specifically on your employability.

Year 1: Studio Performance; Voice and Movement; Introduction to Screen Acting; Fundamentals for Acting; Into ARU.
Year 2: Ruskin Module; Performance Project; Physical Theatre; Performance Technologies; Performing Shakespeare; Storytelling on Screen: Collaborative Project.
Year 3: Immersive Performance; Showcase; Major Project.

Modules are subject to change and availability.

You’ll show your progress through a variety of methods that reflect the skills and knowledge you’ll need as both a practitioner and critic, able to both make work and analyse it. These will test your ability, technique, creativity and production skills, and involve both collaborative practice and individual work.

They include: live or mediated performance; process in creating performance (e.g rehearsals, collaborative skills, and professional conduct); rationales for performance; technical production work; critical reflection; essays; portfolios; design plans (e.g. lighting, sound, costume, shooting scripts for video); reviews; practical demonstrations; workshop facilitation; and oral presentations / examinations.