Bachelor of Fine Arts (Acting)

Queensland University of Technology

About

You will undertake three years of dedicated training, developing your craft, and graduating with the skills to work in highly diversified sector with career pathways in screen, stage, and beyond.

You will begin from the first year, exploring your own creative identity and understanding of creative practice, as well as training in acting skills, including movement, voice, speech production, physical expressivity, character, acting methodologies, and script analysis.

As your course progresses you will continue to refine your acting skills, and your creative leadership skills, as well as having the option to include complementary studies across areas including drama, film, writing, media, and marketing.

These studies will increase your entrepreneurial knowledge, and provide greater flexibility of employment in a rapidly changing industry.

Your final year presents opportunities to work on collaborative projects, developing and demonstrating real world skills in working with other creative practitioners and showcasing these skills to the stage, screen, and emerging media industries you are about to graduate into.

You will graduate confident in your abilities as an actor, and as a creative leader working both independently and collaboratively to produce, promote, and generate audience excitement about your screen and stage performances, throughout the course of your career.

Structure

Domestic Students

Your course

To meet the course requirements of the Bachelor of Fine Arts (Acting), you must complete the following:

  • Two common units (KYB101 and KYB102) – 24 credit points
  • Acting major – 168 credit points
  • Complementary studies – 48 credit points from the Situated Creative Practice Extension plus 48 credit points chosen from a minor or unit options (electives). 

Year 1

  • begin developing and mastering the voice, movement, presence, representation, storytelling and dynamic physical transformation techniques that will underpin your work as an actor in screen and stage contexts
  • train in a range of acting styles, including both realistic acting styles driven by emotion-awareness, authenticity, and imagination, and comic acting styles driven by play, improvisation, and interaction with fellow actors and audience
  • explore approaches, methods, and techniques to harness your own unique expressive capabilities
  • investigate your creative identity, your desired future in the creative industries, and how you can open up new pathways for yourself as an actor in stage, screen, and newly emergent media contexts in this exciting and constantly evolving sector

Year 2

  • continue mastering your voice, movement, acting, and storytelling skills
  • apply your acting skills in a range of screen and stage rehearsal and production settings
  • develop the ability to work collaboratively with producers, directors, writers, and a range of other creatives to achieve a specific artistic vision, in a specific setting, for a specific audience
  • learn how to assess the quality of screen or stage performance works, and develop, write, and direct your own works
  • enhance your employability with complementary studies in drama, film, writing, media, marketing, or a range of other areas

Year 3

  • apply your acting skills, and your creative leadership skills, in professional standard stage, screen, or digital streaming sector projects
  • learn and practise self-tape and audition techniques
  • learn to promote, disseminate, and create positive perception of yourself and your work amongst agents, directors, producers, and other industry professionals, spectators, and the public at large
  • research your career path, including people, platforms, networks, and publics that will be critical in positioning you for success in your desired post-graduation path
  • showcase your skills to the stage, screen, and emerging media industries you are about to graduate into

International Students

Your course

​To meet the course requirements of the Bachelor of Fine Arts (Acting), you must complete the following:

  • Two common units (KYB101 and KYB102) – 24 credit points
  • Acting major – 168 credit points
  • Complementary studies – 48 credit points from the Situated Creative Practice Extension plus 48 credit points chosen from a minor or unit options (electives). 
Year 1 begin developing and mastering the voice, movement, presence, representation, storytelling and dynamic physical transformation techniques that will underpin your work as an actor in screen and stage contexts train in a range of acting styles, including both realistic acting styles driven by emotion-awareness, authenticity, and imagination, and comic acting styles driven by play, improvisation, and interaction with fellow actors and audience explore approaches, methods, and techniques to harness your own unique expressive capabilities investigate your creative identity, your desired future in the creative industries, and how you can open up new pathways for yourself as an actor in stage, screen, and newly emergent media contexts in this exciting and constantly evolving sector Year 2 continue mastering your voice, movement, acting, and storytelling skills apply your acting skills in a range of screen and stage rehearsal and production settings develop the ability to work collaboratively with producers, directors, writers, and a range of other creatives to achieve a specific artistic vision, in a specific setting, for a specific audience learn how to assess the quality of screen or stage performance works, and develop, write, and direct your own works enhance your employability with complementary studies in drama, film, writing, media, marketing, or a range of other areas Year 3 apply your acting skills, and your creative leadership skills, in professional standard stage, screen, or digital streaming sector projects learn and practise self-tape and audition techniques learn to promote, disseminate, and create positive perception of yourself and your work amongst agents, directors, producers, and other industry professionals, spectators, and the public at large research your career path, including people, platforms, networks, and publics that will be critical in positioning you for success in your desired post-graduation path showcase your skills to the stage, screen, and emerging media industries you are about to graduate into

Entry requirements

Assumed knowledge

Before you start this course, we assume you have sound knowledge of the subject/s listed below. If you don't have the subject knowledge, you can still apply for the course but we encourage you to undertake bridging studies to gain the knowledge:

  • English, or Literature, or English and Literature Extension, or English as an Additional Language (Units 3 & 4, C)

Advanced standing

If you have prior studies or work experience, you may be eligible for advanced standing (credit). You can apply for advanced standing once you've been accepted to QUT. If you're in your first semester of study, you must apply for advanced standing within 10 days of receiving your offer.

Deferment

Offers we made to school leavers in Semester 1, 2019

421912 Bachelor of Fine Arts (Acting)

Admission was based on additional entry requirements only.

You can find out more about your fellow students’ backgrounds with this course’s student profile.

Learning outcomes

Careers and outcomes(DOM,INT)

Graduates work nationally and internationally as actors for film, television and stage. They have won leading roles in national and state theatre companies, television series, mini-series and feature films. Notable graduates include:

  • Wayne Blair - Director of The Sapphires; writing team/director/actor in Redfern Now; The Last Time I Saw Michael Gregg; Blessed; Mullet; True West, Sydney Theatre Company; Jesus Hopped the A Train, Company B Belvoir; Othello, Bell Shakespeare; The Sapphires, Belvoir St Theatre; and Run Rabbit Run, Company B.
  • Gigi Edgley - Family Matters, Final Frontier, Last Train to Freo and Newcastle. Rescue: Special Ops, Starter Wife and Stingers
  • Gyton Grantley - Logie for best actor, Underbelly. Also CSI: New York, Fairly Legal, House Husbands. Films include Prime Mover, The Reef, Balibo and Beneath Hill 60. Stage: South Pacific. 
  • Tai Hara - Home and Away and Dancing with the Stars
  • Josh Helman - The Pacific, Animal Kingdom and Jack Reacher
  • Anna McGahan - Rake, Underbelly, House Husbands and ANZAC Girls.
  • Adrienne Pickering - The Reef, The Clinic, Final Call and Candy. ABC’s Rake, All Saints, Out of The Blue and Secrets and Lies. Stage work includes Ruben Guthrie, Company B Belvoir.
  • Alec Snow - Home and Away, lead singer for his band Interim.
  • Michael Dorman - Wonderland, Daybreakers and Wild Boys. The Secret Life of Us, Sea Patrol, Rescue: Special Ops and the ABC’s Serangoon Road.
  • Conrad Coleby - Sea Patrol, Home and Away, All Saints, Headland, Water Rats and Always Greener. Stage includes The Glass Menagerie, Queensland Theatre Company; South Pacific, The Club, Sydney Theatre Company.
  • Brenton Thwaites - SLIDE, Blue Lagoon, Maleficent and Titans.
  • Ruben Guthrie -  Pirates of the Caribbean
  • Sophie Dillman - Home and Away
  • Alison McGirr - Ladies in Black

 

Possible careers

  • Acting/Theatre/Drama Teacher
  • Actor
  • Artist
  • Casting Director/Agent
  • Festival Director
  • Film Composer
  • Film/Television Director
  • Film/Television Producer
  • Film/Television Scriptwriter
  • Playwright
  • Theatre Company Director
  • Theatre Director
  • Web Series Producer
  • Youth/Community Arts Facilitator

Institution