BA (Hons) Acting

All undergraduate courses at AUB offer an optional placement year, to be taken between your second and third years of study.

If you’re unsure about this optional placement, you don’t need to decide now. Once you’re here and studying with us, the course team will discuss the placement options with you, so when the time comes, you can make a decision that’s right for you.

Students on BA (Hons) Acting have the chance to broaden their horizons through exciting exchange and international summer programmes. These opportunities allow you to study abroad at one of our brilliant partner institutions, experience different cultures, and enhance your academic journey.

You'll share all units through first year with your peers on BA (Hons) Acting for Screen.

Throughout the course, you'll focus on fundamental questions and approaches to acting, ensemble, autonomy, spontaneity, repetition, self and character, play and presence. This will be a process of experimentation as you build your own meaning and processes of working.

You'll work on the idea of being in the moment, heightened awareness, precision to detail, and working on the voice and language through dramatic texts. During the year, we also look at exploring vulnerability, openness, risk-taking in making visible what normally, in society, is invisible.

We also introduce you to collaborative, visceral and sensual practices that enhance your stamina, physicality and imagination. You'll play group games, learn how to work together as an ensemble, and have fun by making mistakes and improvising on the spot.

The Acting for Screen and Media unit will enhance your curiosity, sustaining and deepening your awareness of how texts and narratives move into recorded performance, through a range of creative development processes and rehearsals. You'll develop your understanding of how performance in different contexts (recorded or filmed) requires shifts in techniques and technologies.

In second year, you'll continue to learn alongside BA (Hons) Acting for Screen for the first term.

This year consists of more advanced work, concerned with aspects of dramatic structure and the implications of style for the actor. Building on key skills and concepts introduced at Level 4, you'll continue to expand your skills, knowledge and experience of voice and body work as a core spine through the level. As with first year, lessons in acting, movement, voice and singing run throughout the different units in this level.

The acting is developed to a more advanced level in the Shakespeare and Acting 3 units. With historical and contemporary texts and scores, you'll be further challenged to apply existing skills and knowledge with making and staging these works, as well as opening new opportunities to acquire new skills and sensibilities within workshop, rehearsal, and performance settings.

In the Acting 3 unit, we also introduce you to acting for camera through a Meisner or an equivalent technique. You'll also gain skills in acting for innovative technologies (motion capture) and develop your understanding of stage and screen fighting techniques.

From the second term, you'll begin developing stage and devising techniques by learning to create devised, physical and imaginative theatre shows as well as introduction to how to create their companies, and the touring industry. The unit is supported by learning the foundations of dramaturgy and making it a practical skill when devising. You'll then go on to being in your first production. The Staged Mini Production unit is designed to give you a first-hand experience of performing in front of the audience – an integral part of developing your confidence.

The Professional Practice and Research unit is shared part of the Bournemouth Film School (BFS) experience, with common aims and learning outcomes across all courses. You'll have the opportunity to choose from a multitude of different courses within BFS to enhance your curiosity and knowledge in a new field, or undertake a research to suit your specific discipline or focus. This unit gives you the chance to build on your knowledge and practical skills within a professional, industry-relevant environment, encouraging creativity and innovation.

Your final year enables you to extend the scope and depth of your exploration of the acting process, and test the working methods developed in Levels 4 and 5, with a range of creative challenges. At this level, you'll focus on public-facing performance or film recordings, working with a wide range of external screen, theatre and media practitioners, enhancing your skills of collaboration and working to tight professionalised deadlines.

As BA (Hons) Acting students, you'll work on a full-length, public-facing production, both as cast and crew, in collaboration with other BFS courses on AUB Productions. After that project, you'll also create your own ensemble piece (devised, scripted or new writing), which will be performed to the public and industry experts.

You'll collaborate with your BA (Hons) Acting for Screen peers during Graduate Showreels and Showcase and Professional Preparation units, which enable you to build a digital portfolio of work and further your understanding of audio and media work within the profession. You'll present your skills in front of industry agents in Showcase in London and prepare for professionally filmed showreels for the Spotlight platform.

This work is documented and forms an important aspect of the public-facing professional portfolio for each individual student.

In your final unit, you'll design and complete an independent research project on a topic of your choice. The research should be relevant to the subject specialism, but doesn't need to be restricted to acting alone.