Hidden gems: acting programs - BFA or similar

I meant the rate at which grade land decent opportunities after college.

Grads

How many of these colleges make an effort to expose the grads to opportunities to make a living out of the skills they acquire in the school.

@drb1, you won’t find that number because it would be depressingly low! And since work is project based, it would only ever be a snapshot (like the typical "percentage of graduates employed in their field six months after graduation).

I think the best way to get at the information you are seeking is to see which schools provide agent showcases at the end of their program. Also many schools/theater depts. will publish lists of grads with notable jobs/bookings.

And finally I will throw in a “second” for LMU BA Theater
rolling admissions took so much of the pressure off of later auditions and acceptances, actually my DD loved it so much that she withdrew from other programs and auditions after she got home from her visit. She’s there and loves it.

@drb1 - you can get a GREAT gig right out of school - and then not get one again for 5 years. You can get 100 rejections and then get a lead in a movie. This isn’t like other careers.

I’ll put in a plug for my daughter’s school, the Hartt School. (Not really “hidden,” but it seems more talked about on the MT board.) Here’s all the good stuff:

  1. A "toolbox" approach to training, where you learn a lot of different acting techniques and methods and exercises instead of just one.
  2. Excellent movement training including Alexander Technique, Laban, Tai Chi, yoga, etc.
  3. Very experienced and dedicated faculty. The head of the program, Alan Rust, was previously on the theater faculty at UNCSA and SUNY Purchase. The Laban teacher wrote a BOOK on Laban. Several teachers are also professional directors or involved with theater companies, so you're forging industry connections too.
  4. Junior year, the acting students spend two months in London getting Shakespeare training.
  5. Tons of performance opportunities. The freshmen don't perform, but have crew assignments and stage management assignments. Starting sophomore year, each class does four plays a year with guaranteed casting, so they're in rehearsal every night, and the rehearsals are considered an integral part of their training. So they're guaranteed to be in multiple plays at the school and graduate with many roles on their resume.
  6. Professional opportunities: Hartt has a partnership with Hartford Stage, and the senior acting students get to perform in "A Christmas Carol" at Hartford Stage, and I believe they get EMC points from that too. The senior MT students perform at Goodspeed. They're also able to audition for other shows at Hartford Stage, Goodspeed, TheatreWorks of Hartford, Capitol Classics, and other local professional theaters. In addition, Alan Rust runs a summer stock theater in Cape Cod called the Monomoy Theatre, and students are able to audition for roles there, too. So lots of opportunities to build the professional resume before graduation.

Any questions, feel free to p.m. me!

Just a heads-up re Temple (and maybe they’ve gotten their act together in the meantime). My D visited there during spring break 2017 and liked it, and she submitted an application fall 2017. But she was told by a rep at a performing arts college fair that she could audition at Unifieds. It turned out that (at least in 2018) they didn’t hold auditions for actors at Unifieds, only auditions for MT. We reached out about trying to schedule an on-campus audition & got some conflicting answers about whether a pre-screen was needed and couldn’t find info about what they wanted or where/how to submit one. In the end, we weren’t able to work out a return trip to Philadelphia, but we also didn’t try that hard, partly because she had too many irons in the fire already, but also because the lack of organization scared us off a bit.

We are in the middle of this process, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I thought I would post now for parents of juniors who are just getting started building lists - which is where we were a year ago! The “hidden gem” programs that we have focused on are Penn State and Missouri State. Penn State has a great theater program generally, but their acting BFA is only a few years old. My son met a PSU rep at his high school (well known PA) college fair, and got very excited by their description of the program. Missouri State is not a brand-new program, but they have a new director, Joe Price, who used to head the very well-known Minnesota-Guthrie program. They brought him over less than a year ago and his mandate is to build a nationally-ranked department. My son knows him from his summer intensive, and believes for sure he will do it. Anyway - while there are no safeties when it comes to audition BFA schools, these are the closest we have on our list, and I can honestly say my son would be thrilled to end up going to either one.