MFA Acting for Stage and Screen

Edinburgh Napier University

An unrivalled opportunity to develop your stage and screen acting skills in the world’s greatest festival city.

Overview

Our 2-year MFA is a unique vocational training that offers you a full run in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at the end of your first year and extensive screen acting work and showreel opportunities in your second year.

You will be training within a vibrant, interdisciplinary postgraduate community of film and theatre directors as well as screenwriters and playwrights.

Classes are delivered by staff with extensive industry experience and our programme is respected within the profession. Our graduates have been featured on Netflix, Starz, BBC, Amazon Prime, Channel 4, and ITV, as well as working at the Royal National Theatre, The Traverse, the Lyceum Theatre, Dundee Rep, Bard in the Botanics, London Regent’s Park Open Air theatre, and have been nominated for Olivier and Ian Charlson Awards.

Course details

The MFA Acting for Stage & Screen is a unique 2-year degree that will reflect the challenge for most working actors today, which is to work confidently both in stage and screen acting. This is a practice-based course, and it aims to prepare students for an industry in which creative problem solving, advanced practical skills, business acumen, teamworking, and self-generated work are critical. We hope to train students who will graduate with all these abilities and can thrive as freelance performing artists across a range of opportunities within the creative arts industries.

Your first year focuses on stage acting. Alongside taught classes, you will be working with MFA Directors and Playwrights to workshop, develop and hone an original piece for production at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

The second year begins with both stage and screen acting, and in the final two trimesters you will be working with MA Film Directors and Screenwriters to work on short films that will be entered into festivals around the world. You will also have the chance to work with prof

Careers

This course will give you the skills necessary to work in a variety of areas within the performing arts industry, as well as a wide range of transferable skills (confident communication, leadership, collaborative team working skills, and creative problem solving) that can take you into employment in many other fields.

Career opportunities include:

Stage and screen acting
Small-scale producing
Directing
Managing and launching small theatre companies
Theatre company management
Arts administration
Various roles in the entertainment industry which require initiative and creativity
Teaching