The Juilliard School - College Division - Drama Division - Programs of Study

Drama Division
Programs of Study
Actor Training

The Drama Division offers a four-year professional actor training program leading either to a Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree, with liberal arts requirements, or to a Diploma, without liberal arts requirements.

Juilliard acting students who are not already college graduates pursue the B.F.A. In addition to the drama-related studies, the four-year degree program requires 24 credits from Juilliard's Interdivisional Liberal Arts curriculum. Students who already have a baccalaureate degree usually choose the Diploma option, without liberal arts requirements. Either option requires four years of residency at Juilliard regardless of previous study elsewhere.

Each incoming class of 18 students moves as a group through the four years of training.

First Year

This is a year of preparation and discovery, beginning with immersion into a demanding Shakespeare play, with larger roles being shared by several students and the rehearsals being guided through discussion and improvisation, rather than directed in the formal sense.

Acting class aims to free students from self-consciousness, fear, and pretense, and to enhance their powers of concentration. From the first week, students also take classes in movement, voice, speech, and Alexander technique (which focuses on developing awareness of oneself in movement), in order to recognize and learn how to release excess tension and to change those habits that interfere with the free and centered use of the body.

After the Shakespeare project, a class in approaching a script examines two different plays to help students identify a play’s theme, structure, and character relationships. By discovering how to analyze a text and appreciate a whole play, the student should be better able to approach a specific role and to do useful research and homework for rehearsal.

In the second semester, improvisation with basic masks is added to the curriculum, as is an introduction to stage combat — armed and unarmed theatrical fighting — in which safe and effective performance techniques are learned.

Rehearsal projects continue with two realistic, contemporary plays, followed by a play that goes beyond contemporary realism and makes greater demands on the students’ imaginative resources and creativity.

Second Year

The second year expands on the courses of the first. In acting class and in play projects, dramatic interpretation focuses on discerning the inner world of a play and on learning to transform into a living character within it. Acting classes are augmented by work using character masks (with which the student explores changing his or her physical identity and voice to conform to the character suggested by looking into a mirror), and with classes in comedy techniques and singing. Movement class is a rigorous drill to increase stamina, develop physical coordination, coordinate movement with breath, attain uninhibited physical expression, and explore physical character transformations. Voice, speech, and Alexander technique classes continue.

Third Year

Acting class is designed to be an integration of the technical, imaginative, and personal discoveries of the preceding two years through scene work intended to meet the demands of heightened characterization and style. Play projects continue to be an integral part of the training. A one-semester course in stage makeup is introduced, and the movement training centers around jazz dance. Alexander technique, speech, and voice classes continue building on the first two years of training.

Fourth Year

The final year of training is dedicated to performance and to preparation for leaving school and entering the profession. In addition to rehearsing and performing in a season that includes seven plays, the graduating class — with guidance from members of the faculty — selects, rehearses, and presents a program of audition scenes for an invited audience of theatrical agents, managers, and other television and theater professionals, both in New York and Los Angeles, who are interested in new talent coming on the scene. These “Actor Presentations” are attended by more than 400 professionals who are involved in hiring or representing trained and talented actors.

Classes in auditioning techniques and in choosing and preparing audition material are introduced, including one for auditioning for the camera. Classes and individual coaching in voice, speech, movement, Alexander technique, and singing are offered to support whatever rehearsal work is being undertaken by the members of the graduating class.