Theatre & Performance

Our Live Acts studio courses offer students a wide variety of experimental, interdisciplinary, topical, and formally specific techniques and concepts rooted in liveness as central to the medium of performance. Past topics: Ordinary Acts, Failure, Queer Acts, Persona Making. CA 151, 152, 251, 252.

Across these studio courses, the ‘body’ is examined and deployed as a primary material for devising contemporary performance. Past topics: Body Art, Endurance Art, Durational Performance, Butoh, Physical Theatre. CA 254, 255. 

With a focus on the experiential production of space in and through performance making, students research, experiment, and create original art works in response to specific environments. Past topics: site specificity, immersive forms, staged ecologies. CA 256, 356.

As two successive courses taken over one year, our Social studio courses provide upper level students with an introduction to a spectrum of creative strategies and practices that engage a wider public and consider political and social issues. Past topics: Collaboration, Participation, Social Practice, Activist Performance. CA 354, 355.

These hybrid studio-seminar courses offer students a variety of historical and theoretical topics related to the fields of theatre studies, performance studies, and contemporary art, with a specific focus on research-creation. Past topics: Histories and Theories of Avant Garde Performance, Between Theatre & Performance, The Postmodern Body, Postrdamatic Theatre. CA 257W, 357W.

A student-led, hands-on, laboratory for the creation of collaborative and public facing performances. CA 253.

Each year, a faculty member leads students through two courses of creative research as related to their unique artist practice.  The first serves as a pure research and creation period, and the second continues that research, then culminates in a public facing performance and/or event. CA 350, 450.

Over two consecutive courses, fourth year students review and develop their emergent performance practice into a final Capstone Project. By asking students to integrate research-creation methods the broad range of techniques from their interdisciplinary studios, this pair of courses provides a platform for final year students to critically and creatively articulate their individual methodologies for contemporary performance and create a public facing performance or event. The Capstone Projects are designed to help students develop a professional portfolio of creative work, and to reflect on broader issues of professionalization, before entering any number of creative fields and industries available to contemporary performance makers. CA 451, 452.

As a Theatre & Performance program housed within a contemporary art school—and as the only program of its kind in Canada—our curriculum emphasizes experimental performance making over traditional theatre or actor training. Through rigorous studio experimentation and live performance practice, our students gain the practical, technical, conceptual, and professional skills necessary to establish themselves as contemporary artists. By ‘performance makers,’ we mean artists who work with the primary materials of performance [time, space, body, text, movement, social relation] to create unique, aesthetic, and socially engaged live events. From start to finish—and guided by our faculty of interdisciplinary, working artists—our students are responsible for the research, creation, and poetic-critical reflection of their artworks. Past interdisciplinary work created by students have included devised, ensemble creations inspired by dramatic texts; socially engaged media interventions addressing political issues; movement based solo works inspired by the culinary arts; live-cartoon puppet shows mixing clown and punk; experimental drag comedy by invented artist-personas; and so much more. We invite the strange, the weird, and the unknown into our processes so that, collectively, we can carve out future paths for the study and practice of contemporary theatre and performance. While performance making at the SCA might include aspects of more traditional theatrical practice, our core curriculum draws from a diversity of disciplines and techniques, including performance art, social practice, contemporary dance, new media, sound art, visual art, and beyond. 

BFA graduates from the Theatre & Performance program have gone on to act in film and television; create new contemporary works of performance that have toured around the world; design commercial video games; release music records; publish experimental writing; produce national and international festivals; run not-for-profits; secure teaching positions in universities, colleges, high schools, and elementary schools; establish professional theatre companies—the list goes on and on. When you complete your degree in Theatre & Performance, you will be equipped with a skill set that allows for further study and/or immediate collaboration in the professional art world. Our pathways towards professionalization focus on what’s important to you and your creative trajectory; by the fourth-year in our program, you’ll have developed a professional, creative portfolio of work-to-date that will make you immediately competitive for opportunities post-graduation. Further, the skills gained through our curriculum are easily transferable to any number of outside professions as well: creative-critical thinking and problem solving, dynamic and ethical leadership, efficient management of complicated timetables and workflows; presence and confidence for public speaking; and so much more. Please see our Alumni Highlights below for a sense of what our graduates have accomplished post-graduation. 

Absolutely. The Theatre & Performance BFA is designed to provide students with opportunities to stage their own work as well as collaborate on productions with faculty and invited artists, both local and international. It’s also worth noting that ‘on stage’ could also mean a whole variety of performance types. ‘On stage’ in our program can mean the traditional arrangement of audiences in the dark and performers up under the lights; on stage can also mean work out in public places, museums and galleries, within local communities and neighborhoods, protest and activist spaces, filmed and digital spaces, and work out in nature. It is one of the aims of our program to expand what ‘on stage’ might mean and to explore the infinite possibilities of who, what, and where our audiences are. 

Being part of an interdisciplinary program means we encourage collaboration across all the disciplines at the SCA. Practically, this means many of our classes are also open to students from the Music, Visual Art, Music and Sound, Film and Art, Performance and Cinema Studies programs. As a Theatre & Performance major, you will have opportunities to make new works of performance with people with a variety of interests, skill sets, and histories. Contemporary performance is an ever expanding interdisciplinary field and we want to give you as many opportunities to experience that kind of work as possible so you can be a multifaceted artist upon graduation.

Yes! There are a number of scholarships, awards, and bursaries available to all students at the SCA. For more information, please visit:  

• Entrance Scholarships, Entrance Awards, and Entrance Bursaries
• Scholarships, Awards, Bursaries, Work-Study Program, and Loans