Top Performing Arts Universities In Brisbane, Australia

Australia has a number of thriving performing arts institutions with esteemed alumni working on Broadway, touring theatre, local theatre, TV and film! Below, BroadwayWorld rounds up the top performing arts schools in Brisbane. Check out the list below!

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Queensland University of Technology

So you want to be a passionate, hard-working actor with not just a career but a life as a practising artist? This is the kind of student QUT Acting welcomes. If your ambition is to build a career in film and television, and still develop as an artist on stage and elsewhere, then our course offers you the range of learning, training and performance opportunities you need. We understand the passionate drive you have for acting and your seriousness of purpose. This drive is shared by your fellow students and by your teachers who continue to pursue successful careers in film, television and live performance. The course is exhilarating, demanding and life changing, and is a full-time commitment physically, mentally and emotionally. Since film and television needs a diversity of young skilled actors, we welcome applications from aspiring actors of all backgrounds.

QUT Acting is Australia's leading degree in acting specialising in screen performance. It is highly regarded nationally for its graduates' readiness to work in film and television.

You will undertake three years of intensive training and performing, graduating as an employable film and stage actor. Your film shoots have professional film crews, and your performance seasons provide opportunities to work with professional directors and designers of national standing. Our specialised screen training, small group size and superb facilities, give QUT acting graduates a distinctive edge.

Their strong links with industry mean you will graduate with contacts, know-how and networking skills. On completion, your stage and screen work, ActingWorks, is performed in Sydney to invited audiences of Australia's leading agents and casting directors. Your showreel will be distributed nationally and internationally.

Learn more here.

Griffith University

Is musical theatre your calling? Do you love it enough to have a full day of rehearsals and performances, and get up next morning excited about doing it all over again?

Musical theatre training is in hot demand and Queensland Conservatorium is producing professionals of the highest calibre.

Our program is designed to guide and prepare talented students for life as a working artist in musical theatre. You'll be given high-level training in voice, acting, movement and dance. You'll learn to tell a story using your entire body, and you'll be taught to develop a broad range of styles.

Learn more here.

The University of Queensland

Whether your interest is in theatre-making or theatre-going, UQ's undergraduate and postgraduate Drama programs will help you understand the performances that you see and the performance that you may wish to make.

Our focus is theatre through time and across cultures, and UQ is the only place in Australia that offers this approach. At UQ, you will encounter the entire spectrum of theatre practice, from Antiquity to the present day, and most stops in between. We include contemporary performance taking place in Brisbane, now - beyond the limitations of conventional performance spaces. We look at theatre from around Australia and in many different countries across the world - but always in the context of "the big picture". Our staff includes not only full-time educators, but industry professionals, and writers with international reputations.

Undergraduate students enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree can enrol in a Drama Major or Extended Major. In second year and beyond, you can study a range of eras or theatrical movements, including European Theatre from the Renaissance to the French Revolution, Contemporary Drama, Playwrighting and Dramaturgy, Australian Drama, World Theatre, Greek and Roman Theatre, Twentieth Century Experimental Theatre, and Political Theatre and Performance for Social Change. There are also performance courses in which students develop a full-scale production over a semester, with the assistance of a director. Secondments to local theatre companies can be arranged for credit for students who wish to consider working in the theatre industry (through DRAM 3104), and we support students who wish to apply for international study exchanges from second year onwards.

Learn more here.

The Performing Arts Conservatory

Since its inception in 1993 as the Australian Stage Combat School (ASCS), evolving into the Actors Conservatory, the now renamed and expanded Australian Performing Arts Conservatory (APAC) has spent 27 years producing professional graduates who have gone on to successful careers across theatre, film and television.

The original offer of unaccredited, but sought-after, training in Acting eventually developed into a fully RTO accredited Advanced Diploma of Screen and Stage Acting, which was the first step towards the eventual goal of becoming a Higher Education provider. It also created the opportunity in 2007 to expand the range of vocational offerings to include Screen Production and Song & Dance.

Over this time, APAC flourished, bringing with it growth and stability which positioned APAC in 2013, to launch into pursuing its 25-year milestone goal of achieving Higher Education status.

Drawing upon the expertise and experience of a diverse range of highly qualified academic and professional specialists and teachers, APAC set about designing, developing, refining, and implementing its full-time intensive 2 year, Bachelor of Screen and Stage (BSS) degree - achieving TEQSA accreditation at the end of 2018, and delivering its first BSS classes from January 2019.

In December 2020, APAC celebrated the graduation of this inaugural full-time BSS cohort. These graduates will no doubt go on to join APAC's traditionally high-achieving alumni. Whilst not all of their names will immediately leap out as instantly recognisable household names, it is highly likely that you will have seen them, and their work, across a diverse range of national and international stage, film and television projects and productions. What all these APAC graduates have in common is that they are all high-achieving professional performing artists who have, and continue, to forge very successful national and international careers.

These graduates personify many professional success stories. What those success stories have in common, is that they have all emerged from APAC - whose mission is to teach, nurture, develop, mentor and graduate accomplished, articulate, confident, qualified, culturally aware, multi-skilled, employable, professional artists.

We at APAC are immensely proud of our graduates, their achievements, and their success.

Learn more here.

University of Canberra

The Bachelor of Acting and Performance is a conservatory-style training program that provides students with the skills and experience to engage professionally in the Performing Arts, as a stage and film actor, performing artist and performance maker.

Students will learn the craft of acting and performing through extensive performance skills training in acting, voice, and body. Supporting studies include screen & TV, music, singing, theatre history & theory, critical analysis, dramaturgy, writing for performance, performance-making, technical theatre, and professional practice.

Students will engage in four major performance projects over the course of their studies. These public productions provide students with the opportunity to integrate their skills into the preparation and performance of a diverse body of work.

In addition to preparing students for a career as working actors, the program equally encourages and supports students to pursue their own independent performance practice, and provides them with the motivation and practical skills to initiate this process.

Led by a team of leading performing arts practitioners who are currently engaged in the broader Australian and international performing arts industry, the program is very much inspired by and connected with real life. This level of drive, commitment and activity amongst the teaching staff fosters the same level of excitement and productivity amongst the student body. The program engages students in a thriving hub of creative practice and study.

Lean more here.

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