Live Theatre Arts: Acting and Directing

The main accent of the Programme concept lies in allowing actors and director to create a joint theatre product, enabling the training of modern personnel for theatre in Georgia as well as creating a healthy artistic process, which will aim at setting up viable atmosphere and competitive platform in Georgian theatre space.

The pogramme aims at creating a workshop-based space in an active professional theatre that will enable the students to obtain new knowledge in one of the fields of performing arts (directing, acting); develop their own artistic vision; improve practical skills of co-authoring performances and prepare them for independent professional development in future as well as respond to the challenges of the modern theatre practice in Georgia as well as abroad.

The Programme is innovative. It does not have an analogue in the Georgian higher education space. It covers workshop and studio based teaching which unofficially existed in Georgian in the 70-ies and 80-ies of the 20th century in the workshop of celebrated Georgian Director Micheil Tumanishvili in the Theatre Insitute in Tbilisi (which later served as a platform for creating Film Actors Studio Theatre). The programme adopts the educational experience of world’s leading performing art schools and takes into an account experience of studio-based work in teaching directors and actors.

Responding to the challenges of the modern theatre, the Programme covers practical courses, that will enable the students try their forces in different forms and perspectives, learn by doing and develop skills that shall enable them to express various ideas or conceptions through varied means. Today, theatre art encompasses all major performing directions and by the synthesis of different forms creates a modern theatre production. Therefore, the Programme introduces many important courses – Installation and Performance, Space Design, Body as a Word, Documentary Theatre, etc. – that have never been taught in Georgian higher education space. Hence, the Programme builds a solid foundation for the students to go hand in hand with with modern theatre processes in the world and become a competitive creator in Georgia and beyond its borders.

To successfully complete the Programme the student has to accumulate 120 ECTS credits, roughly divided into 4 semesters. An important part of the Programme is formed by masterclasses which are not credited, yet are essencial to successful completion of studies. All students must stage or perform Master’s project performance after the completion of the core courses and electives.

The Programme is taught in Georgian. However, some of the masterclasses are offered by foreign professionals and are taught in English.