‘We've started this new MA in acting with a firm emphasis on creating work and starting new companies to complete the five year trajectory of performance training at LIPA,’ says course leader Matt Wilde. ‘We offer a one-year foundation course, a three-year BA and now this MA.’
In practice, the inaugural year's first cohort of students are not LIPA graduates. ‘Most have worked for a while but want to come back into training in order to build new contacts and work in new ways,’ says Wilde, adding that he has students in their 50s and some international students. ‘That's great for forming companies and creating diverse new work. I feel very blessed because it's wonderful to be able to cast from such a wealth of experience’
Wilde hopes that the new course, which is run in collaboration with Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse (LEP) and validated by Liverpool John Moores University, reflects the current shift in drama training towards real connection with the business: ‘Good training now works very closely with the industry it feeds and we're well placed to mirror that. LEP is only 300m up the road.’
LIPA already has long had a strong commitment to encouraging its students to write, devise and form new companies, and has financially supported some graduates who embark on this path. The new MA takes that support further, requiring students to form companies and providing them with a grant of £1,000 per person to enable work to be professionally produced.
Application
Wilde and his colleagues are looking for people with ideas which can be developed and realised. Most will have done academic drama degrees in universities and now want intensive vocational training. In this case, says Wilde, the vocation isn't just passively ‘being an actor and waiting for the phone to ring,’ but being proactive and taking charge of a career.
Applications can be made now for the next cohort, with Wilde hoping to see numbers grow to around 26 places. Prospective students should apply directly to LIPA and admission is via audition and interview. Wilde is flexible about how this is managed, with video chat an option for applicants who live overseas or in a remote part of the UK.
Course content
The course runs for 12 months. Emphasis is on professional development and actor practice and performance with 12 to 15 contact hours per week, rising to full-time during rehearsal periods.
This year includes a production of the Kneehigh version of Tristan and Iseult in the autumn term and new work with LEP in the spring. The summer term features a devised production which will tour once the students have formed their companies.
‘How they do that is a very fluid, open choice’ says Wilde. ‘They might work as one group or split into subgroups. For example, there could be a student who writes a one-person piece for another to perform or they might work in groups of four to five. It depends entirely on how the work and the ideas take shape.’
The intention is that whatever form this work takes, it will have an afterlife – something which can be used to launch careers in producing touring shows.
Career prospects
‘Well nobody has actually completed this MA yet,’ says Wilde. ‘But we envisage graduates who will be versatile performers who go on to form companies within which they will also be able to take on other roles such as director, producer, script or screen writers, as well as doing their own marketing and administration.’ He adds, ‘you are likely to see them on stage, in film and TV and hear them in radio plays as well as on digital platforms and gaming’.
Notes for teachers
- Mark Featherstone-Witty continues as LIPA Founding Principal and Chief Executive and Paul McCartney takes an ongoing, active interest
- Housed in a renovated former grammar school attended by Paul McCartney and George Harrison, LIPA sits scenically below the grandiloquent Anglican Cathedral
- The LEP has a strong track record of promoting new writing and thinking innovatively in its two separate, distinctively different playing spaces
- Living costs are noticeably lower for students training in Liverpool than for their counterparts in central London.