The Academic Lives of Student Actors: Conservatoire Training as Degree-Level Study

Abstract

A case could, it is believed, be easily made out for the direct establishment of an acting school under the exclusive aegis of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. This is not recommended, out of deference to the view that the University should not be solely responsible for a course of training that includes some elements such as mime and dancing, or practical stage work that do not seem to be of academic character. -Morven Brown "Recommendations regarding suggested new courses in drama" (1958) Writing in 1958, the Dean of the School of Humanities at the newly rechristened University of New South Wales (UNSW) expressed a contemporary view that the training of creative arts practitioners had no place in an academic institution.1 He goes on to suggest that in this case the University could benefit from association with an acting school without having to host it within its walls. Professor Brown's submission to the Professorial Board continues: An alternative to direct University control-and one that is here recommended-is that the University collaborate with the [Australian] Elizabethan Theatre Trust in funding an Institute of Dramatic Art. The pattern of Institutes organically associated with Universities is already well accepted in Britain […] The Senior Lecturer in Dramatic Art [appointed by UNSW] could, if he [sic] were paid an additional appropriate allowance, act as Director of the Institute, that is as its executive officer. In his dual role he would associate the theatre school with the academic teaching of the University and particularly with the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. (Brown 1958)