Actors Studio Drama School

Master your craft

AT THE ACTORS STUDIO DRAMA SCHOOL

We’ll help explore your academic and professional opportunities with the MFA in Acting, Directing, or Playwriting.

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The Actors Studio Drama School prepares you for a career as an actor, director, or playwright over the course of three years. Our continuously evolving curriculum is guided by Constantin Stanislavski’s groundbreaking “system” as set forth in his three books, An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, and Creating a Role.

Whether you are an aspiring actor, director, or playwright, you will begin your three-year exploration by studying the actor’s craft and developing a shared language. In the first year you will be consumed with learning the methodology and language, as well as training in your craft. In the second year, you and your fellow MFA candidates will immerse yourselves in unique and specialized training. Working together as an ensemble—actors, directors and playwrights—in your third year, you will apply your knowledge and skills in a Repertory Season.

Take the Next Step

Learn more about how an MFA from the Actors Studio can transform your career.

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Top 9%
Top 9% of private US colleges that provide the best return on tuition investment —PayScale.com
#9
Most Represented Colleges on Broadway —Playbill, 2023
#1
Most Popular Master's Degree for Directing and Theatrical Production - Collegefactual.com

Unique aspects of the Actors Studio Drama School:

  • The Actors Studio Drama School is the only MFA program officially affiliated and supervised by the legendary Actors Studio
  • It is the only school that offers the authenticity, continuity and authority of the Stanislavski System and the Method
  • The curriculum has been designed and supervised by the leadership of the Actors Studio, including the Presidents of the Actors Studio, Ellen Burstyn, Alec Baldwin and Al Pacino
  • Our faculty members include major figures at the Actors Studio, many of them Moderators, Board Members and Associate Artistic Directors of the Actors Studio
  • All students — actors, directors, playwrights — train side-by-side as actors
  • All students participate in the Craft Seminars known to the world as the Ovation network television series “Inside the Actors Studio.”
  • In Friday Workshops the MFA candidates are exposed to different elements of the theater, such as script analysis, design, stage combat, directing, and auditioning for plays, musicals, film, and television
  • All students participate in an Observership Program at the Actors Studio
  • All MFA black-box studios for professional training are designed and equipped according to state-of-the-art standards
  • Located at prominent and easily reached campus in downtown New York City

Featured companies

Pace alumni go on to perform, write, and direct in major shows and productions.

TELEVISION

  • 30 Rock
  • Curb Your Enthusiasm
  • Law & Order
  • The Wire

 

COMMERCIALS

  • AT&T
  • Burger King
  • Febreeze
  • State Farm Insurance

 

FILM

  • A Serious Man
  • The Architect
  • School of Rock
  • The Place Beyond the Pines
  • Silver Linings Playbook

 

STAGE

  • Coram Boy (Broadway)
  • La Bohème (Broadway)
  • Oklahoma! (National tour)
  • Passing Strange (Off Broadway/Broadway)

 

PLAYWRITING

  • NYC Fringe Festival
  • Edinburgh Fringe Festival
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ONE OF MY FAVORITE ASSIGNMENTS, WHICH WAS DURING MY FIRST YEAR OF SCHOOL, WAS ANIMAL WORK AS PART OF THE STANISLAVSKI SYSTEM.

– KIZZMETT PRINGLE, CLASS OF 2020
Pace University

About Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

Dyson College at Pace University offers the resources and caliber of faculty that you would expect at a large university, while providing the close personal attention associated with a small college experience. Dyson currently has 1,155 enrolled graduate students in programs spanning the arts, humanities, and natural, social and health sciences. In small classes taught by caring faculty who are active practitioners in their fields, Dyson offers  innovative programs at convenient locations in New York City and Westchester.

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