Youth Company: Acting
Are you interested in acting? Ever wondered what training at drama school is like? Come and join our Youth Company: Acting.
Part of our Access and Participation work, this is a 10 month long drama course taking place on Saturday mornings that gives young people aged 16-20 the opportunity to experience actor training.
Regardless of your experience or background we want people who are passionate, curious and keen to learn. You will learn a range of acting techniques and skills that reflect our training. RADA's Youth Company: Acting creates a space for members to build on and develop their own skills and get creative. Working collaboratively with the Youth Company: Theatre Production this course ends with the opportunity to perform in RADA’s Jerwood Vanbrugh theatre.
If you are a disabled applicant please share as much information as you can about access requirements when completing the application form. This will enable us to provide additional support both during the audition workshops and across the course. If you have any further questions about accessibility, please email outreach@rada.ac.uk.
Sessions are led by RADA faculty and Youth Company Director Phil Sheppard with specialist workshops from other RADA tutors and guest tutors.
Applications to the RADA Youth Company 2023 are now closed.
For the Youth Company: Acting, all applicants must meet all of the below criteria:
- Be aged 16-20 at the start of the course on 8 October, 2022 (If you are 16 and in education, you must be in Year 12 or equivalent)
- Live in a London borough
- Currently attend a state school or have previously attended a state school if no longer in education
- Live in a household with a combined income of £43,000 or less
- Have no previous experience of Higher Education
The types of things you will explore:
- Acting techniques, theories and exercises
- Text work - approaches to working with modern and classical texts
- Voice - breath support, articulation, clarity
- Movement
- Devising and improvisation
- Alexander Technique
- Stage Combat
- Q&As and discussions with RADA teachers, students and practitioners
How do I apply?
Applications to the RADA Youth Company 2023 are now closed.
Please note we have a maximum audition capacity and may close applications early if we exceed this, so please apply early!
If you are disabled, we encourage you to share information about access requirements when completing the application form. This will enable us to provide additional support both during the selection workshops and across the course.
If you have any questions about accessibility, the course or would like to talk to a member of the Youth Company team then please email outreach@rada.ac.uk.
Youth Company Timetable
All applicants must attend the Youth Company: Acting sessions every Saturday during term time, for the full academic year.
- Autumn Term: Saturday 8 October – Saturday 10 December (10 weeks), 10am – 6pm
- Spring Term: Saturday 21 January – Saturday 25 March (10 weeks), 10am – 5pm
- Summer Term: Saturday 29 April – Saturday 22 July (13 weeks), 10am – 5pm
- Pre-production Week: Monday 24 July – Friday 29 July, 10am – 5pm everyday
- Production Week: Monday 31 July – Saturday 5 August, 10am – 5pm everyday
- Performances: Friday 4 August & Saturday 5 August 10am – 10pm
You might still be at school or college or already have left. It’s really about giving an opportunity to someone who might be interested in pursuing drama or thinking about actor training. This will give you a good grounding but also let you explore whether it’s the right thing for you.
Whatever your circumstances, we expect full commitment to the course: attending every week, on time and participating.
The RADA Youth Company is free for all participants.
Acting Company members will be selected from a series of practical audition workshops at RADA. These will take place between 15 September and 26 September 2022. These group workshops will be a chance for you to learn a little bit more about the course, meet the Youth Company team and take part in some acting games and activities.
As part of the group workshop audition, we would like you to prepare a 60 second speech. This could be a speech from a play, film, TV, book, short story, a poem, song or lyrics (remember it’s a speech so don’t sing or rap this), a newspaper or magazine article, a recipe, a historical document, a letter or something you’ve written yourself, anything that interests you. We may ask you about your choice of text.