The Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film at Purchase College offers conservatory training in the master-apprentice tradition for a limited number of highly gifted students.With a faculty drawn from the ranks of the professional theatre and film worlds, your studies will be demanding and intensive. We offer incomparable professional training in: Acting, Film, Theatre Design/Technology, and Dramatic Writing. Each of the four Conservatory programs sustain a high level of expectation with an eye continually trained on the realities. Not many colleges can offer you this kind of undergraduate education. As one of five member schools in the Consortium of Professional Theatre Training Programs, Purchase is one of a handful of colleges in the world capable of training artists at this level. If you have the talent, drive, and commitment to succeed in theatre, film, and related media, we welcome your application.

Why Purchase?
Quality of program and faculty, of course, but also location. We are just 35 minutes from New York City, with easy access by train.

For aspiring theatre and media professionals, this is a fantastic place to be.

We are just one conservatory on a campus that boasts three professional performing arts conservatories, a critically acclaimed School of Art+Design, and a top-flight Liberal Arts and Sciences program. Purchase College offers you the camaraderie, ease, and intellectual variety of living on a 500-acre college campus where the arts take center stage.

Acting
With a total enrollment of just 70 matriculated students, the Acting Program provides a small and supportive, yet disciplined and demanding environment for aspiring actors. The actor's academic schedule is rigorous in every way. In a typical week you will work directly with faculty for 27 to 40 hours and spend a comparable amount of time in preparation for class. Classes typically begin at 8:00 in the morning, and rehearsal time might stretch until 11:00 at night.

Professional training, professional expectations
As a member of an acting company with professional standards, you will be subject to bi-semester review by the faculty. The review not only considers your coursework, but assesses your fitness for professional work and your artistic potential. Your first two years of study in the Conservatory are considered a trial period. Similarly, continuation into the third and fourth-year company is based on faculty evaluation of your work.

Film
The Film Program offers intimate and intensive training in all aspects of cinema, including film history and theory.

Be a multi-skilled filmmaker
The Conservatory knows that students who "make it" to Purchase will come with vastly different levels of experience and preparation in film. This is why our core program covers the full complement of skills in directing, cinematography, editing, production, scriptwrit ing, and film analysis.

The primary emphasis is on motion picture directing. At the end of the junior year, every student selects an emphasis on either fiction, documentary, or experimental film. And a few majors, with the approval of the faculty, may concentrate on cinematography or screenwriting.

Design/Technology
Work on productions right from the start
As a freshman in the Theatre Design/Technology Program, you will take part in a select, exploratory common program stressing fundamental coursework. You will also be assigned tasks on actual productions. At the end of freshman and sophomore years, your progress will be evaluated and you may be invited to continue your studies at the advanced level in one of the six Design/ Technology concentrations. You will then move into a highly structured sequential training with continued close mentoring and faculty evaluation.

With the five-theatre Performing Arts Center as your laboratory and a full season of actual productions on which to work, you will become a part of the professional theatre world right from the start. No other campus in America offers the depth and intensity, facilities or faculty you will find at Purchase College. Your technical and artistic skillls will flourish under the guidance of a faculty of working theatre professionals.

After the freshman year, the following concentrations are available:

* scenic design
* costume design
* lighting design
* costume technology
* stage management
* stage management/production management
* technical direction/production management

Dramatic Writing
Limited to approximately 20 talented freshmen per year, Dramatic Writing is an exciting program offered by the Conservatory of Theatre Arts & Film in collaboration with the School of Humanities. The Dramatic Writing Program is designed to train a new breed of versatile writers, educated in TV, stage, film, and emerging media, to take their place in the professional world. Dramatic Writing is a small, select program by design. Students enjoy small classes and the one-on-one attention of the faculty.

If you have the talent, vision, and creativity to be accepted in this program, you will follow a structured four-year program of core studies taught by top professional screenwriters and playwrights. These talented teachers share the belief that in order to write well, it is important to know what others have written and to be able to build on their work. Therefore, Dramatic Writing is a reading and viewing program, as well as a writing program. It includes electives in performing, directing, and non-dramatic forms of writing, as well as liberal, visual, and performing arts.

The required senior project will give you a chance to produce a work of professional caliber and be prepared to market your talents upon graduation.

The Performing Arts Center
The Performing Arts Center provides our students with a state-of-the-art laboratory in which to perfect their craft. The Center houses four superb theatres with performance spaces ranging in seating sizes from 200 to almost 1,400.

The Performing Arts Center supplements the educational experience with lectures, discussions, open rehearsals, workshops, and master classes with professional artists and companies.

Conservatory students also get hands-on training in The Center's sophisticated production support facilities - electrical, audio, paint, scene, costume, and prop shops.

For more information, please visit the Theatre Arts & Film web site.