Theatre is a place where people share stories and reflect on vital questions and social issues. As a maker and educator, you work with others and during the course you acquire the necessary skills, such as acting, design and theatre making.
During the course we challenge you, while you are investigating, to form your own identity as a creator. You do this in all kinds of different contexts, such as a neighbourhood or community, a school or a festival. In the first two years we provide the contexts, and in the third and fourth years you increasingly make your own choices. In this way, you develop into a theatre maker who knows what place they envisage for themselves in the broad field of theatre making. Throughout your course, you receive intensive study career counselling.
Year one: You start the course with an immersion in a theatre festival in Amsterdam. You see a lot of shows and talk about them. And you gain a deeper understanding of the concepts of space and time, and then experiment with them in groups. The theme of Contemporary Aesthetics in the first quarter is followed by the theme of Historical Aesthetics. You examine a historical source, link it to current events and create a performance based on that.
In the third quarter, as part of the theme of Artist Educator in Residence, you work at a primary school for eight weeks with a group of fellow students. The basis comprises a number of theoretical ingredients: the ideas of two great thinkers. What you create together depends on the process. So rather than performing a production someone else has come up with, together you create something new based on theory and practice. The theme in the fourth quarter is Individual Artistic Research. You have received a great deal of input in the past year, and the question now is: what do you want to make and what is your research? What is your fascination and how will you tackle it?
Year 2: The second year of Artisteducator in Theatre has the same themes as the first year, but with a different interpretation. As part of the theme of Contemporary Aesthetics, you create a performance with a community of untrained actors, for example a group of veterans or a group of people with a mental disability. This is about the question of how you can work with each other inclusively, on the basis of equality. Project WE video in collaboration with the Klare Taal theatre group.
In the second quarter, Historical Aesthetics, you learn more about three theatre makers and choose one of them to continue working on.
In the third quarter, the different contexts of the theatre business take centre stage. You work in a group for two weeks in three different settings, such as education, a theatre company or a socio-artistic context. For example, you set up a project in a deprived area, you learn about cultural entrepreneurship or design the programme of a school one-acter festival. In other words, you become acquainted with the entire scope of the field, helping you determine a direction for the third and fourth year.
The fourth quarter again centres on Individual Artistic Research. You deepen your own work and fascination in a theatre studio with excellent technical facilities. In both years, you receive study career counselling for two hours per week in a group of eight people.
The graduation phase starts in September of the third year. You start designing your future career by making choices in terms of modules, internships and your own research. In the final assessment (May year 4), you demonstrate this and show that you are ready to graduate. You influence the assessment in the 3rd and 4th years yourself. You assess yourself, you ask experts to write feedback on how you are doing. We do still give feedback on the content of your assignments, but your credits ECTS do not depend on them. You are called on to demonstrate ownership: you dare to look at yourself and love being independent.
The third year of the Artisteducator in Theatre bachelor's course in Arnhem begins with writing a bachelor's research plan, which outlines where you stand, what choices you want to make in the second half of your course and why. In the third and fourth years you produce at least one performance, conduct research and work on the skills and personal style you need in order to work with and teach groups.
You also do various internships, of which two are compulsory: a teaching internship and an interdisciplinary internship together with students from the Artisteducator in Dance and Fine Art & Design in Education courses. This internship can be done anywhere in the Netherlands, for example in an asylum seekers' centre or a prison, at a theatre company or in a museum. Besides these two internships, you can also choose to do internships within institutions focusing on art education, or a more in-depth internship abroad or an internship within which you explore your own research question in the professional field. In the fourth year, your own research culminates in an essay. That research can be linked to an internship.
In the fourth year, your own research culminates in an essay. That research can be linked to an internship.
There is also plenty of scope for your own input: we offer eight modules, from which you choose two. Examples of modules are ‘Activism and compassionate theatre’, ‘Ex nihilo’ (creating from scratch), ‘Biographical theatre making’ and ‘Fusion’ (experimenting and creating a performance with different cultural forms). The content of the modules changes annually. You can also choose to do an additional internship instead of a module.
All fourth-year students of the Artisteducator in Theatre course perform their graduation projects during the ArtEZ finals.