Performance Creation (BFA)
Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA)
Why study Performance Creation?
Create original, contemporary performances. Learn to make audiences think, react and engage. Take a critical, experimental, and practical, approach to learning about how stories get performed and deepen your understanding of their power to enact social change. Develop skills to produce performance in a variety of spaces and situations, as you discover how to creatively respond to diverse social, historical and cultural contexts.
As part of developing your performance practice you’ll engage with a broad range of approaches to understanding the creation of performance through a variety of lenses and diverse practices including: Indigenous storytelling, gender & sexuality in performance, the avant-garde, puppetry, urbanism, and post-colonial critique. As an emerging performer creator, you will benefit from training that moves across disciplinary boundaries, and that will provide you with core foundational courses in theatre history, directing, playwriting, performance studies, and dramaturgy.
Program details
A Bachelor of Fine Arts degree takes a minimum of three or four years (90 – 120 credits) of full-time study, depending on your academic background.
Program options:
- Specialization in Performance Creation (60 credits)
This program is only available for Fall admission.
Minimum cut-off averages
- Quebec CEGEP: DEC
- High School: C+
- University Transfers (internal/external): C
- Bacc. français: 11
- International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma: 26
Course requirements for admission
None. You must meet Concordia’s minimum admission requirements.
Additional requirements for admission
- Audition video (Submission deadline: March 1)
- Letter of Intent
Following the review of your application, short-listed applicants will be contacted to schedule an interview via videoconference. It is your responsibility to book an interview.
Check program availability as late applications will continue to be accepted for certain programs for an undetermined amount of time.
Minimum cut-off averages should be used as indicators. The cut-off data may change depending on the applicant pool. Applicants who meet the stated minimum requirements are not guaranteed admission to these programs.
We consider complete applications year round and we give priority to applicants who apply by official deadlines. Late applications will be considered if places are still available for the fall term only.
| You've sent your application from: | Fall term deadline | Winter term deadline |
| Inside Canada | March 1 Certain programs have extended their deadlines. Please check program availability. |
N/A Admission to this program is only available for the Fall Term. |
| Outside Canada (International) |
February 1 | N/A |
We reserve the right to close admission to a program at any time after the official deadline without prior notice.
Performance Creation students begin by taking core theatre courses with all theatre students. As you progress and your skill base grows, you will take classes in specialty performance areas and advanced techniques.
Sample classes
- Playwriting
- Dramaturgy
- Directing
- Performance Studies
- Stage Management and Production
- Socially engaged and activist performance
You may also choose from courses that cover all practical aspects of theatre, including stage management, production, and dramaturgy.
See a complete list of current courses in the Undergraduate Calendar.
Either recently created or completely renovated, our performance spaces encourage creativity. You will rehearse in smart rooms that look out over the city, perform in theatres with beautiful acoustics and great sightlines, and build sets and props in incredible workshops. It’s hard to imagine what we can't do in these facilities:
- Multiple performance spaces, from the large, refurbished D.B. Clarke Theatre and Loyola’s F.C. Smith Auditorium, to the Cazalet Studio, our intimate black box space
- Four acting studios with sprung floors and contemporary projection and integrated sound systems (two also have lighting grids)
- Two design classrooms and a lighting lab
- A costume shop, plus costume storage space and a dye lab
- A fully equipped scene construction shop and prop storage
Visit our facilities page for more information on our studios, resources and venues.
Throughout your degree, you will participate in class projects, departmental productions, and student-led shows. You may also take advantage of professional and extracurricular opportunities where you might apply your talents. You could be involved in:
- Most theatre classes have performance elements, and acting students often audition for scenes in the Directing class
- Four main stage department shows
- Cabaret nights hosted by the Concordia Association of Students in Theatre (CAST)
- Short works theatre festival: as part of a Student Initiated Production Assignment (SIPA), five teams of students produce a 20 to 40 minute play
When is our next theatre performance? Visit our news and events page to find out.
Performance Creation graduates are well-positioned for graduate-level studies or further training leading to careers in a variety of disciplines including:
- Theatre arts
- Education
- Journalism
- Community work
- Writing, criticism, and publishing
