The course is designed for graduates who wish to undertake advanced studies to further their knowledge and widen their experience of acting in order to take up a professional acting career upon graduation. The course seeks to create independently minded performers and practitioners who are able to apply a variety of methodologies to their creative work. Its aim is to inculcate forward thinking practitioners able to create real employment opportunities for themselves, both in finding work and creating work. This laboratory programme provides opportunities for students to enhance their experience and understanding of acting by focusing on the repertoire of the British and European traditions. Students form an acting company and each exercise, workshop or production is designed to challenge the student actor and to progressively develop the imaginative, intellectual and creative skills required for acting. The delivery of the course is based on the conservatoire model which requires an intensive taught delivery of a minimum of thirty to forty hours per week over a minimum of thirty weeks per year. Its focus is practice-based learning through which the student is enabled to develop the requisite intellectual, imaginative and physical skills of the professional actor.