MFA Performance

The Master's of Fine Arts in Performance program at the University of Maryland is a three-year course of study designed for the innovative performing artist with professional theatre experience and artistic vision who wishes to build on her or his strengths and insights in a rigorous, creative and scholarly context. This program is for the entrepreneurial artist who wishes to write, direct, perform, and produce his or her own work.  It is for the performer who wishes to enhance her or his teaching artistry through strong mentorship and guidance.

The MFA in Performance Program embraces the global village of art and exposes how other cultural influences can mirror our specific humanity and heritage, our joys, sorrows, troubles and psyches. Such world performance styles range from a traditional Asian theatre, to puppetry, to stilt walking, to African dance, to Middle Eastern styles of vocal expression. The MFA in Performance embraces the individual artist and focuses on training performers to become not only confident, skilled and original voices and innovators in the world of performance, but also skilled teachers, capable of instruction at University, Conservatory, and Studio levels. This is a program pedagogically determined to enhance skills necessary to create your own performance; to train artist/scholars in World Performance, and in the physical, vocal, imaginative skills and rigors of performance and practice. We reflect the collage of humanity—not limited to that which is familiar, but steeped in the multicultural performance art of the world.