Peculiarities of acting education in the domestic artistic and educational process

Abstract

The article discusses the specifics of actors training in Ukraine in the context of the competency-based approach to education codified in the Bologna process and the new Ukrainian educational law. To answer their research questions, the authors analyze competencies for stage actors at the bachelor’s and master’s levels defined by three different Ukrainian institutions of higher education. The authors acknowledge the many benefits of the competency-based approach to education, including improved transparency and comparability of degrees, and increased student and teacher mobility, but also suggest it has its pitfalls. For actors training, the competency-based approach creates a problem of defining core competencies reflective of the specifics of actors training focused on memory, voice, movement, and speech, as well as differentiating between competencies at the bachelor’s and master’s levels. The authors find little difference between bachelor and master level competencies in the programs they analyze and ask if actors not pursuing a teaching career should be required to obtain a master’s degree to attain “complete higher education.” The authors bring up an important issue of preserving unique national actor schools formed by renowned stage masters as the core element of actor’s education. They also suggest festivals of actor schools as a way of learning approaches to actors training.