Elektra (2019). Photo: Daniella Toscano.
Application Information for the MFA Program in Acting
ATTENTION PERFORMING ARTISTS!
We are thrilled to announce that the Graduate Acting Area at UC San Diego will be auditioning this year for the school year beginning Fall of 2025 !! We welcome all artists who want to play, explore, and discover with us. We welcome artists who wish to join our astonishing cohorts in design, directing, playwrighting, and performance studies to collaborate, create, and dream. We want to support you, encourage you, mentor you, guide you, challenge you, and celebrate all that you are and the stories you are on fire to tell.
Auditions will take place in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco in January and February of 2025 . A virtual call-back week-end will happen in early March. See website for specifics. There will also be a webinar in December where you can learn more, meet faculty and students, and ask questions.
Details to come. For more questions contact:
Auditions will take place in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco in January and February of 2025 . A virtual call-back week-end will happen in early March. See website for specifics. There will also be a webinar in December where you can learn more, meet faculty and students, and ask questions.
Details to come. For more questions contact:
Cory Caswell – Graduate Program Coordinator – cpcaswell@ucsd.edu
Ursula Meyer – Head of Graduate Acting – umeyer@ucsd.edu
We look forward to meeting you!
Applications Are Now Open!
Submit your application before Wednesday, January 8th 2025.
Please see below for detailed application instructions.
Open House
Interested in learning more about the program? Watch a recording of the 2024 virtual open house that took place on December 12th to hear from faculty and current MFA students!
Application Materials
Please upload the following materials to the UC San Diego application portal.
- Transcripts or official copies of academic records from all post-secondary institutions attended
- A minimum of three letters of recommendation. Please provide the email address of each recommender.
- Statement of purpose
- 8X10 headshot
- Resume
Auditions
All applicants in the acting area are required to audition. These auditions take place in late January and early February in three cities across the country: New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Sign-up forms for our in-person auditions are linked below. You will be assessed a $65 audition fee upon sign-up.
If you are unable to do an in-person audition, please contact Head of Acting Ursula Meyer at umeyer@ucsd.edu to discuss potential options.
Audition Tour Dates and Information 2025
New York: Ripley-Grier Studio 17C
520 8th Ave FL16
New York, NY 10018
January 16-20, 2025
Click here for directions
New York Audition Registration
Chicago: the Hyatt Regency
151 East Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL 60601
January 28-29, 2025
Click here for directions
San Francisco: Studio A.C.T.
30 Grant Ave
San Francisco, CA 94108
February 1-2, 2025
Click here for directions
San Francisco Audition Registration
Callbacks
Virtual (Zoom)
February 28 - March 1, 2025
Preparing for Your Audition
Each audition will be scheduled for approximately 7 minutes. Although this time is limited, we hope to gain a clear impression of your range and imagination, the scope of your ability to bring a text to life, and the level of technical skills you have at your command. More importantly , we welcome your passion and your curiosity in what and how you present yourself and your work. This helps us in imagining your potential for growth in our program and beyond.
We ask that you present two audition pieces. These monologues should meet the following criteria: Each piece should be no longer that two minutes in length. At least one should be from a contemporary play and the other from a play with language challenges. It will be to your advantage if you choose clearly contrasting audition pieces that show us as much as possible your creative range. We also suggest that at least one piece be within your age range.
Attending your audition will be several members of the acting faculty. An information session and callbacks are conducted at the end of each day for those candidates we wish to see again. At that time, we may request that you present a third audition piece and sixteen bars of a song. We also may work with one or both of your original selections.
After the audition tour, we will invite roughly 16-20 finalists to come to La Jolla for a two day callback weekend. At that time, candidates will audition for the rest of the faculty , meet current students, participate in workshops and information sessions, and attend a performance.
You must bring the following to your audition
- 8X10 headshot with a resume on the reverse side (contact information should be included on your resume)
At the conclusion of the callback weekend, there will be a final selection process. We will then notify those actors we wish to admit to the acting program.
International Applicants
We celebrate our international students and welcome you to our audition process. As the majority of classwork and production assignments will be in English, we do require all applicants to demonstrate a proficiency in English.
International applicants are welcome to audition in person at any of the aforementioned locations; however, we will be accepting self-tapes from international students for the initial round of auditions. Self-tapes should submitted here by Wednesday, January 8, 2025. The materials should include a headshot, resume, two contrasting audition pieces and sixteen bars of a song.
We will inform candidates of their callback status by TBD 2025. Dates for initial Zoom callbacks are TBD. If you are invited to our callback weekend in TBD 2025 we would love to see you in person. However, if that is still prohibitive for you, we will consider a final online callback .
If you have questions about the application process or about the materials required of you, please e-mail at tdgradcoord@ucsd.edu