Geared for individuals who want to conceive and perform their own solo and group performances, the program in Authorial Acting develops the knowledge, skills and capabilities needed to discover and develop personal themes and cultivate the expressive means for articulating them. Careful attention is given to fundamental dramatic principles, like play and improvisation, as well as the anthropological and philosophical aspects of creativity. Acting and performance are studied in a multidisciplinary manner as creative public behaviour.

The Authorial Acting Program at DAMU comes out of the humanist and dialogical traditions. It views performance first and foremost as creative public behaviour. We cultivate creativity of body, voice and of mind in real-time by exploring acting through the lenses of different disciplines – this includes theatre performance. Students are encouraged to go beyond traditional forms of theatre, crossing boundaries and drawing on personal experiences in fields like education, social work and psychology.

The Authorial Acting Program focuses on practical and theoretical explorations of the following questions:

• What are authorship and creativity and what does it mean to be an author, a creator?
• How does one discover and cultivate personal themes?
• How can I / we share these themes in a performance situation, with the self fully and authentically present?
• What sort of psychosomatic fitness does that require – and how can I study and develop it?
• What is the social, political, and pedagogical significance of our work?

Students pursue multidisciplinary studies, both practical and theoretical, rooted in a psychosomatic (psycho-physical) understanding of the individual (e.g., Stanislavski, M. Chekhov, Brook, Donnellan, Vyskočil, Zarrilli) and a philosophical foundation stemming from humanism, personalism, and the dialogical self (e.g., Buber, Frankl, Fromm, Hermans).