Acting I

Course Description

Acting I is an introduction to the process of acting designed for students with some prior experience on stage. UWF states that work is directed toward bringing a character to life on the stage and communicating this life and relationships with others to an audience.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, TPP is the Theatre: Performance prefix. The University of West Florida publishes this at 3 semester hours through the Department of Theatre, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities.

⚠⚠ Note the qualifying phrase: "designed for students with some prior experience on stage." This is the distinction between this course and TPP2100 Acting for Non-majors, whose description is otherwise nearly identical but carries no such expectation. If you have not acted before, TPP2100 is very likely the right course — and it is worth asking the Department of Theatre rather than guessing, because the two are easy to confuse.

⚠ This guide exists because the statewide inventory carries this number with a C suffix and UWF publishes it without one. Both are studio-format courses; the suffix difference is a filing decision. See the note on arts suffixes below.

Acting is a craft with a technique, which surprises people who assume it is either innate talent or pretending. It is neither. The work is attention, action, listening and specificity, and it is trainable in the way that any physical skill is trainable.

⚠ It is also the most immediately exposing course most students will take, and that is worth stating rather than glossing. You will work in front of people in week one. Read the note below on what the course asks of you before you register.

This course gates the sequence: UWF publishes TPP3155 Acting II with TPP2110 as its prerequisite, leading to TPP4113 Acting III. The theatre major is sequence-bound and frequently offered in one term only, so a missed course can cost a year.

⚠ Why this guide exists under this number

Many Florida institutions publish this number with a C suffix, marking a combined lecture-and-laboratory course. UWF publishes it with no suffix at all, though the format is studio work in both cases — see the note on arts suffixes below. ⚠ SCNS equivalency does not cross suffixes, so transfer between the two forms is evaluated by hand. Carry a syllabus in either direction.

⚠ The contact-hour figure is derived — the University of West Florida publishes none

UWF's catalog publishes a credit value in semester hours, the college and department, prerequisites, repeat limits and fee notices. It does not publish contact hours or terms of offering for any course. Every contact-hour value in a UWF guide in this repository is derived. ⚠⚠ This is a performance studio course, and although UWF publishes no suffix on it the format is not a lecture. Acting and movement courses meet as supervised studio work, conventionally above the lecture rate and below the laboratory rate. The figure records the studio convention of 60 contact hours for 3 semester hours. ⚠ Rehearsal, performance and outside preparation are additional and are frequently the larger commitment. Confirm the meeting schedule with the department.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe the actor's process and the demands of the discipline.
• Apply relaxation and physical preparation before working.
• Use the voice with adequate support, clarity, and audibility.
• Use the body expressively and with awareness of physical habit.
• Analyse a script for given circumstances, action, and relationship.
• Identify a character's objective and the obstacles to it.
• Play an action rather than portraying an emotion.
• Make specific choices and commit to them fully.
• Listen and respond truthfully to a scene partner.
• Work moment to moment rather than to a predetermined result.
• Memorise text accurately and hold it under performance conditions.
• Rehearse productively with a partner outside class.
• Apply stage vocabulary, geography, and basic blocking conventions.
• Take and apply direction.
• Perform a scene or monologue before an audience.
• Sustain a character across a scene.
• Give and receive critique constructively and without defensiveness.
• Reflect on one's own work and identify what to change.
• Describe professional discipline, punctuality, and ensemble responsibility.
• Describe consent, boundaries, and safe practice in physical and intimate staging.

Optional Outcomes

• Perform or exhibit work publicly.
• Give and receive critique constructively.
• Build a portfolio, reel, or repertoire list for audition or application.
• Relate the work to its historical and cultural context.
• Describe the professional practices of the field.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• The actor's process
• Relaxation and physical preparation
• Vocal support and clarity
• Physical expressiveness and habit
• Script analysis: given circumstances
• Objectives and obstacles
• Playing action rather than emotion
• Specificity and commitment
• Listening and responding
• Working moment to moment
• Memorisation under pressure
• Productive partner rehearsal
• Stage vocabulary and blocking
• Taking direction
• Scene and monologue performance
• Sustaining character
• Critique, given and received
• Self-reflection
• Professional discipline and ensemble
• Consent and safe practice

Optional Topics

• Public performance or exhibition
• Critique practice
• Portfolio, reel, or repertoire development
• Historical and cultural context
• Professional practice in the field

Resources & Tools

• The text the instructor assigns — Hagen's Respect for Acting and A Challenge for the Actor, Stanislavski's An Actor Prepares, and Bruder's A Practical Handbook for the Actor are the ones most used. UWF names Hagen and Stanislavski explicitly in the TPP3155 entry, so they are the house tradition here.
• Plays — a great many of them, read whole. ⚠ Actors who have read widely audition better, because they know what exists and what suits them. Project Gutenberg and the UWF library are free, and the library carries current published playtexts the public domain does not.
• Live theatre, as much as you can get to — UWF productions are cheap or free to students, and watching actors solve problems is a distinct kind of learning from doing it.
• A recording device — free on any phone; uncomfortable and effective. You do not perceive your own habits accurately from the inside.
• A rehearsal space and a committed partner — free; scene work assigned in class is rehearsed outside it, and a partner who does not turn up is the commonest reason a scene fails. Agree a schedule in the first week.
• A monologue book and an audition notebook — start collecting pieces now. ⚠ Every actor needs monologues ready at short notice, and assembling them under deadline produces bad choices.
• A UWF librarian and the library's arts collections — included in enrolment; scores, recordings, image and film databases are subscriptions a student already has, and most never find out.

Career Pathways

• Actor (SOC 27-2011) — ⚠ overwhelmingly freelance, project-based and competitive, with long gaps between engagements. Nearly everyone who works in this field assembles income from several sources, and knowing that at the start is more useful than learning it later.
• Theatre educator and teaching artist — K-12 teaching requires Florida teacher certification; teaching-artist and residency work does not and is a real market.
• Director, stage manager, and production roles — stage management in particular is consistently in demand and less crowded than performance.
• Voice, audiobook, and commercial voice work — a growing market that draws directly on vocal training.
• Theme park and cruise line performance — ⚠ Florida is one of the largest live-performance employers in the world through Orlando's parks and the cruise industry out of Miami, Port Canaveral and Tampa. These are salaried, contracted performance jobs with benefits, and they audition regularly.
• Corporate and applied theatre — training, simulation, standardised patient work in medical education, and communication coaching. UWF publishes TPP1200C Healthcare Theater, which is exactly this.
• Adjacent professional work — the training in presence, voice, listening and reading people transfers directly into sales, law, teaching, ministry, therapy and management. This is not a consolation prize; it is a genuine and common outcome.
• ⚠ Florida context: the parks and cruise lines, regional and professional theatres across the state, film and television production, and a substantial community and educational theatre sector.

Special Information

⚠⚠⚠ What an acting class asks of you, stated plainly

• You will work in front of other people from the first week, be watched closely, and be critiqued. There is no version of this course that avoids that, and a student who is not prepared for it should know before registering.
• ⚠ The discomfort is the mechanism, not a side effect. Acting requires accessible emotional range and dropped self-protection, and that is genuinely exposing. Nearly everyone finds it uncomfortable at first and nearly everyone finds the discomfort recedes.
• ⚠⚠ Acting training is not therapy and should not be used as it. Good training works on craft — attention, action, listening — not on excavating a student's personal history. An instructor pressing you to use private trauma as material is not applying current best practice, and you are entitled to decline. UWF Counseling and Psychological Services is free to students if the work stirs something up, which it sometimes does.
• Consent and boundaries apply to physical and intimate staging. Contemporary practice uses intimacy direction and choreographed, rehearsed, repeatable staging with explicit consent for anything involving touch, closeness or violence. ⚠ You may decline physical contact and you may withdraw consent at any point, including after agreeing to it. Say so early and directly.
• Attendance rules are strict and the reason is structural: your absence stops your scene partner working. This is the most common way students damage their standing in a theatre programme.
• Punctuality and preparation are assessed as professional behaviour, not merely as courtesy — because in this industry a reputation for either forms fast and travels.

⚠⚠ The single most useful idea in a first acting course

• Play an action, not an emotion. Trying to feel sad produces indicating; trying to get something from your partner produces behaviour that reads as truthful. Emotion is a by-product of pursuit, not a target.
• ⚠ Specificity beats intensity. A precise, small, concrete choice reads better than a large vague one, every time.
• Listening is the whole job and it is the hardest part. Most beginning actors wait for their cue rather than hearing what was said. The work changes the moment that changes.
• Your scene partner is the subject of your attention, not the audience and not yourself. Almost every note a beginner receives is a version of this.

⚠⚠ TPP2110 or TPP2100? Read this before registering

• UWF publishes both, with descriptions that are nearly identical apart from one phrase. TPP2110 Acting I is "designed for students with some prior experience on stage." TPP2100 Acting for Non-majors carries no such expectation.
• ⚠ Neither publishes a prerequisite, so nothing in the registration system will stop you choosing the wrong one.
• The practical rule: if you intend to major or minor in theatre, take TPP2110 — it is the one that opens TPP3155 Acting II. If you are taking one acting course out of interest, TPP2100 is built for you.
• ⚠⚠ The statewide inventory lists BOTH numbers under the title "Acting I" — TPP2110C at 17 institutions and TPP2100 at 10 — which means a transfer evaluation matching on title alone cannot tell them apart. UWF's own titles do distinguish them. Carry the description.
• UWF also publishes TPP1110 Acting I and TPP1111 Acting II in the statewide inventory at lower-division numbers, already documented in this repository. ⚠ The 1000- and 2000-level acting numbers are not interchangeable for programmes that specify one.

⚠⚠ What the suffix does and does not tell you in the arts

• SCNS offers institutions a limited set of suffix options — none, C for combined lecture and laboratory, and L for laboratory — and none of them describes a studio, a rehearsal room, or a private lesson.
• ⚠ So arts departments fit real formats into the nearest available designation, and the fit is frequently poor. UWF publishes TPP2101L and TPP3102L as acting studios under a laboratory suffix, TPP2710C as voice under a combined suffix, and TPP2110 as acting under no suffix at all — three suffixes for what are all studio-format courses.
• The description records the course; the suffix records how it was filed. When they disagree, believe the description — and when transferring an arts course, send the description and the syllabus rather than the number alone.
• ⚠ The same number is frequently published with a C at one Florida institution and without one at another, which is why the statewide inventory and a given catalog so often disagree on suffix. SCNS equivalency does not cross suffixes, so this is evaluated by hand.

Transfer, articulation, and how Florida course levels work

In the Florida Statewide Course Numbering System the first digit is the level: 1 and 2 are lower division, 3 and 4 upper division, 5 and above graduate. ⚠ A lower-division course generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement. SCNS equivalency runs on the number and the content, so a course transfers as what it is rather than as what its title resembles.

⚠⚠ The arts carry a transfer complication that most disciplines do not: admission is frequently by audition or portfolio, not by transcript. A performance or studio programme may accept your credit and still require you to audition or submit a portfolio for placement into the major, and placement can put a transferring student back a level regardless of the credit awarded.

Programmatic accreditation matters here. Many music programmes are accredited by NASM, art and design programmes by NASAD, and theatre programmes by NAST. ⚠ Accredited programmes carry specific curricular requirements, so a course that articulates may still not satisfy the requirement it appears to match. Ask the receiving department, not only the registrar.

Course format and position in the curriculum

• Scheduled studio or class sessions with substantial required preparation outside them.
• ⚠ Attendance in a studio or performance course is not comparable to attendance in a lecture. The work happens in the room, with other people, and a missed session cannot be made up by reading. Attendance policies in these courses are correspondingly strict.
• UWF publishes no contact hours or terms of offering. Arts sequences are frequently offered in one term only, so a missed course can delay a degree by a full year — confirm with the department.

TPP2110 is 3 semester hours at the University of West Florida.