What do you learn during the study?
During your studies, you work on an assignment-oriented basis and you develop your personal imagination. How do you create a new visual world that raises exciting questions and wonder? You will be fully fed with professional knowledge and inspiration. You make various study trips, where you also explore the field internationally. You will be taught in small groups and your personal creative ambitions are central. We are the only Dutch theater design program that is located under one roof with all other theater and dance disciplines. As a result, you will be working intensively with students from other disciplines on idiosyncratic projects and performances during your studies. You also have access to excellent facilities: you can realize your designs 1-on-1 in collaboration with our set design studio, costume studio, the ID Lab and theater technology department.
Under the webpage teachers you can see which teachers teach which subject, so you immediately get an overall picture of the diversity of subjects you will encounter during your studies.
Programme in academic years
• You explore the three sub-areas of the scenography subject in a broad teaching package: the image in relation to space, the body and digital media. You learn to shape your own design process with clear phases.
• You follow ten design blocks, supervised by leading designers. After an intensive creative process, you close many blocks with a presentation of the 1-on-1 final result. Not a scale model, but your design in full size. In this way you learn to work in a process-oriented way: you know how to make your creative ideas actually realizable.
• You lay an artistic and theoretical foundation with subjects such as art history, costume history, philosophy, theater history and dramaturgy. You learn to conduct an artistic dialogue.
• You will become skilled in crafts such as model building, digital techniques, steel and woodworking, sewing, pattern drawing and theater technique. You research materiality, visit performances and look backstage at set and costume studios: how is the execution of the design organised?
• In the second half of the study you will work more and more independently and will focus on your individual development: what are your artistic desires and what do you need to take them further?
• In the third year you gain practical experience as an assistant designer with a theater or dance company or autonomous maker. You will also create your own performances with fellow students, for example in our multimedia IDlab or on Oerol, and you will research biobased designs (whereby you make new materials yourself with 'waste').
• During your fourth year of study, you develop your own set or costume designs for graduation productions within creative teams of students from our Academy. You can also initiate a project or autonomous theatrical installation yourself. In addition, you present your visual work in a digital portfolio and make plans for the first time after your studies.