Theater Arts Course: Curriculum, Auditions, Careers

TL;DR: The theater arts course is prescribed by CHED Memorandum Order No. 25, series of 2017, which creates the Bachelor of Performing Arts (BPeA) with two tracks — dance and theater — totalling 134 units. The theatre track is 17 courses covering history, theory, acting, directing, dramaturgy, technical theatre and management, ending in a Theater Recital: Production and Documentation thesis. Several universities award a BA Theatre Arts under their own curricula instead. There is no PRC board exam for theatre practitioners, and CHED does not prescribe an admission audition — that is set school by school.

Theatre is one of the few Philippine creative fields where CHED wrote a genuinely detailed curriculum. If you want to know what four years of theatre study actually looks like before you commit to it, the memorandum is unusually specific — right down to the order the courses are taken in.

Here is what it prescribes, what it deliberately leaves out, and how the main university alternative differs.

The CHED Policy Behind the Course

CHED Memorandum Order No. 25, series of 2017 promulgates the Policies, Standards and Guidelines for the Bachelor of Performing Arts (BPeA), issued by virtue of Commission en banc Resolution No. 231-2017 dated 28 March 2017.

CHED states that the programme "will comprise mandatory course components in theory and criticism, aesthetics and semiotics, music, movement and choreography," and that "the BPeA program has two tracks: dance and theater."

On the theatre side specifically, the memorandum says the programme "shall produce graduates who are highly skilled practitioners of their field of concentration (i.e. directing, acting, production and design) and who are competent in the theory, history and literature of theater."

CHED lists the programme's allied fields, which is a useful map of where theatre sits academically: Bachelor of Music, BFA or AB Creative Writing, AB Literature, Bachelor in Multimedia Arts, AB Philippine Studies, AB Asian Studies, AB Communication and BS Human Kinetics. Those matter in practice — they govern which faculty can teach the programme and which students may shift in from another department.

Disclaimer: CHED prescribes minimum standards; schools design their own curricula within them. Confirm the current programme of study with your target school.

The 134-Unit Curriculum

The Performing Arts Core (24 units)

Every BPeA student takes these eight courses regardless of track: Introduction to the Performing Arts, Theory and Criticism of the Performing Arts, Semiotics of the Performing Arts, Perspectives on Asian Performing Arts, Fundamentals of Music, Movement in the Performing Arts, Improvisation and Composition in the Performing Arts, and Stage Craft.

Note what that means for a theatre student: music and movement are compulsory, not optional. CHED explicitly says the theatre curriculum "shall contain core subjects related to the performing arts such as dance and movement which are necessary for the creation of competent Filipino theater artists and cultural workers."

The Theatre Track (51 units)

Seventeen courses at 3 units each:

CHED's sample programme of study spreads these across four years. First year opens with Body, Voice and Movement and Theater History (Classical). Second year adds Acting 1 and 2, Dramaturgy, Sociology of Theater, Asian Theater Traditions and Philippine Theater History. Third year is the production year — Stage Management, Theater Theory and Criticism, Production Design, Technical Theater, then Directing. Fourth year runs Production Management and the Theater Recital: Production and Documentation, with CHED's own curriculum note requiring research in the semester before the recital.

The 9 elective units come from CHED's suggested performing arts and theatre elective lists, which include Musical Theater, Regional Theater, Readings in Philippine Theater, Theater and Film, Theater and Special Education, Theater and Literature, Contemporary Theater, Playwriting, Shakespearean Theater and Children's Theater, alongside cross-track options such as Performing Arts as Therapy and Multimedia and the Performing Arts. These are suggestions — ask which a school actually runs.

The University Alternative: BA Theatre Arts

Several universities award a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts under their own curricula rather than the BPeA. The clearest published example is the Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts at UP Diliman, in the College of Arts and Letters.

Its BA Theatre Arts is described by the department as leaning "towards intellectual praxes through practice-based-research and performance-led-research activities and critical interrogations of theatre and performance as socio-cultural idioms for the understanding of the self, society and culture," and it offers five specialisation areas: theatre and performance studies, performance, dramaturgy and directing, theatre management, and technical theatre and design.

The department publishes its curriculum components as 33 units of GE courses, 54 units of core and foundational courses, 6 units of foreign language electives, 6 units of theatre electives, 12 units of non-theatre electives, 3 units of legislated course, 6 units of NSTP and 8 units of PE — which adds to 128 units, though the department does not print a headline total.

Conservatory-style colleges add a third shape. De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde lists Theater Arts and, separately, Production Design and Performing Arts major in Dance under its School of Arts, Culture and Performance — so design and performance can be separate degrees rather than tracks inside one.

Auditions: What CHED Does Not Prescribe

This is worth stating plainly because the assumption runs the other way. CMO No. 25, s. 2017 contains no admission audition requirement. It sets programme outcomes, curriculum, faculty and facility standards — not screening.

Admission is therefore institutional. In practice, programmes with performance concentrations commonly run an audition, an interview or a portfolio review alongside the general entrance exam, while more studies-oriented BA programmes may screen on entrance test results and grades alone. Neither approach is more legitimate than the other; they are testing for different things.

What that means for you:

• Ask the department directly whether an audition is required, in what form, and what material to prepare. Do not infer it from another school's process.
• If there is an audition, expect prepared monologues or a scene, a movement or voice component, and an interview about why you want the degree.
• If there is no audition, your entrance exam and grades carry the whole decision, so treat them accordingly.
• Dates move every cycle. Schools publish audition and application windows on their own admissions pages. Check the current cycle rather than a figure from an article.

Our college admission requirements checklist covers the documents needed regardless of course, and our entrance exam requirements checklist covers the general test side.

Does Theater Arts Have a Board Exam?

No. The Professional Regulation Commission administers 46 Professional Regulatory Boards, covering fields such as Accountancy, Architecture, Interior Design, Nursing and Professional Teachers. Theatre arts and the performing arts are not among them. There is no licensure examination for actors, directors, dramaturgs, designers or stage managers, and no licence is required to work.

The one licensed profession adjacent to the degree is Professional Teachers. Teaching in basic education normally requires passing the Licensure Examination for Teachers. Note that Section 8(a) of Republic Act No. 10533, the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, allows DepEd and private schools to hire graduates of "science, mathematics, statistics, engineering, music and other degree courses with shortages in qualified Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET) applicants" to teach their specialised subjects, provided they pass the LET within five years of hiring, with part-time teaching exempt from the LET requirement. Music is named expressly in the statute; whether a given theatre-arts graduate falls under the "other degree courses" clause is a hiring determination made by DepEd, not something you can assume. If teaching is the plan, our how to become a teacher guide sets out the standard route.

For fields that do end in licensure, see our list of courses with board exams.

Careers After a Theatre Arts Degree

CMO No. 25, s. 2017 states that graduates "will have career opportunities in performance, production, teaching, choreography, and directing." The realistic breadth is wider than that sentence suggests, and much of it is off-stage:

• Performance — theatre, musical theatre, film and television, voice work, corporate and educational performance.
• Directing and dramaturgy — including new-work development and adaptation.
• Technical theatre and design — lighting, sound, set, costume, props, and the increasingly employable crossover into events and live production.
• Stage and production management — the most consistently in-demand skills the CHED curriculum teaches, and directly transferable to events, television and corporate production.
• Teaching and applied theatre — Theater Pedagogy is a required course in CHED's track, and theatre in education, therapy and community development is a genuine sector.
• Arts administration and programming — theatre companies, cultural agencies, festivals and venues.

Republic Act No. 11904, the Philippine Creative Industries Development Act, defines a Performing Arts Domain covering "all activities involved in the training of performers, the creation, promotion, distribution, exhibition, and preservation of artistic shows, performances and such other art forms including live music, theatre, musical theatre, dance, opera, circus, spoken word; and puppetry." The Act creates a council mandated to run a long-term development plan for the sector, including employment and skills programmes. Its Creative Services Domain separately recognises "live creative experiences," which is where much commercial events work sits.

Choosing a Theatre Arts Programme

• Do you want to perform, or to make theatre? CHED's track is deliberately broad — directing, design, management and pedagogy all appear. A performance-only ambition may be better served by a programme with declared concentration areas.
• Which document governs the curriculum? A BPeA follows CMO No. 25, s. 2017. A BA Theatre Arts follows the university's own curriculum. Read the actual course list.
• How much production work will you actually do? Ask how many productions the department mounts per year and whether students crew them. Technical Theater and Stage Management are only as good as the productions behind them.
• Is there a theatre to work in? Facilities vary enormously and cannot be assessed from a website.
• Is there an audition? Do not assume either way.
• Which strand did you take? HUMSS and Arts and Design are the most common feeders; see our Arts and Design strand guide and our HUMSS strand guide.

Ready to find the right school? Browse schools and compare programmes across the Philippines on SchoolFinderPH.

Sources

• Commission on Higher Education — CMO No. 25, series of 2017, PSG for the Bachelor of Performing Arts (BPeA)
• Commission on Higher Education — 2017 CHED Memorandum Orders index
• UP Diliman Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts — Bachelor of Arts (Theatre Arts)
• UP Diliman Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts — Degree Programs
• Professional Regulation Commission — Professional Regulatory Boards
• Republic Act No. 10533 — Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013
• Republic Act No. 11904 — Philippine Creative Industries Development Act
• De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde — Undergraduate Programmes