• School of Drama

    About

  • Our School of Drama combines rigor with creative experimentation. We focus on authenticity of expression and confront today's most pressing societal issues through the making of theater, film, and emerging media.

    Our faculty is made up of New York's contemporary legends-award-winning actors, playwrights, and directors who bring a currency of professional experience, artistic training, and project-based learning into the classroom.  

    Our four-year BFA program in Dramatic Arts prepares students to be artists in today's changing world, creative thinkers, and engaged citizens. Our MFA program throws students into an intensive, highly collaborative, and ensemble-driven training, with a focus on the creation of new works and relevant reinterpretation of existing plays.

    We take inspiration from the greats who walked these halls before us, including Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, and Tennessee Williams, as well as our more recent graduates, like Adrienne C. Moore and Jason Kim.

  • Message From The Dean

    Jermaine Hill, Dean

    School of Drama

    Welcome to the School of Drama, where a vibrant and diverse community of dramatic artists thrives. Our students hail from around the globe, guided by an esteemed faculty who are leaders in their fields, and bring professional practice and scholarship drawn from a range of pedagogies, perspectives, voices, and aesthetics to our classrooms, studios, and performance spaces. Through our BFA and MFA programs, we empower theater makers to learn in a dynamic artistic and professional community, demanding a breadth of skills, profound knowledge, and fearless vision.

    Here at the School of Drama, students devise dynamic new work and breathe vibrant life into classics. They perform extant works, innovate dramatic forms, direct, design projections, self-produce, and explore in a variety of genres and settings. In collaboration with instrumentalists, composers, and vocalists from across the College of Performing Arts, they pioneer modes of creative expression. Our emphasis on collaboration, experimentation, and multidisciplinary training prepares our graduates for successful and sustainable careers as generative and iterative dramatics artists and innovators of forms yet to be defined. 

    Since 1940, The New School has been at the forefront of theater education. The renowned Dramatic Workshop, founded by director Erwin Piscator, shaped some of the 20th century's most influential actors, activists, and writers, including Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Judith Malina, and Tennessee Williams. Today, we continue to offer rigorous and applicable training programs, cultivating artists who are boldly imaginative, socially aware, and creatively astute, as demonstrated by recent graduates Stefania Bulbarella, Jordan E. Cooper, Jason Kim, and Stevie Walker-Webb. We elevate collaboration across backgrounds, disciplines, and experiences, and recognize the power of the arts to address complex local and global challenges.

    Our students bring a vital spirit of joy and liberation to audiences and fellow artists. Working with our exceptional faculty and teaming up with renowned artistic partners, guest artists, and community collaborators, School of Drama students create theater experiences as distinctive as their own identities. We are driven, compassionate, and dedicated to shaping the present and future of our craft. 

    On behalf of the entire School of Drama, I invite you to explore our programs and join the next generation of visionary creators and performers.

    Show More

  • Since our founding in the 1940s by Erwin Piscator as the Dramatic Workshop, the School of Drama has pushed the boundaries of creative experimentation.



  • The School of Drama has creative partnerships with renowned organizations and groundbreaking performers across New York City, giving students access to real-world industry experience and training.

  • Take The Next Step

Submit your application

Undergraduates

To apply to any of our undergraduate programs (except the Bachelor's Program for Adults and Transfer Students and Parsons Associate of Applied Science programs) complete and submit the Common App online.

Undergraduate Adult Learners

To apply to any of our Bachelor's Program for Adults and Transfer Students and Parsons Associate of Applied Science programs, complete and submit the New School Online Application.

Graduates

To apply to any of our Master's, Doctoral, Professional Studies Diploma, and Graduate Certificate programs, complete and submit the New School Online Application.