Portfolio Conferences are the performance or presentation portion of our admission process, offered by invitation to applicants who pass the first round of application reviews.
Applicants must apply by our December 1 priority deadline to be considered for a Portfolio Conference. If space is available, applicants who apply after December 1 may be considered for a conference on a rolling basis.
A current schedule of Portfolio Conferences is available on our Audition Schedule page.
The conferences are open format by design
and consist of these elements:
Ten Minutes of Performance and/or Presentation
The first ten minutes of your Portfolio Conference is reserved for you to perform current work or present past work. Trust your intuition and focus on one or two projects you're most excited about. Feel free to use the same material you submitted in your portfolio or something completely new. In-progress work is also acceptable.
If you identify primarily as a performer, actor, or performing artist, most of your presentation time should be devoted to live performance. Actors may use their performance time to present monologues as in a typical acting audition.
If you identify primarily as a dramatic writer, you'll spend most of the conference in conversation, but you're welcome to include a presentation or performance.
Q&A with Faculty Panel
All applicants will have 10 to 15 minutes for an informal dialogue with faculty panelists. Topics may include, but are not limited to, your work samples, your live performance presentation, your professional
goals and artistic interests, your experiences with socially engaged creativity, and your particular interest in The New School’s Master of Fine Arts program in Contemporary Theatre and Performance.