Performing Arts | Mannes, Drama, Jazz | The New School

College of Performing Arts

Discover a progressive artistic center housed within The New School. Our performing arts college in NYC, one of the world’s greatest cities for the arts, offers programs that nurture each individual artist. You'll benefit from a curriculum designed to cultivate fearless risk takers who go beyond the edge of the stage, discovering new ways to unleash your talents and potential. Learn more about our performing arts school in New York to find a new home in which to develop your art. For more details about our college, please explore the individual school sites below.
Mannes

We have transformed the traditional music conservatory by integrating rigorous classical training with real-world experience and cross-disciplinary opportunities.

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Drama

We combine rigor with creative experimentation. Our work exemplifies imagination, social consciousness, and authenticity of expression.

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Jazz

We are renowned across the globe for our artist-as-mentor approach and the largest internship program in New York City.

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The 21st-Century Artist

The 21st-Century Artist

What makes a 21st-century artist? We believe it is finding new relevance for your art, reinventing convention, training like an artist, engaging with social issues, embracing collaboration, and navigating sustainable career opportunities. A 21st-century artist is a nimble entrepreneur who has skill as well as vision and uses both to make a difference in the world.
Ma in arts management and entrepreneurship

MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship

The future of performance is rapidly evolving. To establish sustainable and satisfying careers, today’s performers must be enterprising and innovative, flexible and fearless. Our innovative new program enables performing artists out in the world to advance their performance practice while acquiring the competencies needed to excel as independent artists, reinvent existing cultural organizations, and launch their own arts-related enterprises.
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Collaborative Performances

True to The New School’s dedication to collaborative excellence, students from the College of Performing Arts combined their array of talents to put on Mannes School of Music's first musical production, Happy End. The play, written by Bertolt Brecht, with music by Kurt Weill, brings together disciplines to illuminate the political conflict between a group of speakeasy gangsters and the Salvation Army in Chicago in 1919 — the founding year of The New School.

One of the first collaborations between the three schools that make up our performing arts college, Happy End drew on a range of resources of this intimate university community. MFA Acting students from the School of Drama, along with Mannes voice students, served as the play's cast of characters, while Mannes and Jazz students brought to life Weill’s timeless compositions. Gary S. Fagin delivered world-class direction as guest conductor and music director, bringing together a rich and compelling production that evokes our political past and points to the college's bright future.
IDEAS AS WELL AS PEOPLE BECOME LEGENDARY
Collaboration is Key

We embrace collaboration with a hungry, entrepreneurial spirit. The College of Performing Arts is made up of three schools — the School of Jazz, Mannes School of Music, and the School of Drama — all within a university, The New School. This unique model allows us to offer three tiers of collaboration:    

School

Within each school, students collaborate with their classmates — actors with directors, composers with musicians.

College

Throughout the three performing arts schools, musicians, playwrights, actors, and directors join forces — taking classes and performing together.

University

Across The New School, performing arts students can pursue minors and courses in every discipline: liberal arts, design, technology, and management, to name a few.
IMAGINE THE ENTIRE CITY AS YOUR MENTOR
Discover The World's Most Creative Community

Discover The World's
Most Creative Community

At some point in their lives, all artists should experience living in downtown NYC — especially Greenwich Village. It’s where social activists stirred the nation and virtuosos honed their craft and reshaped art forms. You gain inspiration from the revolutionary New School alumni and faculty who inhabited these streets before you — Jack Kerouac, Bill Evans, James Baldwin, Stella Adler, John Cage, and more. Today you are surrounded by dozens of small theaters and clubs and a community of people always breaking new creative ground.

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A Building Designed To Inspire Greatness

A Building Designed
To Inspire Greatness

We break down the walls between performing arts disciplines, both figuratively and literally. Students coming to our college enter a world-class building tailored to performing artists of all kinds. The refine their practice in acoustically designed rooms. There are state-of-the-art practice rooms, sound booths, ensemble classrooms, adjustable performance spaces, and percussion classrooms throughout the building. The ground-floor glass box performance space opens up our performances to the world outside.
DISCOVER THE WORLD’S MOST CREATIVE COMMUNITY
Define the future of your art form

Define the future of your art form

The deans of Jazz, Mannes, and Drama at The New School explain how students explore a range of studies and methods — from collaborative practice to entertainment management to social justice — bringing about positive change in their creative fields and in the world as a whole.

Our Deans:
Richard Kessler, Executive Dean, College of Performing Arts; Dean, Mannes School of Music
Keller Coker, Dean, School of Jazz
Pippin Parker, Dean, School of Drama

Learn more about Mannes.
Learn more about Drama.
Learn more about Jazz.

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