TDS @ UTM: Changes for 2026/27

Yes — if anything the new program will provide a richer training experience. TDS @ UTM will retain all the qualities that have made the joint program such a successful and highly regarded endeavour. Students will continue to be trained by industry professionals in all aspects of the performing arts, through a curriculum grounded in intensive work on voice, movement, and acting techniques, from day one. The new program will in fact increase the number of training hours in first year, maintain the same intensity of training in years two through four, and offer the same level of performance opportunities in years three and four, with greater freedom to explore individual interest and customize your program than before.

All studio and production courses will be taught by theatre and film professionals with active careers in the performing arts. The curriculum will be guided by a group of Adjunct Professors with professional appointments at the Stratford and Shaw Festivals and long-standing relationships with Canadian Stage, Soulpepper, Crow's Theatre, and many other major Canadian theatre companies.

Courses in dramatic literature, theatre history, and performance studies will be taught by UTM's internationally renowned faculty. Playwriting classes will continue to be offered by leading Canadian playwrights; in recent years, these instructors have included Anusree Roy, Andrea Scott, Djanet Sears, and David Yee. And all productions in our season will be directed by established professional directors.

Students in TDS will train in dedicated spaces that were built in 2014 and have been continually improved since then: four large rehearsal halls, all equipped with sprung floors and suitable for dance and fight training. All studio spaces have speaker systems and large TVs or screens and projectors. Studio courses also use the smaller of our two black-box theatres, the MiST, which has a full lighting grid and sound system. All performances will continue to take place in the Erindale Studio Theatre, an extremely flexible black-box space equipped with all-LED state-of-the-art lighting. Students also have access to a small dedicated self-tape space with sound proofing and a simple lighting setup. These spaces were developed for the joint program and are reserved for the exclusive use of TDS students; they are among the best rehearsal facilities anywhere in Ontario.

Students will no longer earn a Diploma from Sheridan College. The program still leads to a BA Hons from U of T.

Students will no longer need to commute between the Sheridan campus in Oakville and UTM's campus.

In practice, not earning a Diploma will have no real consequences. Casting directors, agents, and theatre companies do not ask for a Diploma (though they will be interested where you did your training), nor do any graduate programs require such a qualification.

On the other hand, taking all your classes at UTM will mean greater flexibility for scheduling and course selection. Students also will no longer have to budget for travel time. If you live off campus you will no longer have to worry about two different commutes. The split between the two campuses in the past made it necessary to limit studio classes to Tuesdays and Thursdays, which made it difficult for our students to enrol in courses and programs outside of TDS. Under the new program, studio and production courses will run throughout the week; this will allowing students to take fuller advantage of the courses and resources of Canada’s leading research university, even as it will make it possible to integrate practical and theoretical classes much more tightly than in the past.

For example, on a given day in second year, you might listen to a lecture about Shakespeare in the morning, spend three hours of the afternoon working through a Shakespeare scene under the guidance of a seasoned Stratford actor, and then spend four hours in the evening as an Assistant Stage Manager experiencing the rehearsal process for a fully-designed Shakespeare production for our mainstage season. (And of course "Shakespeare" is just one small aspect of the kind of work you will be doing in the program!)

Yes, several — and these are likely to increase over the next years:

• We are introducing an optional internship course that will allow you to earn an academic credit while spending a significant portion of your summer between third and fourth year with one of our partner theatre companies (in Toronto or at one of the major festivals) observing production and rehearsal processes.
• We are also introducing an element of choice into studio classes offered in fourth year, allowing students to explore modes of performance or forms of theatre making of special interest to them. We recognize that it is important to allow young artists to develop their own voice and their own creative identity, and this element of choice will make it possible to tailor the curriculum to individual students' needs.
• Instead of the third-year devised show, for which the entire third-year class worked together on a single production created from scratch, third-year students will now collaborate in small groups to build up to five shorter shows which will then be presented publicly as part of our season, and are ideally suited to being developed into a piece to be shown beyond the university setting, at Fringe festivals or festivals for young theatre makers such as Paprika.
• Fourth-year classes will be connected more directly to current industry practices. For instance, we are introducing an in-depth self-tape workshop run by casting professionals as well as other workshop-style units designed to make our graduates "industry-ready." We will also bring graduates of the program with active professional careers in the performing arts, artistic directors, and producers to campus on a weekly basis to share their experiences with our graduating class and to create ample opportunities for networking.
• Finally, we are establishing a mentorship system in which every fourth-year student is connected to a TDS graduate active in the theatre and/or film and TV industries.

We firmly believe that the BA is an important asset for our students, since it allows them the broadest range of career options after graduation. Thanks to the BA qualification, graduates from the joint program were able to go to law school or earn a BEd immediately after their undergraduate education; others have gone on to successful careers in law, psychotherapy and other areas of healthcare, in the corporate world (sometimes with MBAs), and in academia: several former TDSers have earned their PhD and are now professors. The BA creates opportunities. But unlike other BA programs in theatre, TDS has always provided a level of training usually associated with BFA programs, which is why our graduates can be found everywhere in the Canadian theatre world.

TDS has always been a demanding program: in the past, this was because students earned two degrees in four years (the BA and the Sheridan Diploma). We don't want to lose the opportunities the BA offers, but neither are we prepared to lose the intensity of the hands-on training previously delivered by Sheridan. Therefore, TDS @ UTM will be a BA program like no other in Canada: our students will spend as many hours in studio and production classes as their peers in BFA programs elsewhere in the Greater Toronto Area. But they will also take a significant number of courses in which they read plays and analyse performances, writing essays or new plays, contemplating and debating ideas and honing their critical thinking skills. TDS @ UTM will offer an exceptionally rich educational experience as well as exceptional opportunities for experiential learning.

We have always been proud to train thinking actors and to educate creative thinkers. That will not change, and the BA is the mark of that special quality of the program.

Admission to the program will continue to be based on an audition (as described here) as well as on strong academic performance in high school. TDS @ UTM will remain as selective as the joint program was, admitting about 25 students a year. We will also continue to make the same commitment we have always made to our students: once you have been admitted to TDS, we will do our best to allow you to succeed. We do not ask students to re-audition at any point in the program, and we do not attempt to reduce the number of students in our acting classes in any other way. Ideally, we would like everyone we admit to the program in year one to graduate with their cohort four years later. That has always been the culture of TDS and this will not change in the new program.

Yes, though this will be easier for some programs than others. Certain classes in English, Creative Writing, Game Studies, and Cinema Studies also count as "drama-related" credits towards your TDS Specialist, so taking the additional classes required to complete a minor in those areas is quite manageable. For other areas of study, completing a minor (or even another major) might mean taking more than the 20 credits needed to graduate from U of T, but we will work with you to enable you to build the educational experience and gain the qualifications you envision. Given how demanding and intense a program TDS is, it can be challenging to combine it with a minor or major in a largely unrelated field, but some students also find it helpful to enrol in classes that take them into completely different ways of thinking. In other words, this is a question that is best assessed on a case-by-case basis, and we would encourage you to speak to the undergraduate advisors in all departments you are interested in to explore the possibilities of adding a major or a minor to your TDS Specialist.