Students who have not attained the age of 18 years prior to the first day of their chosen course of study cannot be enrolled at the School. In exceptional circumstances an exemption to this age restriction may be granted. There is no upper age limit.

The age restriction is necessary because the course is very emotionally and physically challenging. A certain degree of intellectual rigour is also required, and we have found that those students best suited to this rigorous course are over 18.

We acknowledge that there are younger people there with emotional, intellectual and physical maturity, but we believe that life experience is of great benefit, therefore we have chosen this age regulation to ensure students come to Toi Whakaari and undertake training at the best possible time.

We often have a wide age range within each class. For example, for each of the last three years, we have had a student of approximate 40 years old in the incoming group.

To prepare for entry to Toi Whakaari, we encourage people to get as much experience as possible. Do part-time courses and work on other people’s plays and films. Check out your local amateur repertory theatre, musical theatre society or your school and get involved. Or you could put on your own plays or make your own films. All of your experience will be useful. Some of our students work to gain some money behind them for their studies. Another option is to do some other courses in the meantime.

The performing arts courses that seem to provide many of our current students include: Hagley Community College, Otago University (Allen Hall), Victoria University, TAPAC, UCOL, Young and Hungry, Auckland Theatre Company Education Unit , the National Youth Drama School and Long Cloud Youth Theatre Company. These places all provide an excellent grounding in drama, particularly in the needs of the ensemble. They also have a very good success rate in terms of their graduates gaining entry to Toi Whakaari.

Toi Whakaari holds short courses in most secondary school holidays. Courses include technical, costume, design and acting. Check this out for information on upcoming courses.

Applications for the following year generally open towards the end of May. For example; applications for 2024 open on 26 May 2023.

Anyone who’s already studied for a degree has an advantage in that they understand the discipline of study. It is likely they will also possess research skills and the maturity that comes with a university background. But it is how you present at your audition or interview that really counts. A former director of Toi Whakaari, Annie Ruth, described this as demonstrating “courage and flexibility on the day”.

Of major significance is the secondment programme, in which our students organise to apprentice themselves to a theatre, film company or drama school, either within New Zealand or overseas. In addition, during your time as a student, you are given every encouragement to absorb as much local theatre and film as possible, including cheap tickets to most Wellington-based shows. Practitioners from local theatres and film companies have a close working relationship with Toi Whakaari and are often contracted to teach block courses.

Te Kura Toi Whakaari o Aotearoa: New Zealand Drama School acknowledges Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Treaty of Waitangi as the foundation document of the country. To honour the Treaty, the School instills an awareness of the culture of Aotearoa in its diversity and history while initiating an awareness of the school’s responsibility for sharing and furthering Māori culture.

Through the lens of a Treaty Partnership, the school will continue to explore and celebrate the theatre, dance, film and performing arts of other cultures and races of Aotearoa.. The diverse origins of immigrants over the last 50 years enriches the intake of students and expands the studies and productions within the school.

These are the official documents you will have received from your secondary school, university or the training institution you attended after leaving school. We ask to see them in order to see what your interests and areas of achievement have been so far. However, they will not be a deciding factor in whether or not you are accepted into Toi Whakaari. If you no longer have these documents, please contact the relevant institution for duplicate copies.

Yes! This is the main method of communication used by the school from the audition process onwards, so organise one now. Your email address should include your first name and surname.

Audition Workshops are usually held during September. Those who are recalled attend a weekend-long workshop and a further audition at Toi Whakaari, usually in late October.

The audition will consist of a group workshop of around three hours led by Toi Whakaari graduates and staff.

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No. We are interested in you and how you react, not in what you can hide behind.

Toi Whakaari graduates and staff from the Acting Department.

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Yes, although it is not ideal. Overseas applicants must prepare their monologues and record them as videos, then send us a link so that staff can watch them. In their initial audition they will perform the prepared pieces, be given direction to play their pieces in a variety of different ways and will have a conversation with Toi Whakaari staff members.

Australian applicants: If you are recalled on the basis of your initial online audition, you MUST be able to attend Applicants’ Weekend at Toi Whakaari.

We receive over 250 acting applications each year and everyone gets an audition. We select around 40-60 for the Applicants Weekend and up to 20 for the first year intake.

The course is set up to receive eight students a year. Within each intake we expect there to be a range of interests. Some will want to focus on set construction; others will want to focus more heavily on props. As far as possible we will endeavour to cater to each student’s particular interests.

Within these general areas there will be greater specialisation, such as soft props / built costume, steel fabrication and so on. The first year will be structured to cover a wide range of coreset and props skills. Production roles on stage and screen projects, assigned through student and staff discussion, will allow greater specialisation for each student.

In your second year a far greater degree of specialisation is achievable. You will undertake a major personal project in an area of your choosing. You will also arrange your own professional internship with an organisation of you choosing, developing the skills you wish to enhance. You’ll also continue working on Toi Whakaari’s own stage and screen projects taking on lead production roles in your chosen area.

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We currently produce between three to six short films a year, working with award winning film directors and professional crew. We also produce three theatre productions; usually two studio shows and one main house piece, working with a mix of in house talent and visiting professionals.Our graduation event is also usually quite a big production number.

In addition there are many other opportunities for applying your production skills. One of the more notable aspects of studying at Toi Whakaari is how student led much of the activity is. Final year students across all disciplines are engaged in their own independent projects as part of their course,and these are often collaborative live or screen based projects. We generally set aside each Wednesday for students to make collaborative work outside of their timetabled work. So there is ample opportunity for you to make work and contribute in a way that will develop your practice as your inclination takes you. Nor do you have to wait to get involved in a project another student is leading. You’re just as able to initiate your own projects and pull in the human resource of students from other programmes. It’s all down to your own drive and collaborative skills, and these are key areas we address in the broader work of the school.

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I will answer specifically in terms of technical craft and aesthetic skills, but these are not the only attributes we are looking for an applicant (see below; what are you looking for in an applicant).

We are looking for evidence of clever hands and a keen eye. You don’t have to be working inexpensive materials. A thing made well in cardboard is still well made. Evidence of accuracy and care is important. Speaking to an employer recently, they told me that if they receive an email or portfolio from a potential employee and it has a typo in it, they bin it. Harsh you may think, but detail and finish is their trade. As an old film maker once said to me, “All the camera sees is the topcoat of paint. It’s all about finish”. So take time to present your work to its best advantage.

We are keen to understand your enthusiasm for the work you are making. Tell us about what excites you and why. Study at Toi Whakaari is heavily focussed on interdisciplinary practice. You’ll spend lots of time working with students from other programmes making work together. So your portfolio can also contain references of the things that inspire you as well as the things you have made.

Your portfolio doesn’t have to be a single thing either: It can be work books; it can be curated online sources. We’d like to hear what interests you in these references. Maybe it’s about mood or lighting, colour palette, design aesthetic, history or character as much as it is about the making of the thing.These are all important things to consider when producing products for the creative industries. We will ask you to submit a portfolio before we reach the interview stage, so it’s important that you annotate your images. Tell us what they are and why you’ve selected them. Draw our attention to what interests you.

You may not at present have the contacts or resources to work beyond a certain scale, but check out what’s going on around you. Are there places you can volunteer, get in the door and start working with materials and resources that are new to you? Do you have experience of making things for school, youth theatre or amateur work? If so tell us both about the making itself, but also the experience of working in a production team.

You don’t have to know about everything the course covers to be of interest to us. We’re not expecting you to be able to do, or know about it all. Those are the skills you are coming to learn and expand on. What we are looking for is evidence of your emergent talent as a maker and your potential to learn and apply new skills.

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The course is full time and you undertake 1,200 hours of study (minimum) in each year. In a normal academic institution 5 - 10% of that would be contact teaching time. In your first year at Toi Whakaari it is likely you will be in contact with staff around 50% of the time. So there’s a high degree of face to face tuition. In your second year this drops due to the self led nature of your independent research and your internship, but the level of mentorship remains high. Staff work closely with students on all aspects of the school’s production work.

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Of the 1,200 hours of work in first year 600 is allocated purely to developing core set and props skills through workshop projects. The remaining time is split between production work on stage and screen projects and collaborative work across disciplines.

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Collaboration will also be part of the 600 hrs of core skills. For instance, if we are undertaking even a relatively simple activity, like making masks, we would collaborate with acting students to create the brief and develop the function of the prop. We would explore the mask in relationship to character.Seeing the mask in use as a tool is vital feedback for us as makers, and we have the resource to working this way that is not open to many makers and designers elsewhere.

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We’ve spent a lot of time talking to the industry and the good news is that there’s work waiting for the successful graduate. The feedback we get is consistent: They are looking for graduates with sufficient core skills to start work on day 1. They are interested in making sure our students reach this point by offering internships and, in many cases, coming into the school to teach and run short projects.

However their absolute priority is that the graduate has excellent group working and interpersonal skills: that they are able to read a work environment, see what needs doing and pro-actively respond. Successful graduates of the course will know how to support and how to lead, and be able to tell when which response is appropriate.

It’s a lot of work to reach that level of practice but it’s something we focus on very heavily at Toi Whakaari. Students here are involved in a lot of group work. All fist year students study a unit called“Context and Practice” which explores the structure and interplay of creative roles within stage and screen arts. Importantly, it also develops the skills by which such collaboration is achieved. The work we do in this unit provides the foundation of how we work together as a school. All students engage in our twice weekly school gatherings to share our progress, and to build our skills of communicating and working together.

We recently ran a short raygun making workshop. A graduate of Toi’s design course, who’s been making hero props for Peter Jackson’s Mortal Engines, came in to feed back on our work. Asked about the most valuable learning she gained from her time at Toi, she said it was these group working skills that “made her most employable”.

So it follows that we’re looking for applicants who have the potential to match this graduate profile.We’re really interested in how you will work with others and how you will bring forward your creative potential in a team.

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Our interview process usually spans 2 days. On the first day you’ll engage in a creative workshop with other applicants, participating as a group. In the evening we’ll usually see a show together. On the second day we’ll have individual interviews. In these we will discuss your portfolio and talk further about your creative interests. Be ready to tell us about work you have seen and makers,artists, writers and other creative people who have influenced you. If we ask you for your top three favourite films we’re certainly going to ask why they’re your top three. If you’re interested in working for the stage be ready to talk about the shows that you like and why. What have you seen,read and heard that inspired you lately. If the answer right now is “not much” then you have a few months to get inspired. Cast your net wide.

Toi Whakaari is New Zealand’s national drama school and entry is undoubtedly competitive. We often see applicants who have real potential but are not ready to join us yet. They need to grow their personal or practical skills a little further to make the most of the time they’ll have with us. If this turns out to be you then please don’t be discouraged. We’ll give you guidance on where we think you can grow your talents, and hopefully we’ll see you again.

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We usually offer 8 places for 1st year.

We interview everyone who applies. The interviews are held at our Applicant’s Weekend at the beginning of November. We strongly recommend attending this event in person. However some people are unable to travel for various reasons. We are able to conduct interviews via Skype or Zoom if necessary.

We would like to see photos of at least two garments/outfits/costumes that you have created. They don’t need to be specifically costumes from a performance event. You don’t need to send us photos of everything you have ever made! Just pick the ones that you think are your best work, or the ones that show the most range of ability and skill. When you come for your interview, bring the items with you so that we can see them and talk about them.

Ideally we are looking for costumiers who have a core sewing skill-level above beginners – you will get more out of the course this way. We are also looking for costumiers who have an interest in performance and working with others. Any experience with amateur drama, film making or musicals is great practice for working in a collaborative environment. We are also looking for a candidate who has done some research and has a clear vision for how they want to use the skills they learn here in their future career.

The ability to select from a range of sewing techniques to create costumes is one of our core key competencies. So it is very important – 50% of the course involves sewing of some kind. However there are other construction techniques to learn that do not involve sewing, as well as pattern drafting, costume organisation and supervision. People often have strengths and weaknesses. We will want to strengthen the things you are weak in and introduce you to things you haven’t yet explored. How willing you are to work on your weaknesses is something we are keen to find out!

Most people who enter our course have had zero or limited experience on industrial machinery of all kinds. Don’t worry – that is what you are here to learn.

In the creation of a film or live performance the person who creates the visual experience is called a designer. Designers are a part of the key creative team on a production, they collaborate with directors, other designers, actors, dancers, managers and technicians.

Designers are responsible for the creating the visual concept and the transformation of the concept into reality. They design what the spatial environment will be, what costumes the performers will wear and what projection or light will be used for a given script, screenplay, or devised piece of live art.  

Many designers consider themselves artists who design a visual experience for the audience to interpret. On this course, our designers are encouraged to develop an independent art practice. Initiating and creating work that considers wider ideas of performance beyond the traditional stage or screen.

Film:

·        Production Designer

·        Costume Designer

·        Set Designer

·        Props Designer

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Live: 

·        Performance designer

·        Costume designer

·        Set designer

·        Props designer

·        Lighting designer

·        Projection designer

·        Events designer  

The Bachelor of Design (Stage and Screen) does not offer training for Sound Design.

Designers are involved in

·        Feature films - studio and independent films

·        Television series

·        Documentaries

·        Music videos

·        Web series

·        Theatre/opera

·        Dance

·        Performance installations

·        Events and exhibitions

·        Live music performance

·        Their own artistic practice

Complete the application forms, which include a personal statement about why you wish to study design at Toi Whakaari, and submit a portfolio of creative work (see separate FAQ on what Toi Whakaari is looking for in a portfolio) by the date required.  

Generally speaking, ALL applicants will be invited to Toi Whakaari to participate in a selection workshop and interview during Applicants’ Weekend. This invitation will also include a task to view and respond in written form to a specified screen work. Your written response will be collected during the Applicants’ Weekend workshop.

At Applicants’ Weekend design applicants participate in a short 3-4 hour workshop exercise that involves collaborating with other applicants to propose (not realise) a performative event. Applicants will be invited to attend a Toi Whakaari theatre production in the evening.

The following day applicants have an individual 25-minute interview with the Design Department tutors.

International students, who are unable to attend Applicants’ Weekend in person, may apply to have their interview and ‘workshop’ process conducted via some form of live video link.

Successful applicants will be sent an offer of place on the Bachelor of Design programme within a week of their interview.

The course emphasises highly practical learning. You will be encouraged to test ideas by engaging in processes where making and testing your ideas is as important as coming up with the concept. We teach computer programmes such as Photoshop, Rhino 3D, QLab and Premiere Pro alongside hands-on projects. You are always applying what you learn to an actual project.

Through Year One and Year Two the balance is about 50% film projects and 50% live projects. You can choose to focus on one or the other or both forms in your final year.

Our tutors will work with you to make an individualised plan for internship and support you to connect with practitioners and secure internships. You complete internships in both Year Two and Year Three. Our students have interned on Netflix series, with Oscar winners, with international and national theatre companies, music video directors, local tv and documentary productions and Aotearoa-New Zealand's best designers.

In applicants we look for a person who

·        Has a clear idea of why they wish to study design for stage and screen

·        Has a clear idea of why they wish to study at Toi Whakaari

·        Values curiosity especially about themselves as a learner and are willing to look at how they learn

·        Is able to build purposeful and effective collaborations with an empathetic engagement

·        Is able to self- initiate and self-motivate creative work

·        Exhibits flexibility and resilience in being able to adapt to uncertainty and changing environments

·        Values ethical practice, independent thought and intellectual rigour

Quality not quantity.  We want to see works that you are proud of and works that you think are a failure - we value both outcomes in any creative process.

What we are hoping to get from a portfolio is an insight into:

o   How you currently communicate visually,

o   How you have innovated creatively

o   What creative processes you currently use in your work

o   What you are passionate about in a creative way

o   What personal skills you have drawn on to collaborate effectively and

o   What evidence is there of your conceptual thinking

We would love to see examples of your design process on a live and film productions however if you haven’t had any experience of these yet that’s ok! You can use work from School projects or self initiated projects. ​Use your portfolio to help us see who you are creatively.  

Below are some suggestion of other work to include in your portfolio:

o   Sculptures

o   Paintings

o   Collage

o   drawings

o   Photographs that you have taken in order to capture an idea or concept (ie not just holiday snaps)

o   Video work

o   Photo-shopped images

o   Something you have made, like a piece of clothing or a book or a piece of furniture or jewellery

o   Visual design for an event – a friend’s wedding or family occasions

o   Design for a school production

o   Graphic Design

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Obviously some finished products will need to be presented as photos rather than the real thing. If you wish you can bring bulkier things to show us at Applicants’ Weekend.

Examples of a visual process​ you used to achieve an end product – ​what stages you went through to work out how to achieve it"

o  What inspired you

o  What was your intention in making it

o  What research you did to find out more about it or how to do it (who or what you consulted to find out more)

o  The resource material you collected (pinterest,scrapbook ...)

o  The plans you made to help you get to the end(timelines, budgets, materials lists ...)

o  How you went about enlisting people to work with you  

o  How you collaborated with them and guided them through the project

o  What tests/experiments you did that helped you sort out what would work and what wouldn’t

o  How you finally made it

o  How you presented it and ‘recorded’ it

and finally

o  What you learnt from doing it in a reflection report on the process and your achievement  

Other examples

Your experience in your own area of creative visual interest – screen, live performance, costume, stage/screen/special effects make-up, props making, art, photography, dance, performance, script writing, directing etc.  

Your area of passion; food, music, dance, horse riding, martial arts, go-kart racing, tramping, crochet, egg carving etc

Portfolio Size and Form

There is no prescribed size, volume or way to assemble a portfolio BUT remember that assembling a portfolio is a creative endeavour. It is a creative act in its own right.

Presentation is key. Think of your audience, who will be viewing your portfolio.

As designers we will look at how you have put together and presented a portfolio as much as we will look at what is in it.  

Select your images carefully and with purpose.

You can present a portfolio digitally on a USB drive, a personal web site or via some programme such as google docs or you can send us a physical portfolio or a combination of digital and physical.  

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Please make sure to ​name your portfolio.

One of the values of studying Design at Toi Whakaari is the small class sizes. We provide individual studio space to each student and as such our maximum class size for any year cohort is 12 students.