The School of Theater at CalArts runs two BFA programs. One is Acting, entered by audition. The other is Experience Design and Production, entered by portfolio, and it is the program almost no Korean art student knows exists.

This article covers that second door: what the degree contains, its six specialisations, how the four years are structured, the two reviews you must pass, and — the part that matters most — exactly what CalArts asks for in the application, which is not what its animation and film programs ask for.

Two doors, two completely different applications

Acting is an audition degree. CalArts requires two self-taped monologues, one from Shakespeare and one from a contemporary play, each no longer than two minutes and each filmed in a single take without edits or cuts. One video must be framed in close-up or mid-close-up and the other as a full body shot. Applicants then audition in person in Los Angeles, New York or Chicago, or virtually — and virtual applicants must first pass a pre-screening evaluation whose decisions CalArts states are final.

Experience Design and Production is a portfolio degree. No monologue, no audition, no pre-screening. An artist’s statement, a resume, a portfolio and a short video introduction. An interview happens only if the faculty request one — CalArts states plainly that not all candidates are interviewed.

If you have been building an art portfolio in Seoul for a year, one of those two doors is open to you and the other is not. That is the entire practical content of this section, and it is the reason we wrote this article.

What Experience Design and Production covers

It is not only theater. CalArts describes the program as integrating a variety of collaborative practices including live performance, film, dance, themed entertainment, and immersive environments, as well as social and civic entrepreneurship. The subjects it names students explore are narrative, immersive experience, environments, behaviour, dramaturgy, fabrication and interactivity.

Read that list twice if you are a Korean student who has been told your options are graphic design, illustration or industrial design. Themed entertainment is the theme park industry. Immersive environments is the exhibition and experiential industry. Fabrication is building things at architectural scale. Those are three growing employment areas in Korea as well as in the United States, and this is a four-year undergraduate degree aimed directly at them.

Within the degree, CalArts lists six areas a student may specialise in — one or more of them:

Specialisations from CalArts’ published BFA Experience Design and Production page, September 2026. The right-hand column is our characterisation, not the school’s.

Four of those six are directly continuous with the skills a Korean art academy already teaches. Scene design in particular is drawing, model-making and spatial reasoning — the same abilities an industrial design or architecture applicant has spent a year building.

How the four years are shaped

The first two years are labs; the last two are yours. CalArts states that the first two years run through project-driven Studio Labs examining design thinking, visual communication and aesthetics, fostering what the school calls a sustained dialogue between thinking and making. In years three and four, students work with faculty mentors on individualised training programs tailored to personal goals, with the curriculum customised beyond the core requirements.

That shape — common structure first, individual programme second — recurs across CalArts. It is the same logic as the self-defined final year we found at RISD, arrived at from a different direction: RISD hands over the project, CalArts hands over the curriculum.

Students are also required to complete general education through Critical Studies, the CalArts liberal arts curriculum, and are encouraged to work on projects through the Center for New Performance, the institute’s professional producing arm.

The leadership is published: Ellen McCartney is Director of Experience Design and Production and Shannon Scrofano is Associate Director. The School of Theater states that its faculty are 100% working actors, directors and designers, and describes the education as experimental, interdisciplinary, international and diverse.

Two reviews, as everywhere at CalArts

You must pass a mid-residence review and a graduation review. CalArts states this plainly for XDP, and it is the same structure we found in Character Animation, Experimental Animation and Film and Video. The degree is conditional on a jury, twice.

We keep repeating this across the CalArts articles because Korean families consistently assume American admission is the hard part and graduation is administrative. At this institute it is not. Admission gets you in; two reviews decide whether you finish.

The portfolio — and the number CalArts does not give you

There is no required number of pieces. CalArts asks for materials reflecting your primary areas of interest and artistic strength, and lists what may be included:

Notice the first line. Drawings, paintings, sculpture and photography are the first category listed — not the fallback. An applicant who has never worked on a production is inside the requirement, not outside it.

The absence of a required number is a genuine freedom and a genuine trap. Our advice is the same one we would give for any open brief: choose the number that lets every piece be argued for. Fifteen strong pieces with a visible logic beats forty that show range and no judgement. The faculty are reading for interest and strength, which is a judgement about you, not an inventory of your output.

The written component is one page single-spaced or two double-spaced, and CalArts is specific about what it should contain: your goals and their relationship to your past experience, plus evidence of your interest in performance-based design — whether in theater, film, installation, writing or other related forms. That clause is the one to answer directly. A Korean applicant who has seen exhibitions, been to immersive shows, or worked on a school production has evidence; one who writes generally about liking design does not.

⚠️ These requirements are not the other CalArts requirements

Do not reuse another program’s checklist. We wrote three CalArts articles earlier in this series and the requirements differ program by program in ways that would cost an applicant their file.

Compiled from the CalArts admission pages for each program, September 2026. Requirements are published per program and change; read the page for the program you are applying to, in the year you apply.

The video length difference is the one that catches people. Sixty seconds is a floor here and thirty seconds is a floor next door — and a 45-second video that would satisfy the animation programs is short for this one. Its subject is also specified: describe your interest in the theater and its interrelated creative environments of immersive entertainment and experimental live performance, spoken directly to camera, not read from a script, with no special effects.

The graduate programs above it

The School of Theater is mostly a graduate school. CalArts lists MFA degrees in Acting, Directing, Costume Design, Lighting Design, Scene Design, Sound Design, Producing, Stage Management, Technical Direction and Interactive Media for Performance — ten graduate programs against two undergraduate ones.

Two consequences follow. An undergraduate in Experience Design and Production is studying inside a school built around graduate specialists, which is unusual and generally an advantage: the equipment, the productions and the faculty are calibrated to a professional level. And each of the six BFA specialisations has a corresponding MFA above it, so the degree has an obvious continuation for a student who wants one.

Interactive Media for Performance has no undergraduate equivalent and is worth noting on its own. For a Korean student whose interest is media art, projection or interactive installation rather than theater in the traditional sense, that is the graduate destination this undergraduate degree can lead to.

Cost, English and the calendar

CalArts publishes a complete cost of attendance. For 2026–27, undergraduate tuition is $62,954 and mandatory fees are $730. On-campus housing is $8,304 and food is $9,406 — those four lines are what the accounting department bills, about $81,400 a year. The published total cost of attendance is $90,455, which adds the school’s estimates for books, transport, personal expenses and medical cover.

CalArts housing at $8,304 is the least expensive in this series by a wide margin, against $15,150 at Parsons and roughly $18,700 to $23,300 at SVA. Valencia is not Manhattan, and this is where that shows up.

On English, CalArts publishes a TOEFL requirement of 4 on the scale ETS introduced in January 2026 and a Duolingo requirement of 105 — the most accessible published thresholds among the schools in this series, against SVA at 4.5 and 115, RISD at 5 and 120, and Pratt at 92 on the old scale with Duolingo 125.

Deadlines are the same for every CalArts program: a preferred deadline of 1 December with a reduced $65 application fee, a regular deadline of 5 January at $85, then rolling admission until each program closes. CalArts states explicitly that the preferred deadline is not early decision — it is a fee discount that requires everything, portfolio included, by that date.

What our record shows, and what it does not

We have no theater line, and we will not build one. Royal Blue keeps a record of every acceptance we have confirmed directly with the student: 1,099 acceptances across 95 schools between 2009 and 2026, of which 454 carried scholarship money — an award rate of 41.3% and $23,746,972 in total.

Royal Blue admissions records, 2009–2026. Initial award letters. Theater and performance design are not among the ten majors in our record large enough to publish; the three nearest spatial and moving-image disciplines are shown instead.

We also do not publish a CalArts school-level award rate. Our CalArts sample is not large enough for a percentage to carry information, and we have taken the same position in all four CalArts articles in this series. A rate calculated on a handful of cases looks like data and behaves like noise.

What we will say is narrower and honest: almost no Korean applicant we meet has considered this program. That is a fact about the market, not a claim about your odds — but in a field where most Korean portfolios arrive looking like each other, a discipline nobody in Seoul is preparing for is worth ten minutes of your attention.

What to build, if you have nine months

Nothing in this list requires access to a theater. The portfolio CalArts describes can be assembled from an art student’s ordinary practice plus three deliberate additions. This is our suggested shape, not a CalArts specification, and we label it as such because the school gives no number.

Royal Blue’s suggested shape. CalArts publishes no required number or composition for this program.

The last row is the one Korean applicants dismiss and should not. A high school performance you helped light, a festival booth you designed, a set you painted for a church event — these are exactly the evidence the artist’s statement asks for, and they are the difference between writing that you are interested in performance-based design and demonstrating it.

Everything on that list is buildable between January and a December deadline, which is the practical reason we are writing about this program now rather than as an afterthought at the end of a consultation.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need theater experience to apply?

No. The first category CalArts lists in the portfolio is visual artwork — drawings, paintings, sculpture, photography. What the artist’s statement does ask for is evidence of your interest in performance-based design, whether in theater, film, installation, writing or other related forms. Interest with evidence, not experience.

How many pieces should the portfolio have?

CalArts does not specify a number for this program. Choose the number where every piece can be argued for — the faculty are reading for your primary areas of interest and artistic strength, which is a judgement, not an inventory.

Is there an audition or an interview?

No audition. An interview happens only if the faculty request one, and CalArts states that not all candidates are interviewed. Acting is the program with the audition, and its pre-screening decisions are described as final.

Can I use the same application materials as for CalArts animation?

No, and this is the mistake worth avoiding. The video introduction here is 60 to 90 seconds against 30 to 90 next door; letters of recommendation are required for the animation and film programs and not listed for this one; and the portfolio specifications are entirely different. Read this program’s own page.

What can this degree lead to?

Within CalArts, each of the six specialisations has a corresponding MFA, and Interactive Media for Performance sits above the degree with no undergraduate equivalent. Beyond it, CalArts names live performance, film, dance, themed entertainment and immersive environments as the practices the program integrates. We report those as the school’s description of the field, not as outcomes we promise.

Related reading

• CalArts Film and Video: the door that asks for a film, not a drawing
• CalArts Art
• CalArts Music
• CalArts program updates
• Parsons Fine Arts
• Building a portfolio as an international student
• CalArts School of Theater, official page