Situated at the intersection of theatre and education studies, this thesis examines Acting Through Song (ATS) as a taught practice in a UK conservatoire. Drawing on literature on signature pedagogies, performing arts education, and culturally sustaining frameworks, it argues that ATS operates as a recognisable pedagogy with routinised surface, deep, and implicit structures, and that these structures shape learning for multilingual, international cohorts.

A single-site ethnographic case study was conducted at the Guildford School of Acting. Fieldwork comprised non-participant observations of ATS classes over seven teaching weeks, semi-structured interviews with tutors and students, and analysis of programme documents and institutional statements. In total, 56 classes were observed across four tutors, and 36 interviews were conducted with 12 tutors and 24 students.

Findings show that, although modules were framed as workshops, the dominant delivery was rotating one-to-one coaching in front of peers. Participation was uneven, observation was rarely scaffolded, and demands for readability and authenticity fell most acutely on English-as-a-Second-Language learners who were managing accent, idiom, and musical phrasing at speed. Integration of acting, voice, and musicianship was widely expected yet often under-modelled. Time pressure, room layout, and feedback patterns shaped who benefited, and whether learning occurred through coaching or observation.

The thesis makes three contributions. First, it maps ATS’s signature pedagogy in a contemporary UK conservatoire, specifying routines, assumptions, and tacit values that organise moment-to-moment learning. Second, it reframes accent, intelligibility, and stylistic neutrality as pedagogic design questions rather than individual deficits, arguing for culturally sustaining approaches that broaden what counts as legible while preparing students to be industry-ready. Third, it offers practical implications for curriculum and class design, including clearer observation tasks for non-performing students, more distributed participation, and explicit modelling of integration aligned to assessment. These insights are intended for tutors, programme leaders, and performance coaches.