Theatre and Performance MA

Program Overview

The MA Theatre and Performance at Queen Mary University of London is a one- or two-year program that explores the potential of contemporary performance to effect social change. Through practical workshops, seminars, and tutorials, students develop, refine, and theorize their own practice while engaging with critical issues such as decolonialization, climate change, and access to justice.

Program Outline

Degree Overview

Overview

The MA Theatre and Performance is a one- or two-year program designed for artists, activist practitioners, students of literature and visual art, recent or aspiring theatre practitioners, and any interested in a stimulating intellectual journey within the realm of artistic practice as both a critical mode of thought and a site for social change. It will support your advanced research and practice in experimental theatre, socially engaged and participatory performance, live art, and activism. This program will explore your own ideas in depth and build a body of original, thought-provoking work. A key benefit of the program is its flexibility: across compulsory and optional modules, you can develop your interests in both theoretical and practical projects to advance your expertise and career.

Objectives

In this program, you will:

• Work with leading academics and theatre practitioners
• Study alongside a community with a shared purpose and interest in artistic exploration of social justice themes
• Have opportunities to experiment with the program's various performance practices in your own artistic development
Through practical workshops, seminars, and tutorials, students have the chance to develop, refine, and theorize their own practice while engaging with critical issues such as decolonialization, climate change, and access to justice.

Outline

Structure

The MA Theatre and Performance consists of:

• Core and option modules
• A 12,000-15,000-word dissertation or a 5,000-word practice-based dissertation with a critical analysis

Core Modules

• Dissertation
(12,000-15,000 words): This independent research project culminates in a dissertation of 12,000-15,000 words. Working with the support of a supervisor, students pursue their own independent investigation of the theory and practice of performance. Research development is enabled and supported by participation in a Dissertation Colloquium and Festival in May/June, in which students present their research in progress and receive feedback from academic staff and other postgraduate students. Recent dissertation topics have included studies of illness and performance, performance and second language acquisition, the performance of rural spaces and identities, contemporary performance and relational aesthetics, circus performance in Victorian Britain, cultural value and performance and performance and social conflict
• Culture, Ethics, Politics
(6 credits): This module provides you with historical and political grounding in thinking about theatre and performance through a focus on material and cultural conditions of production and reception. Drawing on London’s rich performance resources but also looking globally, it examines what is urgent in contemporary theatre and performance and how theatre and performance scholarship can help us understand contemporary cultures and cultural debates. In weekly seminars informed by critical reading and preparation, you explore a range of issues related to, for example, decolonisation, ethics, bodies, gender, sexuality, finance, spaces, institutions, labour, feelings, and spectatorship. You consider issues of social power, representation, and social change. The module will respond to emerging issues and scholarship as it happens Through weekly workshops and readings, students engage with diverse methodologies in action and performance-making, with sessions focused on improvisation, devising work inspired by textual sources, auto/biographical performance, live art formats, approaches to score-making (the documentation, as a text, of an artwork or performance), and documenting, for yourself or an audience, or other, your process for re-performing or re-staging performance. The assessment involves creating performance work (with or without an audience) and a portfolio for documentation that includes critical reflections (minimum 6,000 words) on the project in relation to its critical, methodological, ethical, aesthetic and historical contexts
• Performance, Activism, Social Justice
(6 credits): This module explores how performance has functioned as a form of protest, a way of engaging with social and political life, and more recently, as a method of making visible and mobilising political groups or identities that struggle for political recognition of injustices. You examine historical and contemporary social movements (from Black Lives Matter to Extinction Rebellion) and look critically at the ways they use performance in protest and creative expression. Your practical investigations will be embedded in critical readings in identity politics and social justice, in relation to identity formations including gender, sexuality, race, class and ability

Optional Modules

Optional modules offered are subject to availability. Current examples may include:

• Practice-Based Dissertation:
The MRes and MA programs also offer students the opportunity to write a practice-based dissertation, submitting an extended performance project alongside a 6,000 to 7,000-word document analyzing and exploring the project's conceptual development, performance techniques, and artistic significance within broader artistic and critical frameworks (subject to staff availability)

Assessment

Assessment Methods

• Continuous assessments
• Essays
• Performances with reflections

Assessment Criteria

• Creativity
• Rigorous academic standards
• Critical thinking
• Analysis
• Understanding the role of performance in society

Home: £11,950 Overseas: £24,000 EU/EEA/Swiss studentsThe course fee is charged per annum for 2 years.