Contemporary Performance Making MA

The MA Contemporary Performance Making has a strong practical focus and students may choose to do a practical dissertation creating a performance piece of professional standard. This has proved a very popular and highly successful element of the course and students have gone on to present their degree shows as part of events such as National Review of Live Art and East End Collaborations. Another very popular element is the professional placement and several students have gone on to receive employment after graduating as a result of their placement.

The MA programme has a flexible modular structure designed to accommodate both full-time (30-40 study hours per week) and part-time students (15-20 study hours per week). All students will undertake five compulsory modules and a practical project or, if preferred, a written dissertation.

Typical Modules (all compulsory)

Exploring specialist options in Performance Directing, Solo Performance, and Performance Writing

Teaching blocks in various skills vary from year to year. Students explore each skill as groundwork for their final performance project or written dissertation in the final two terms. You will produce two practical pieces together with documentation.

​Digital Performance Technologies

This is a practice-based module, also offered as groundwork for your final project. It focuses on providing practical instruction in a laboratory setting for sustained experimentation with vocabularies and strategies of multimedia and digital performance composition. You work with video shooting and editing techniques, sound recording and processing techniques, interactive sensor environments (utilising Brunel's unique sensor toolkits), and multi-media real time integration.

Approaches to Performance/Mise-en-Scène Making

This module addresses the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary performance. It will give attention to the multiplicity and diversity of approaches to performance making used over the last 100 years. You will study a variety of practical and theoretical approaches that will contextualise your own work.

Research Methodologies​

This module aims to enhance the development of independent thought and an understanding of interdisciplinary research methodologies in performance studies. You engage with abstract concepts, advanced ideas and current trends. In this way, you will discuss and analyse your own and others' approaches. This will also serve as a platform to test your ideas and present a series of short papers on selected topics.

Professional Placement

In the first term of the module you will attend lectures and workshops on professional development with staff and guest lecturers/leading experts in the field. In the second part of the module, you will undertake a placement/apprenticeship with an established partner organisation, such as a national or international theatre company, festival, or university with whom we will sign a learning contract. We have had MA students on placements throughout the UK, the US, Canada, Hungary, Romania and France.

​Final Performance Project/Dissertation

During the spring and summer terms you will work towards your practical performance project or written dissertation. The performance project should be a final performance either in directing, performance writing or solo-performance, supported by a written document. Or you may choose to submit an entirely written dissertation.

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