MA Applied Theatre
Postgraduate
In London
Description
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Type
Postgraduate
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Location
London
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Duration
1 Year
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Start date
Different dates available
This course provides an opportunity to explore applied theatre via one of two specialist pathways: Drama in the Community and Drama Education or Drama and the Criminal Justice System. Each pathway is designed to support current practice at work, or a particular field of interest in applied theatre and drama. Students will develop their own practice and scholarship, learn key practices in applied theatre, engage with new ideas in the field, undertake project-based study examining specific professional work with a range of client groups, or specialise in working with people whose lives have been affected by the criminal justice system. The course receives substantial support from The Leverhulme Trust. This unique funding of over £60,000 a year (from September 2016) is specifically to enable both MA and BA applied theatre students to undertake projects and placements in the UK and abroad.
Facilities
Location
Start date
Start date
Reviews
Subjects
- Drama
- Theatre
- Project
- School
- Theatre Studies
- Theatre Education
- Theatre Management
- Theatre Set Design
- Theatre Directing
- Drama skill
Course programme
The units will focus on theatre practices that promote inclusion and will address the ways in which theatre can be an agent for change, enablement and transformation, while problematising these terms. You will participate in workshops and seminars to explore practices that make a difference to people by engaging with issues, dramatising relevant stories, representing role models or possibilities for action, and involving participants in processes that they find useful, informative or exciting. This will also develop an understanding of the social and cultural contexts of applied theatre.
For both pathways, study is undertaken through traditional academic means, as well as hands-on learning in the form of industry placements. Learning will be guided by tuition from professional specialists involved in theatre in a variety of community settings, including the academic experience of Central’s renowned applied theatre and drama education tutors.
You will have the opportunity to engage with relevant research methods in your field, usually presenting your work at Central’s annual postgraduate conference.
During Term Three, you may undertake project work (or further placement/professional practice) as part of an assessed unit.
On the Drama in the Community and Drama Education pathway, you may work individually, or as part of a small group, on a practical project, such as an arts residency in a primary or special needs school, a devised play andworkshops for refugee children in the UK or abroad, creative playwriting workshops with selected client groups, or a performance and workshop on Bertolt Brecht’s theatre practice for post-16 students in schools and colleges in and around London.
On the Drama and the Criminal Justice System pathway, you may work individually, or as part of a small group, on a practical project which might include a residency in a prison or young offenders’ institution, a devised play and workshops with fathers in prison for their children, or creative playwriting workshops with prisoners or ex-prisoners.
On both pathways, you will theorise this work, interrogating its relationship within current and seminal discourses in the field.
Term Three may lead to a performance with a specified community, or may be more process orientated. Recent examples of project work include:
a community radio project in Brazil,
a series of workshops with the young platform dwellers of Jaipur Station in India,
working with students in a hospital school in London,
teaching English as a second language through drama with hotel staff in Thailand, working on Shakespeare in performance with a youth theatre,
developing a range of theatre activities within a centre for the homeless in London, and introducing drama techniques to a special needs school in Ghana.
Recent examples of work within the criminal justice system have included:
an arts residency in HMYOI Feltham, a variety of performance-related work at Thameside Prison working with Second Shot in the areas of restorative justice,
making theatre with the residents of a prison in Malta, Theatre-in- Education (TIE) for those at risk devising and performing plays for invited audiences.
You may also work alongside a professional host or in one of Central’s partner placement institutions in the third term, or use their own work-based practice. In addition, students have the option to join one of Central’s many cross-School optional courses.
At the end of the year, you will consolidate your knowledge and understanding through a Sustained Independent Project (SIP). This is a dissertation about an area of particular interest in applied theatre.
MA Applied Theatre