Your course will be delivered at Derby Theatre, a fully equipped, professional theatre and major live performance venue, allowing you to gain valuable industry experience and contacts as you learn.

This contemporary theatre and performance programme will develop your theatre and performance skills such as acting, directing and devising for your career as a professional theatre artist. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to showcase your work and you may be involved in performances regionally, nationally and internationally.

This dynamic and exciting theatre arts programme is taught by practising professional artists with expertise in their own fields. Built around process, experimentation and risk taking you will encounter a range of practices to explore and develop theatre making and performance skills. An exciting part of your studies will be the professional work experience within Derby Theatre or partner organisations which will contribute to the development of your professional portfolio. You will take part in a number of public performances across your years of study and in a variety of venues, including main house and studio theatre spaces, off-site in the community, schools, and art centres.

In this multidisciplinary course you will develop technical, design, and production knowledge and skills for theatre and live performance in the growing and dynamic creative industries. Your real-world experience will be enhanced by learning and working alongside students from our BA (Hons) Theatre Arts course and external partners as you become part of the day-to-day operations of a busy professional venue: Derby Theatre.

You will benefit from being able to draw from the knowledge of a wide range of industry professionals to enhance your networks, relatability and exposure to the industry. There will be opportunities to take part in projects drawn from Derby Theatre’s Arts Council England (ACE) National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) agenda on community, youth and education.   

You will experiment and familiarise yourself with the possibilities of existing and emerging disciplines in the field, such as light, sound, projection, video, digital media, immersive and interactive storytelling, extended realities, AI, stage technology, costume and set design, scenography, production, project and stage management. You will also be supported to explore expanded design practices beyond the theatre stage, such as performance installations, sound installations, interactive audio walks, design-led, site-specific, immersive, socially engaged and devised performances, exhibition and event design in galleries and found spaces.

This course will provide you with the opportunity to explore, develop and test your creativity within a qualification structure which is stimulating, demanding and supportive. It will offer you an excellent opportunity to develop all-round and transferable skills in all aspect of the make-up industry.

You will explore SFX, Prosthetics, Stage Make-Up and Hair, Period Make-Up and Hair, Body Art, Fashion and Fantasy. Alongside these specialisms you will also work on both small and large scale productions throughout the year, such as musicals and plays to design and realise the make-up and hair designs.

This will support your experience and expertise when planning and executing your Final Major Project, where you take on ownership and responsibility of managing the success of a collaborative performance.

This course is fully funded for 16 to 18-year-olds.

Lancaster's degree in Theatre and Creative Writing is taught jointly by the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA) and the Department of English and Creative Writing. It combines the study of Theatre with the writing of original and imaginative fiction, poetry or plays. These two different focuses reinforce and complement each other.

Studying Theatre at Lancaster gives you the opportunity to learn about innovative twentieth and twenty-first century theatre and performance through an exciting and varied mix of practical and academic approaches. You will be taught by internationally esteemed, award winning theatre practitioners and scholars and will gain critical and creative skills that open up possibilities for working in theatre, while making you attractive to a wide range of other employers.

Your Creative Writing courses are taught by a team of widely published authors through a combination of lectures, readings, practice and discussion in regular tutor-led workshops. Your degree includes an Introduction to Creative Writing in your first year, and in your second and third years of study you will choose additional genre-specific units such as Short Fiction, Poetry Writing or Creative Non-fiction.

You will begin your degree with core courses including, an Introduction to Theatre Studies and Creative Writing. In your second year you’ll move on to subjects such as Theatre Techniques, Performance Composition, Work Placement, Intermediate Creative Writing and Critical Reflections. You will then complete your degree by choosing from a selection of Theatre and Creative Writing modules on offer including a final year theatre production module.

If you have a passion for sound, and would like to learn how to design it so that it is seamlessly integrated into media, products or environments, then this degree will help you develop an in-depth understanding and the practical skills needed to design and evaluate effective sound for listeners.

This course will teach you the techniques to create new sounds that coexist with dialogue and music to support a wide variety of media and applications. The underlying principles of linear and interactive media are also addressed, as well as products and environments to maximise potential employment.

Throughout your studies you can specialise in your chosen discipline, and then work towards creating an appropriate portfolio, whilst gaining valuable contacts who could help you during your transition from study to a professional career.

A mix of assignments and projects will give you the chance to collaborate with students on Acting, Digital Media, Film, Games Development and Television degrees.

Studying Sound Design will allow you to collaborate with students on Acting, Digital Media, Film, Games, Journalism, Television, UX and Web degrees.

We also have an extensive range of online guest lectures from internationally recognised Sound Designers.