Do you want to explore what Shakespeare means in today's world? Immerse yourself in Shakespeare's works and learn from expert academics at our Shakespeare Institute. You'll also get to work with theatre practitioners at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) as part of our unique collaboration.
Pursue your creativity and your passion for Shakespeare and experience the thrill of producing your own creative response to his poetry and plays. This course is ideal for any aspiring academic, actor, writer, or director looking to explore Shakespeare from perspectives like academic research, theatre performances and public engagement.
Our MA Musical Theatre Creatives is an individually-tailored MA for anyone interested in creating new musical theatre and a professional career as a creative in the industries, whether as a composer, writer, choreographer, lyricist or something that has yet to be defined.
This unique course focuses on students' particular needs to develop their skills in their field (composition, dance and dramaturgy etc), whilst simultaneously generating work as a collective with other creatives across the MAs.
Working with leading institutions from across the North and with practitioners that include composers, lyricists, and book-writers (the creative team of a musical), students will leave the course with a portfolio of work to take into the industry, to peers to build a creative team with, and leave with a unique artistic voice to shape the theatre of tomorrow.
The Musical Theatre Company course combines rigorous conservatoire training with continued, collaborative, student-led development of new work, preparing students not only to gain employment in the musical theatre industry, but as artists creating their own work.
With weekly classes in a range of dance styles, voice, acting, and singing (including audition technique), students will form a company and use these skills to engage in continued and collaborative development of new work (alongside students from the other MAs), guided by leading directors and practitioners working in the industry today.
Working towards public performances at the end of the year, students will leave prepared for auditions, the rehearsal process and the life of a working actor, having developed the knowledge, skills and contacts necessary to succeed in this highly-demanding industry.
Our MA in Musical Direction is designed to fully-prepare highly-skilled musicians to embark upon a career as a musical director. With tailored one-to-one classes, students will hone their musicianship and be exposed to a wide-range of working practices, working alongside key practitioners, companies and industry professionals from across the region.
This MA encourages students to interrogate the role of the musical director and redefine it for themselves, through the continued collaborative, student-led development of new work across the year.
With collaboration and individual artistry at the heart of all of our Theatre MAs, students will leave this course not only fully equipped to adapt to the changing face of theatre, but also with the skill set and tenacity required to drive that change.
Our MA in Dramaturgy focuses on the development of new work and individual artistry through collaborative practice.
Whether as a practitioner shaping theatre though storytelling, dance or music, or as a dramaturg in a literary department dissecting text, students will be introduced to a multitude of ways of creating new theatre.
Working with leading practitioners and institutions from across the North, students will learn the key components of storytelling, character and structure.
‘Dramaturgy’ has several definitions, due to the ever-evolving nature of how theatre is created. Students will explore them all and be encouraged to define it for themselves, leaving this MA not only with a comprehensive understanding of how things have been done, but a vision for how they want to do things in the future.
This MA is the only postgraduate course of its kind in the UK and has been re-developed in response to the changing needs of the industry and in consultation with previous graduates. We designed the course as a conversion degree, and we welcome applicants from non-arts related subjects.
This course is ideal if you want to add a vocational stage management emphasis to your undergraduate degree, or if you have significant workplace experience and would like to gain a formal qualification.
From theatre productions and arts festivals to music gigs and charity events, the entertainment and live events industries are growing rapidly. At the same time, the work of stage managers is becoming more complex and technically challenging. This means that arts and events companies are looking for skilled stage managers with more holistic and integrated perspectives regarding the management of entertainment and live events and the artistic, economic, social and environmental conditions in which they function.
This course has been developed in response to this need and is rooted in a belief that effective stage managers need training that is both practical and critically reflective. It will develop your knowledge of the contemporary issues affecting the management of entertainment and live events while equipping you with the practical skills that are essential for developing a career in the field.
The course is run in partnership with the Edinburgh Stage Management School, which specialises in postgraduate vocational training and combines a well-established industry focus with successful graduate employment. It combines the best aspects of the vocational, practical and academic models.
MA/MSc Human Resource Management for the Creative Industries course, taught in our creative specialist Business School, is a degree that gives you a unique opportunity to tailor your HR skills to better suit this dynamic sector of the economy.
Ideal for those seeking a more specialised route into careers within areas like gaming, fashion or publishing, this course will give you the knowledge and skills to thrive within the creative industries’ organisational context, and support you to develop the specialised management and leadership skills needed in the sector.
You will manage your own learning and development and enhance your own skills in critical enquiry, logical thought, creative imagination and independent judgement. You will also develop and consolidate informed professional and ethical competence across a range of industry specialisms.
Re-frame and challenge your artistic practice
This new course is expansive in how it interrogates the conventions of cultural, aesthetic or historical assumptions about contemporary dance. You will explore how dance practices are experienced and how they can be situated within wide social, political and artistic contexts. As a practice-led, and student centred course, you will develop professional skills and your portfolio of work, whilst we offer the space and support for you to re-frame and challenge your practice.
The course supports artists at different stages of their career who are forging their own paths as dancers, makers, teachers and facilitators, helping graduates to transition into or continue working confidently within the independent dance sector.
Throughout this course you will develop a portfolio of work which aims to build your confidence in how you contextualise your practice and how you can communicate your ideas.
The course:
- Is a 12-month MA course running from January to December.
- Has a strong research focus.
- Is centred around the learning journey of the individual within a community of researchers.
- Offers group learning and peer feedback.
- Explores different modes of communication and presentation including live performance, presentation, project proposals, digital outputs, and reflective portfolios.
You are encouraged to:
- Critically reflect on your own practice, acknowledging your own personal narratives and histories.
- Be autonomous and self-motivated in your own learning.
- Come with an open mind, be curious and be willing to take risks!
It will give you the opportunity to:
- Engage in a range of embodied, collaborative and reflective practices, choreographic approaches, political debate and creative experimentation.
- Build the necessary skills to be able to initiate and realise creative projects independently.
Validated by University of the Arts London (UAL).
DSL’s PGDIP/MA Professional Acting is an intensive and comprehensive preparation for entry into the 21st century performance industries.
Working in small groups, the course is delivered through entirely practical, vocational classes, workshops and rehearsals which lead to focused performance projects. These sessions immerse you in the methods and approaches of British and European performance practice as they apply to and influence the contemporary theatre landscape. Expressive and technical skills are developed for work across video and audio media throughout the course, alongside developing your own core vocal and physical practice. You are encouraged and enabled to explore and take control of your own working process and expressive potential, rather than following a single methodology or attaining an idealised voice and body. You can expect to evolve an adaptable, broad ranging and immediately employable skillset for the profession.
You may not have made the decision of whether you will do the PG Dip or the MA yet. This can be discussed in your audition.
Our MA Playwriting course is an intensive one-year programme designed to provide a genuine gateway into a writing career in the theatre and performance industries.
Like our successful MA Screenwriting course, the MA Playwriting is taught by practitioners and is vocationally-oriented and industry-focused.
Over the course of the year, you will work with leading industry practitioners to develop your playwriting, pitching and dramaturgical skills. You will learn about and develop skills in writing for performance across a diverse range of contexts, genres and themes.
By the end of the course, you will have developed at least one full-length stage play, a collection of one-act dramas, a full-length festival play and at least one play that adapts elements of a classic text to engage with a contemporary context.
You will have access to individual career guidance and training in how to navigate entry-level writing work in the theatre and performance industries. The course features regular speakers from the industry, including returning alumni who have established successful careers as writers, dramaturgs and producers.
In Semester 1, you will study the basics of playwriting as a craft, with a focus on form and structure. This will include engaging with plays in textual form and in live performance, and the study of plot/story, character, genre, scene development, monologue and dialogue, dramatic action, beginnings, endings, features of staging and audience relationship.
You will study a diverse range of new and historical works, including historical plays that have brought about innovations in dramatic form and structure, as well as new writing staged in Britain and further afield in recent years.
In the second semester, we turn to industry-oriented study, focusing on developing new pieces for festival contexts, and on the skills and resiliencies needed to sustain a living in playwriting.
There will be an industry day based at our studio theatre on campus, with talks from directors, agents, producers, publishers, literary officers and writers.
