The MA in Theatre Making at Kent offers an opportunity to develop advanced knowledge of practices, traditions and professional contexts of theatre making through academic engagement, practice-based learning, individual supervision and professional study.

This MA is intended for graduates from theatre and performing arts degrees and other subjects as well as emerging theatre artists who want to further pursue their experimentation with a range of advanced theatre-making practices.

On this programme, you will acquire skills in a range of approaches to making performance, drawing on techniques from directing, devising, ensemble performance and performance art, in order to develop your own individual and/or company practice.

Throughout the autumn term you will be taught in weekly workshops and create performances in response to professional commissions, often in association with a local arts venue or site. In parallel you will study the relationship between theatre and audiences through weekly lecture-seminars.

In the spring term you will conceive, develop and manage an original practical and creative project at an advanced level, taking for example the role of writer, director or performer on this project for the duration of the term. This will be supported through weekly supervisions and workshops by visiting professionals. In parallel you will take a Professional Study module, for which you will undertake a placement with an artist or theatre company (to be sourced by the student), as well as attending lectures on professional practice, including topics such as funding applications and marketing.

For the summer term you will develop your own independent research project, which may include a practice-as-research element.

Please contact us on arts-pgadmissions@kent.ac.uk if you wish to discuss your application.

About the School of Arts

Postgraduate Drama and Theatre studies at Kent has a very strong reputation for research and supervision in contemporary theatre and performance. We are the home of two renowned international research centres, the European Theatre Research Network (ETRN) and the Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance (CKP).

The wide-ranging interests of our international team of leading and emerging researchers (from the UK, Australia, Greece, Germany, France and other countries) include research strengths in contemporary performance, applied theatre, Shakespeare, 18th-century theatre, multimedia performance, popular performance, theatre directing and dramaturgy, and physical acting.

Our distinctive focus at Kent is on theatre as practice, whatever the topic, area, mode and methodology of research. We were the first department in the country to offer, since the late 1990s, MA and PhD degrees by practice-as-research. We encourage postgraduate students to make use of our close links and contacts with local, national and international (especially European) theatre companies, venues, schools and artists, both for research and to encourage professional development.

The School of Arts’ award-winning Jarman Building offers professional standard drama facilities, along with social spaces and a dedicated centre for postgraduate students. In addition to the two performance studios and the Gallery in the Jarman Building, Drama & Theatre facilities across the Canterbury campus include two further theatre spaces – the 113-seat Aphra Theatre (a courtyard-type gallery theatre space) and the Lumley Theatre, which is a flexible and adaptable studio space – as well as further rehearsal facilities in Eliot College, a sound and simulation suite, and an extensively equipped construction workshop and costume collection.