
MA Applied Theatre: Drama in Educational, Community & Social Contexts
London, United Kingdom
DURATION
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time, Part time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
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EARLIEST START DATE
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TUITION FEES
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STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
Introduction
MA Applied Theatre: Drama in Educational, Community & Social Contexts
Develop your ability to contextualise, critique, and create. This MA addresses the historical, political, theoretical and ethical issues of applied theatre, and explores the ways in which theatre and performance are created by diverse groups of people.
Why study the MA Applied Theatre at Goldsmiths?
- The Masters is aimed at early-career practitioners with a background in theatre, education, activism or social change, as well as at more established practitioners who want to reflect, refresh and develop their skills.
- Develop your skills as a collaborative, responsive, imaginative, politically engaged and culturally-aware artist practitioner.
- Explore how theatre is created in schools, on the streets, in children’s homes, care homes, conflict zones, creches, youth clubs, prisons, women’s refuges, and refugee centres – anywhere groups of people meet and interact.
- The degree is structured so that practice and theory constantly respond to one another through practical classes and seminars. You will undertake a placement in a recognised host organisation, where you'll work with experienced practitioners and learn how participatory arts organisations function, from an insider’s perspective.
- Learn about the dynamic and ever-changing field of applied theatre: an umbrella term for a range of performance forms concerned with personal and social change. The term embraces everything from the theatre of the oppressed and prison theatre, to theatre-in-education and theatre for development.
- You will have the opportunity to explore case studies from the UK and around the globe, using them to inform discussions on questions of identity, representation, health, equality, human rights, aesthetics, and the role of the artist, among many others.
- You will work with and learn from tutors who are practising artists in a variety of performance, community and social settings.
Admissions
Scholarships and Funding
Several scholarship options are available. Please check the university website for more information.
Curriculum
Histories Theories and Contexts
In the autumn term, we look at the roots of Applied Theatre in Education, in Social and Political Change, and in Community. Classes include work with Geese Theatre on their use of masks in Prisons, Drama and Theatre in Education techniques with Gail Babb, intergenerational arts practices with Course Director Sue Mayo, and the use of Drama with Refugees and Asylum Seekers. Throughout this term, students are also engaged in skills-sharing sessions in order to pool their knowledge and expertise.
Practice-based classes are linked to a contextual strand, taught through seminars, that enables us to consider the thinking behind our embodied knowledge. Through a series of seminars, we consider the development of applied methodologies from its roots in political theatre; radical and celebratory arts; drama and theatre-in-education; community theatre; prison theatre; therapeutic creative practices and the legacy of Freire and Boal. We study the growing body of writing on applied theatre and its practitioners, and theatre theory.
In the Spring Term, the module Analysing Practice focusses on the practices of Applied Theatre. We have a short festival of art forms, with classes in song, puppetry and dance, and a residency shared with students of the MA in performance making, working across modules with artists of distinction from within the Goldsmith’s staff and beyond.
Throughout the practical sessions, we work with students to develop their facilitation, devising, project planning and management skills with attention to issues such as group dynamics; power and leadership; inclusion; accessibility; equality; conflict; intercultural practice; safe space and the ethics of touch.
Tutor Raj Bhari from the Peaceful Change Initiative leads a module on creative approaches to Community Cohesion, Conflict Resolution, and the artist as activist. At the end of the term, students design and lead a weekend of workshops for a public audience.
Complementary Contextual modules
Students also choose two lecture or practice-based Option modules from one of our other exciting MA programmes. Previous modules have included, Disability Theatre, African Theatre, Performance Praxis, Radical Performance, Cultural Theory, and The Reflexive Practitioner (which is open only to Applied Theatre students). These are taken in Year 2 by part-time students.
Placement
The Convenor, Sue Mayo, supports students to locate and develop a placement in a recognised host organisation. On the placement students further the skills they have practised on the programme, whilst dealing with the challenges of a professional context. Placement hosts include London Bubble, Magic Me, Resonate. Greenwich & Lewisham Young People's Theatre, Talawa Theatre, Pan-arts, Crisis, Ovalhouse, Green Shoes Arts, The Young Vic, MIND, CEN8, Lewisham Youth Theatre and Spare Tyre.
Professional development
As part of our commitment to student’s employability, we offer up to five workshops covering various areas directly relevant to workplaces where drama may be applied; for example, planning and managing projects, child protection and working with vulnerable adults, ethics, evaluation, setting up a theatre company or working as an independent artist.
Program Tuition Fee
Career Opportunities
Our students go on to work in a range of roles including setting up and running community/participatory theatre companies, as freelance drama workshop facilitators, lecturers, heads of education or participation producers within established theatre companies.
Previous students have gone on to carry out:
- setting up independant companies
- working as freelance director and facilitators
- arts projects with refugees and migrants
- arts work with people with learning disabilities
- theatre work with early years
- creative work in schools and pupil referral units
- cross-arts projects in a range of educational, community and social contexts
- theatre education and outreach
- community theatre
- museum education
- theatre in prisons and with youth risk