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 it is created by diverse groups of people.

• 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.

Contact the department

If you have specific questions about the degree, contact Gail Babb.

You should have (or expect to be awarded) an undergraduate degree of at least second class standard in a relevant/related subject.

You might also be considered for some programmes if you aren’t a graduate or your degree is in an unrelated field, but have relevant experience and can show that you have the ability to work at postgraduate level.

Priority is given to applicants with experience in the applied theatre field. This could be volunteering or assisting in work that is about working collaboratively through drama, using drama as a learning medium, or using drama for social change, among others.

Please note: You must also fulfil our Fitness to Train requirements.

International qualifications

We accept a wide range of international qualifications. Find out more about the qualifications we accept from around the world.

If English isn’t your first language, you will need an IELTS score (or equivalent English language qualification) of 6.5 with a 6.5 in writing and no element lower than 6.0 to study this programme. If you need assistance with your English language, we offer a range of courses that can help prepare you for postgraduate-level study.

Where this degree can take you

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

Previous graduates from the programme have also continued with research study towards the MPhil or PhD qualification.

We have graduates working at the Southbank Centre, the Royal National Theatre, The Young Vic, Brighton Dome, Pan Arts, Rewrite, Ovalhouse, Battersea Arts Centre, the Albany and Talawa Theatre; with MIND, Tender, Magic Me, and Headway.

Companies set up by past students include:

• Green Shoes Arts
• Unscene Suffolk
• Bread and Goose
• Blink Dance Company

Graduates are also working in India, the Caribbean, Brazil, Columbia, Estonia, Greece, Germany, Italy, Russia and the Philippines.

Skills

The MA aims to equip you with the appropriate background knowledge and understanding to work creatively and critically within the broad remit of applied theatre. Recent research identified three core skills for participatory artists working in socially engaged theatre practice.

These are:

• Critical thinking: the ability to contextualise and interrogate practice in the light of current thinking and practice
• Creativity: the ability to take creative risks based on a strong skill base
• Responsiveness: the ability to reflect and adapt

The programme works with these core skills threaded through its methodology, while also offering opportunities to look at the hard skills of planning, documenting and evaluating work.

Find out more about employability at Goldsmiths