MA Dramaturgy & Writing for Performance

A unique programme for dramaturgs and playwrights, this Masters concentrates on the process of writing for live performance, together with an ongoing evaluation of the work in process.

• This Masters will help you establish a distinctive, individual approach as a writer and dramaturg. You will work on projects including site-specific work, writing for a specific audience, verbatim theatre and interdisciplinary collaboration.
• You will develop texts for performance, and refine your intellectual understanding of the diverse forms and contexts in which live performance can be made.
• You will be taught by experienced permanent staff, as well as visiting tutors, including Goldsmiths alumni David Lane, Juliet Gilkes Romero, Penny Black, Hanna Slattne, Somebody Jones and Morgan Lloyd Malcolm.
• You will have the opportunity to work on an interdisciplinary project with students from MA Performance Making and composers from the Department of Music. Your final project texts, performed and directed by industry professionals at the Soho Theatre in London, and attended by key industry representatives.
• Graduates from this programme are highly successful in obtaining commissions, dramaturgy posts and artistic directorships. All students receive Professional Orientation and career development support. Recent successes include:
  • Kendal Feaver (commissions for The Almeida Theatre and The National Theatre 2024)
  • David Luff (Artistic Director Soho Theatre 2024)
  • Juliet Gilkes Romero (Writer in Residence National Theatre 2023-2024)
  • Somebody Jones (Tony Craze Award Winner 2023)
• You will be based in one of the world’s biggest artistic and performance hubs: London. The capital is world-leading in new writing and contemporary performance, and offers many platforms for emerging artists, as well as professional and creative networking.
• The programme has strong links to a number of London-based practitioners, international networks, and venues in the field of new performance writing (see our Key Associate Organisations). Many of these contribute directly to the teaching of the programme.

Contact the department

If you have specific questions about the degree, contact Fiona Graham.

You should have (or expect to be awarded) an undergraduate degree of at least upper 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.

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 7.0 with a 7.0 in writing and no element lower than 6.5 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 your degree can take you

Numerous playwrights completing this programme receive high-level professional development opportunities, commissions, awards and full-scale productions of their work at major new writing centres in the UK, USA and in continental Europe. Many also work for at least part of the time in the fields of script development (for theatre and television), and in theatre publication.

Recent playwriting alumni include:

• Chloe Todd Fordham is a Judges Award Bruntwood Prize winner and has been shortlisted for the WiT Award and Theatre503’s Playwriting Award.
• Rhianna Ilube is a playwright and events curator from London. Her debut play, 'Samuel Takes A Break...', was Highly Commended for the Soho Theatre’s Verity Bargate Award, and shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting.

In each of these cases the award-winning play was the writer’s Final Project from this programme.

Dramaturgy alumni work in professional literary management for mainstream and fringe building-based companies, as well as on freelance script development programmes in the UK and internationally. These include:

• Sam Pout is Literary Associate at Omnibus Theatre, dramaturging in-house shows and some co-productions. He also produces Engine Room, the monthly scratch night for artists with work in development.
• David Lane is a playwright and dramaturg whose work includes commissions for Half Moon, Theatre Royal Plymouth, Chichester Festival Theatre, Papatango, Forest Forge, Theatre West, Kilter Theatre, Shooting Fist, Blue Brook Productions/Tobacco Factory Theatres, and the Egg Theatre Royal Bath, where he was a Leverhulme Incubator Scholar in 2015.

Find out more about employability at Goldsmiths.

Skills

Playwriting specialists will become skilled in:

• The use of a range of techniques for the development and structuring of original material for live performance
• Working to a brief in diverse professional circumstances
• Evolving an individual creative vision

Dramaturgy specialists will become:

• Familiar with a diverse range of techniques for generating and developing new work
• Skilled in analysis of dramatic text and live performance
• Skilled in formulating a distinctive contribution to policy and practice in one or more fields of new writing