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Drama & Theatre
Department of Drama & Theatre Undergraduate Studies Department of Drama & Theatre
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Royal Holloway is widely recognised on the world stage as one of the UK’s leading teaching and research universities. One of the larger colleges of the University of London, we are strong across the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. We were ranked 12th in the UK (102nd in the world) by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2014, which described us as ‘truly world class’. 2
Department of Drama & Theatre
As a cosmopolitan community, with students from 130 countries, we focus on the support and development of the individual. Our friendly and safe campus, west of central London, provides a unique environment for university study. We have been voted as one of the 16 most beautiful universities in the world (Daily Telegraph).
Department of Drama & Theatre Contents Top-rated for teaching and research, Royal Holloway has one of the largest and most influential Drama and Theatre departments in the UK. Our academic staff cover a huge range of theatre and performance with particular strengths in applied drama, contemporary theatre, international performance, theatre history, and theatre and performance making. Our new state-of-the-art £4m performance space, the Caryl Churchill Theatre, sits alongside the Boilerhouse Theatre and Noh Theatre, providing exemplary facilities for study and practice. Our proximity to London gives us unrivalled access to theatres, productions and practitioners, while the Surrey campus offers an intensive and stimulating creative environment.
Why study Drama?
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Why study Drama & Theatre on London’s creative campus?
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Facilities
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Degree structure
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Teaching and assessment
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World-renowned research-led teaching
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Combining Drama & Theatre with other disciplines
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Admissions, entry requirements and other opportunities
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Your future career
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Staff teaching profiles
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CONTACT DETAILS
Head of Department Professor Dan Rebellato d.rebellato@royalholloway.ac.uk General enquiries drama@royalholloway.ac.uk T: +44 (0)1784 276315 F: +44 (0)1784 276385 @RHULDrama
MORE INFORMATION
This brochure is designed to complement Royal Holloway’s Undergraduate Prospectus and information on the department’s website at royalholloway.ac.uk/drama It is also available as a PDF at royalholloway.ac.uk/studyhere
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Why study drama? • Performance is about communication, and we live in a society where the arts of communication are more important than ever before. To study Drama is to acquire immensely valuable life and career skills, including the ability to express your ideas individually and in groups, on paper, in performance, in person, and through technology. It asks you to demonstrate skills in project management, teamwork and group management, time management, research and creativity. • Making theatre and performance requires skills in all aspects of the personality, mixing physical skills and mental agility, critical rigour and boundless imagination. Studying drama involves – and helps to develop – the whole person.
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• Exploring the theatre means drawing on history, psychology, sociology, philosophy and more: studying Drama at university is a uniquely broad education in the arts and humanities. • From the ancient world to the present day, the theatre has played a role in reflecting, questioning, and celebrating the world around us. The theatre is a social practice and studying Drama involves a profound exploration of society.
Why study Drama & Theatre on London’s creative campus?
Welcome The Department of Drama & Theatre at Royal Holloway is part of the most creative campus in the University of London. We offer a great range of approaches to theatre, spanning the globe and the centuries, offering unrivalled opportunities for students to explore the theatrical cultures of the world. Our staff’s research is at the cutting edge of the discipline and our students find that our mixture of creative freedom and critical rigour makes for a stimulating, challenging environment in which to broaden their minds and deepen their skills. Our graduates are amazing. After three years here, it is always so satisfying to see them go on to make a real impact in their chosen careers, whether that is theatre and the arts, media, education, administration or business. Over the last decade, our graduates have formed theatre companies that have received national and international acclaim for their work. The success of our department can be seen in the fact that wherever in the country you choose to study Drama, you will probably be taught by someone who studied at Royal Holloway!
Professor Dan Rebellato Head of Department
Top ten UK Drama department for research quality (Times & Sunday Times Good University Guide, 2014) • Our beautiful, well-equipped campus has outstanding facilities to support your learning. Drama & Theatre has three major performance spaces (the Caryl Churchill Theatre, the Boilerhouse and the Handa Noh Studio), four rehearsal rooms equipped for performance, two workshops, design studio, and a digital technology studio. • Every course we teach has both a critical and creative assessment. You will have the opportunity to explore practice in a wide range of areas, including playwriting, devising, puppetry, dance and design. • You will work with world-leading teaching teams in areas such as applied theatre, contemporary theatre, international theatre, theatre history and performance-making. • We have a resident theatre company, and our location close to London provides us with strong links to theatre companies and individual theatre artists, local communities and a national and international network of theatre scholars and makers. We offer regular fieldtrips and activities in London as part of the degree. • You will be part of an energetic faculty that makes up London’s creative campus. You will find creative connections with other students studying Music, Media Arts, Creative Writing and English. Our active ‘Student Workshop’ is the department’s own drama society and is open to all years. The campus also boasts numerous drama, music, musical theatre and dance societies. • Combined students applying for Drama with Creative Writing, English, Languages or Music will enjoy an integrated degree based upon close co-operation between our strong and distinctive departments.
Image: Martha Pavlidou
GRADUATE VIEW
Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez, Max and Ivan, award-winning comedy writer/performers, BA Drama & Theatre Studies. “We are completely indebted to Royal Holloway for its amazing support - none of our future successes would have been possible without the encouragement we received during our time there”.
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Facilities We have three major performance spaces: The brand new Caryl Churchill Theatre, opened in 2013 and named after one of the most influential theatre writers of the last hundred years, is a flexible fullyequipped modern theatre seating up to 175. This is the space that we use for productions requiring complicated scenery or sophisticated lighting. It is adjacent to the Katharine Worth Building, the Georgian mansion in which most of our offices and teaching rooms are located. It is fully licensed for public performance. The Boilerhouse is a converted 19th-century boiler room that once heated the Royal Holloway’s Founder’s Building. This is a huge and atmospheric ‘found’ space in which we have installed a sprung dance floor. It is ideal for movement-based and environmental work, and the cobbled courtyard outside also offers an atmospheric performance space. The same complex houses a dance workshop space and the digital studio. The latter encourages the creation of mixed media work in the Boilerhouse. The Handa Noh Theatre is an asset unique to Royal Holloway, being the only permanently-standing Japanese Noh stage in Europe. Its square wooden stage has been used for movement work of many different kinds, and the audience space can easily be transformed into a performance space with broader cultural resonances. We also have a well-stocked wardrobe and a modern well-equipped workshop.
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Our undergraduates have their own common room. You are free to book rehearsal rooms and performance spaces outside teaching hours, so long as they are not needed for other departmental activities. We occupy two self-contained sites at one end of the campus, which helps build a strong sense of community. You’ll have 24-hour access to the College Computer Centre, and the library has built up a large stock of drama books and videos.
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Degree structure First year (foundation courses)
Second year
The first year is designed to equip all students with a toolbox and shared set of reference points to enable the study of theatre. In Theatre & Performance-Making, you will encounter a range of creative methods for making theatre and get to make a 20-minute performance in response to a particular theatre company. Theatre & Culture looks at the various complex ways that theatre can reflect, question, and intervene in the culture around it – and vice versa – from political theatre to applied drama, intercultural performance to community plays. Theatre & Text provides you with enhanced skills in reading, performing and creating theatrical texts, while Theatre & Ideas shows how other disciplines like philosophy, physics, politics and sociology can inform the study of theatre and how the theatre can be a forum for creatively interrogating those other disciplines. You’ll attend live performances and be taught by a range of staff, with opportunities to work with visiting theatremakers to explore your own creative and critical ideas.
You will return to each of these strands, but at a higher and more specialist level. Students on Theatre & Performance-Making 2 will specialise in a particular creative skill – playwriting, directing, designing, devising, and more – through intensive and rigorous practice and critical study. In Theatre & Text 2 and Theatre & Culture 2, the skills acquired in the first year are explored through the study of a particular period, culture, genre or tradition of writing for performance and a particular mode in which theatre and culture encounter each other; the range of expertise in the department is very considerable so you might find yourself studying Indonesian theatre and Theatre in Education, or Restoration Comedy and Augusto Boal, or Contemporary British Playwriting and Dramatherapy, or many other combinations. In Theatre & Ideas 2, you’ll explore a particular interdisciplinary encounter between theatre and another area of knowledge before considering some particular debates in the philosophy of art. We consider creative practice and critical analysis to be complementary modes of exploring the theatre, both essential, each reinforcing the other, and at first- and second-year level, all courses have 50% creative and 50% critical assessments. Final year You will have the opportunity to take much more personal responsibility for your learning, building on the skills you have already acquired. The centrepiece of your degree is the Final Year Project, which may be a group performance, a dissertation, or a special study option, each student choosing and developing their own project with guidance from staff. As such, while all students will continue to integrate creative and critical work, you can choose to specialise more in one direction than another. All of the Final Year Projects are showcased at a Finalists Festival, a week-long programme of performances, visiting speakers, panels, presentations, and debates, open to the public, showcasing the richness of the department’s work. Methods & Processes, is an advanced-level option that prepares you for independent work. You’ll also take part in a Drama Research Seminar, working in small groups with members of staff in an area of in-depth, original and cutting-edge research in some area of theatre and performance. Culture & Creativity looks outward to life after the degree, bringing in leading figures in the Arts, and sending students out to experience of the wealth of theatre and culture available in London. Joint honours students’ degrees are made up 50% of courses in Drama and 50% in the other department (see p.10).
STUDENT VIEW
Rachel Burnham, BA Drama & Theatre “There’s a great crossover between the academic side of things and the practical, extra-curricular side, which you can get involved with whenever you want!”
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Teaching and assessment You will experience a great range of teaching styles, including lectures, seminars, tutorials, and workshops. The most common teaching mode is the seminar/workshop, a class that lasts for two to three hours and contains around 18 students. This format allows the teaching to move freely between exposition (with visual aids as required), workshop exercises and informal discussion, ensuring that there is a constant interplay between theory and practice. Well-prepared students learn from each other as well as the course leader.
Assessment takes a variety of forms, according to the needs of the different subject areas; the only mode that we do not use is the formal timed examination. In all first- and second-year courses you are assessed half by creative work and half by critical work, reflecting our departmental principle that the two approaches are equally important, complementary and mutually reinforcing. You are sometimes assessed as part of a group, though after the first year that mark is always individually moderated. You accumulate, through your second and third years, the marks that make up your final degree.
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World-renowned research-led teaching Our world-leading teaching teams shape the discipline through their research, and this feeds directly into what you study. We have particular specialisms in: • applied theatre: this includes theatre in education, theatre in prisons, theatre for the elderly, community theatre, theatre and everyday life, dramatherapy, theatre and war and more • contemporary theatre: we have particular expertise in contemporary theatre, drama and performance in Britain, Europe, Australasia, North America and more • international theatre: including post-colonial theatre, interculturalism and migration, theatre and indigeneity, Indonesian, Chinese and Japanese theatre and more
• theatre history: we cover theatre in Ancient Greece, medieval theatre, Shakespeare and Renaissance theatre, eighteenth century theatre, melodrama, naturalism and modernist theatre, and more • performance-making: our staff includes directors, actors, leaders of devising companies, performance artists, playwrights, dramatherapists, applied theatremakers, designers and technical theatre specialists. Available courses change every year in response to evolving staff and student interests, as well as developments in theatre practice and the discipline. Within the limitations of class size and timetable, you have increasing freedom as you progress through your degree to choose courses that enable you to pursue your own creative and critical interests.
Combining Drama & Theatre with other disciplines One of the attractions of being on London’s creative campus is the opportunity to pursue a wide range of exciting combined degrees. BA Drama & Creative Writing This is a popular degree where students take half the single honours degree in Drama & Theatre and devote half their time to Creative Writing. By combining these two subjects, you will gain unique insights into the techniques used within a text by exploring them practically in your drama work and through writing your own pieces. BA Drama & Dance This exciting and rigorous programme is creative and critical in equal measure. It challenges your mind and body and offers you the opportunity to express your understanding of the cultures, contexts and histories of dance and theatre in both practical and theoretical ways.
BA English & Drama This distinctive joint honours programme allows students to take courses from both departments and also courses especially for English & Drama students, including Shakespeare Page to Stage. Students can specialise and pursue their developing interests in relations between text and performance across their three years of study. BA Classical Studies & Drama BA Comparative Literature and Culture & Drama BA Drama & Classical Studies BA Drama & German BA Drama & Italian BA Drama & Music BA Drama & Philosophy / with Philosophy BA Drama & Spanish BA French & Drama In all these programmes, you follow half your degree in one department, and half in the other (with the exception of Drama with Philosophy, which is split 75%/25%). Students taking drama with a language will spend their third year abroad.
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Admissions, entry requirements and other opportunities Interviews
Study abroad
We invite all candidates to an Applicant Visit Day, when you’ll have the opportunity to take part in a workshop and a short small group seminar with a member of staff. This is an opportunity for you to see the department in action and sample our teaching, so you can be sure you are making the right choice. And of course it is also a chance for us to meet you. The Applicant Visit Day day is not an audition and doesn’t involve any testing of your performance skills. We are looking for engaged, independent, creative and lively students to get the most out of the degree.
There are two options for studying abroad:
Entry requirements
If you choose to remain in the department to continue your studies, we offer MAs in Playwriting, in Applied and Participatory Theatre, and in Contemporary Performance Practices, as well as opportunities for postgraduate research. royalholloway.ac.uk/drama
The standard requirement for conditional offers is AAB-ABB. However, we encourage mature students with different forms of qualification and applicants who come with international qualifications or who have taken Access courses. If you feel that our requirements are beyond your reach, not because of your ability but because of your particular educational background, please do not feel that there is no point in applying! We are ready to recognise academic potential as well as achievement, and our aim is to achieve a diverse student group. The step between school and university is a big one, and if you are tempted to take a gap year, you have our full support.
• under the Socrates scheme, we send one student each year to Trinity College Dublin; here you take drama courses equivalent to those you would have studied at Royal Holloway • under a College scheme, you can compete with students from other departments for a placement in the USA, Canada, Japan or Australia. Postgraduate opportunities
College Open Days An Open Day at Royal Holloway offers a unique opportunity to come and see the College for yourself. You will have the chance to meet our students and teaching staff, and get a taste of what university life is really like. Parents and friends are very welcome to come with you. Dates of our next Open Days are listed at: royalholloway.ac.uk/opendays
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Your future career ‘While drama school allows students to hone their acting technique, a drama degree takes a more theoretical approach, covering topics such as scriptwriting and theatre design, giving graduates a thorough grounding in the subject and widening their career options in a highly competitive field.’ The Guardian
A Drama degree will give you: • confidence and self-presentation skills • self-discipline, organisation, planning and self-motivation skills • analytical skills, plus critical and independent thought, through research • ability to apply performance and production skills to communicate with an audience • communication skills, both written and oral
95% of our graduates are in work or further study
• ability to handle criticism • ability to negotiate and handle interpersonal issues through the creation of original work in groups • enhanced creativity and imagination • a bility to construct arguments and present them in appropriate ways.
(KIS data, 2014)
All kinds of employers value the combination of intellectual, imaginative, and practical skills that Royal Holloway’s Drama degrees develop. Our very successful graduates embark on a wide variety of careers as well as further academic study, for example in acting, stage management, arts administration, journalism, teaching or marketing and PR. You will gain considerable experience in transferable skills – the versatile strengths that you can apply and make use of in many different roles – and also in technical and organisational matters, as your productions may well involve complicated management of people, technical apparatus, and accounts. Our graduates move quickly into employment or to enhance their skills with further study. Some of our most recent graduates have gone to work with Stagecoach Theatre Arts School, Barbican Centre, Patchwork Theatre, the Sunday Times, and Limelight, as well as setting up their own theatre and arts companies.
GRADUATE VIEW
Lotty Englishby, Assistant Front of House Manager, Oxford Playhouse “The most important thing Royal Holloway taught me was to be confident and passionate about what I do. The verbal presentation element of each course component gives you the confidence to articulate your ideas, to persuade your audience and communicate your passion to a group. This has been indispensable in job interviews, meetings and presentations.”
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We work in partnership with the College’s dedicated Careers Service to help you enhance your employability and prepare for the choices ahead. We host The Next Stage, a week of events including talks on workshops on starting a theatre company, taking a production to Edinburgh and honing your CV and interview technique. Our students, along with those from across Royal Holloway’s creative arts departments, take a lead role in the Play! Festival of Culture, a fantastic summer showcase of original work, held on campus in partnership with the Firestation Arts Centre, Windsor. There are networking events with our alumni, like the buzzing Hob Nob Night, and we offer one-to-one appointments with a Careers Consultant, which are available throughout the year. Drama students can take advantage of the incredible range of employability opportunities across the year such as a part-time jobs fair, a wide variety of skills workshops, online sector-specific resources; plus a series of relevant themed careers weeks including ‘Creative and Media Careers’. royalholloway.ac.uk/careers And when you eventually move into the world of work, we like to keep in touch with you wherever you are in the world, and are always delighted to hear how your career is progressing. royalholloway.ac.uk/alumni
GRADUATE VIEW
Lizzie Cooper, BA Drama & Theatre Studies, Stage Manager “What was wonderful about the second and third years is that you were able to be extremely independent in your learning and go into areas that you were really enthusiastic about within a module - it could just all be about you!”
GRADUATE VIEW
James Pidgeon, BA English & Drama, Programme Manager, Shoreditch Town Hall “I chose Royal Holloway because of the integration of both my chosen disciplines into one course. I was attracted to how specific bespoke modules purposefully combined the two subjects as well as being taught by representatives from both departments. The two disciplines were treated as complementary subjects rather than completely detached, which I’d seen at other universities.”
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Staff teaching profiles Melissa Blanco Borelli, Senior Lecturer in Dance
Chris Megson, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre
Dance history and theory; devising for dance theatre; performance ethnography; critical (race) theory and philosophy
Contemporary theatre: politics and philosophy; post-war British theatre; naturalist and fin-de-siècle theatre; group Performance
Emma Brodzinski, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre
Helen Nicholson, Professor of Theatre and Performance
Live art; theatre and therapy; theatre and health; devising
Theatre education; performance of memory and museum theatre; theatre and cultural practices; theatre for young audiences
Matthew Isaac Cohen, Professor of International Theatre Southeast Asian performing arts, puppet theatre and object performance, cross-cultural and transnational performance Emma Cox, Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Australian and New Zealand theatre, film and activism; asylum and migration; museology, indigeneity and repatriation; family history
Sophie Nield, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre European modernist theatre; place, space and performance; historiography and critical theory; film studies Dan Rebellato, Professor of Contemporary Theatre, Head of Department
Helen Gilbert, Professor of Theatre
Modern and contemporary British and European theatre; playwriting; critical theory and philosophy
Australian theatre and film; postcolonial theatre; theatre in the Americas
Elizabeth Schafer, Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies
Lynette Goddard - Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Black and Asian theatre and performance; staging race on the British stage from the renaissance to the present; gender, race and sexuality in film, theatre and television; contemporary productions of Shakespeare on stage and screen Bryce Lease, Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Performance studies; contemporary European theatre; gender and sexuality; political theatre
Shakespeare in performance; Renaissance drama; Australian drama and theatre Ashley Thorpe, Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Actor training methods in Chinese and Japanese theatre; casting and theatrical representation; intercultural performance; research through practice Caroline Wake, Lecturer in Drama and Theatre
Dick McCaw, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre
Australian theatre, performance and visual culture; theatres of the real, including testimonial, tribunal and documentary theatre; theatre, performance and media; theories of spectatorship
Physical theatre; contemporary theatre practitioners; practical skills in theatre
David Williams, Professor of Performance Practices
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Devising, collaborative performance-making practices; directing; dramaturgy
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Royal Holloway, University of London Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX T: +44 (0)1784 434455 royalholloway.ac.uk
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