中央演讲与戏剧学院(伦敦大学)

About the course

As a student on the MA or MFA Advanced Theatre Practice at Central, you can expect to:

Engage in a collaborative laboratory for practical experimentation
Create new work for an extensive range of public encounters
Play a leading role in tomorrow’s performance and theatre making worlds.

Benefits of the programme

• Develop experience from extensive workshops with leading professionals, learning to research and extend your own practice, launch a company, make new work, and, on the MA, finally take this to an audience beyond Central
• Extend the roles of performer, director, writer, designer, dramaturg, puppeteer, musician, artist, or creative thinker in new and unexpected ways within a supportive atmosphere of discovery and innovation
• Explore the interdisciplinarity of performer practices, performance composition or scenography, through learning skills, exploring processes and experimenting with techniques. Become involved in web-based technologies and digital media, building on the tradition of theatre making as a communicative medium of exchange, or inspired by the current wave of experimental directors, explore the distinct roles of director or performer working with text in contemporary theatre
• Become involved in new technologies, digital media and virtual techniques or, inspired by the current wave of experimental directors, explore the distinct roles of director, performer, or puppeteer (of object theatre) working with text in contemporary theatre
• Have opportunities to take work made on the course to festivals and events outside the School, for example, Camden People’s Theatre, Istropolitana Projekt (Slovakia), Zlomvaz Festival (Prague), Marathon Festival (Jerusalem), Blalystok Festival (Poland), Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Prague Quadriennale
• Join a network of distinguished alumni, including winners of Olivier, Total Theatre, Irish Times, Deutsche Bank, Rolex Mentor and Protégée, JMK, Allen Wright, Linbury and Evening Standard Theatre Awards, changing the way we work and think about theatre
• Have excellent opportunities, if undertaking the MFA, to work for an extended period with a number of distinguished external companies. You will be part of a carefully selected group who wish to pool your resources and imagine the theatre of the future.

Assessment

Practice is evaluated throughout the first three terms through continuous assessment of contribution to the rehearsal/development process, combined with essays reflecting on this work in the broader context of contemporary theatre practice. Peer assessment also forms a part of the evaluation process.

The course prepares you for the Sustained Independent Project. Those undertaking the MA will take a performance work that has been made with colleagues to a documented encounter with a public audience during the summer.

MFA students will choose from a list of possible approaches and means of documenting your work, undertaking a more developed and independent version of the Sustained Independent Project beyond Central during your second year.