About Theatre And Performative Practices in University College Cork

The MA in Theatre & Performative Practices is designed to produce flexible, empowered theatre artists who want to rock the boat with innovative, cutting edge work. It provides a challenging and supported space for recent graduates and professional practitioners who know performance can be world-changing as it can be entertaining. Students will learn to follow their instincts and explore their unique creativity, within a rigorous critical context and research environment. 

With a focus on experimentation, collaboration and composition, this MA offers a unique opportunity for students to develop their own voice in a dynamic, practice and research-based, interdisciplinary learning environment. It is launching at a key time in the history of theatre and performance practice Ireland and world-wide, with the Me Too movement, Waking the Feminists, and ongoing discussion and controversy regarding the culture and nature of performance, film and theatre work. 

Students will engage in study trips abroad and workshops with pioneering theatre and performance practitioners, including American dance duo Junk Ensemble and the inaugural UCC Cork Opera House Theatre Artist in Residence (to be appointed in June 2018). The MA includes a one week intensive with The Llanarth Group, directed by world-leading scholar and director Philip Zarrilli and award-winning dramaturge, playwright and Arts & Disability activist Kaite O’Reilly. 

This MA makes space for performance as an essential tool for social and political change. Graduates will emerge ready to invigorate the cultural life of Ireland, Europe and beyond.

To mark the launch of the new MA in theatre and performative practice, the college of arts, celtic studies and social sciences are offering a masters excellence scholarship to one applicant to this programme.

Skills and Careers Information

What can I do after I graduate with an MA in Theatre & Performative Practices?
After you graduate you will be qualified and work-ready for multiple aspects of the creative industries, both those specifically related to theatre and performance, as well as broader aspects of cultural production, administration and the creative industries. This MA trains students in skills of making and producing theatre and performative events, in lively collaboration and always in context. These are skills which are critically and dynamically transferable to the professional worlds of theatre, dance and cultural industries. 

Occupations associated with the MA in Theatre & Performative Practices
Our previous students work in multiple aspects of contemporary theatre, dance and the cultural industries. These include Creative Cultural Producers (Theatre Production, Dance Production, Festival Production), Arts Managers, Arts Administrators, Theatre Directors, Choreographers, Performers, Playwrights, Writers for TV & Film, Community Artists working in Theatre, Dance and Visual Art as well as related industries of Journalism, Library Management, Teaching and Academia.

What are our graduates doing?
Sefanie Preissner is a screenwriter, playwright and actor. Her six-part comedy-drama series, Can’t Cope/Won’t Cope (RTE, Northern Ireland Screen, Deadpan Pictures) was broadcast in 2016: “A series so well written it was hard to watch” Irish Times Oct 17, 2016. Stefanie graduated with a BA in Drama & Theatre Studies & Spanish in 2008.
Julie Kelleher is Artistic Director of the Everyman Theatre in Cork. One of the youngest venue producers in the country, she has been responsible for dynamically raising the profile of the Everyman. Julie was among the first cohort of students to study Drama & Theatre Studies at UCC, graduating with a BA in 2004, and an MA in 2007.

Academic qualification equivalents

• Applicants should have an honours degree in a related subject.
• Indian applicants will normally be required to achieve a first class/first division mark in their undergraduate programme at a good institution of higher education in India. At the discretion of academic departments, students with degrees awarded by top universities such as the University of Mumbai, University of Delhi, University of Calcutta, and the University of Pune, may be accepted with high second class/high second division marks. 

English language requirements (one of the below):

• IELTS: 6.5  Minimum individual sections 5.5
• TOEFL: TOEFL 90  Listening - 17; Reading - 18; Speaking - 20; Writing 17
• PTE: 63 Minimum individual sections 51

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