Curious about studying Drama - BA (Hons)at University of Essex? We've gathered all the key details—entry requirements, modules, fees, and more. Hear from real students by checking out reviews, or take the next step by booking an open day to explore it for yourself.
Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) - BA (Hons)
University of Essex
Full Time
Oct 2026
3 Year
Theatre is a radical and influential art form. Its roots lie deep in the ancient world but its relevance to contemporary life is urgent and ongoing. Theatre enables different cultures and societies to confront the most important issues of our time; it provides a crucial space to laugh, to dream, and dare to project different worlds. Studying theatre and drama at Essex enables you to examine some of the most influential play-texts ever written, and to be ready to take part in shaping the essential performances of tomorrow. This degree is a chance to unlock and explore your creativity. You will be performing and producing work in the professional context of our state-of-the-art Lakeside Theatre, and will be developing a wide range of creative, critical and practical skills that will open the door to a future in the theatre, cultural industries or a wide range of other graduate careers. At Essex, we offer a rich combination of practical workshops, critical seminars and lectures, and employability opportunities delivered by an experienced team of playwrights, directors, and actors, as well as leading academic theatre specialists. Areas of exploration in our modules include, but are not limited to: - Dramatic literature from Ancient Greek tragedy and Shakespeare, to modern plays from around the world - Contemporary playwriting and devising techniques - Staging political ideas, human rights and social justice issues - Gender, identity, orientation and sexual politics on stage - Creating Applied Theatre in educational and community contexts - Emergent trends in interactive performance-making and audience participation Through classroom teaching, practical experiment and professional experience, we help you craft the skillset that will be essential in your creative development. This approach reflects our core belief that engaging with both practice and theory produces a deeper understanding of how theatre works. Our commitment to the student experience is why we are ranked third for drama in the Guardian University Guide 2021 and top 20 for dance, drama and cinematics (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2021). Top 20 for overall student satisfaction in the National Student Survey 2021. Other courses within the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, including Literature, Creative Writing, Filmmaking and Journalism, are available as options to all our students.
Which writers re-worked Homer’s Odyssey? Or borrowed ideas from Dante’s Inferno? Examine how key literary texts and genres have been used by successive generations of writers up until the present day. Shift from classical text to a more modern example, studying the long cultural traditions that exist.
This module looks at how theatrical ideas developed and made into reality. The module guides you carefully through the technical expertise required, and allows you to explore lighting, sound and stage management in professionally-led workshops. Through a series of workshops, seminars and field trips, including theatre and gallery visits, students will be introduced to the variety of stimuli and strategies that theatre makers use to create a production. The content of this half-module is closely linked to the programme of the Lakeside Theatre, students will see professional performances, be introduced to visiting professional theatre makers and will experiment with a range of practical processes that they use. Students will be introduced to a variety of rehearsal processes and techniques commonly used by contemporary theatre and performance makers.
This is the foundational module for your BA Drama Degree. We enrich your existing knowledge of major theatre practitioners – Aristotle, Brecht, Artaud and Stanislavski – and complement these studies by introducing new theatre theorists, movements and styles. Examine plays from Ancient Greece to today, discussing issues like genre, representation, reception, modernism and postmodernism. This module blends together practical and theoretical classes to create the building blocks for an informed study of theatre practice.
Theatre is a collaborative art form. A company of theatre practitioners gathers to make a production, comprising of a producer, director, designers, composers, production manager, performers, technicians, musicians, stage management, promoters, choreographers, scenic artists, set builders etc. according to the needs of the production and the confines of the budget. Each person plays a key role and makes an individual creative contribution to the whole. In this module, you will develop work related to Technical Theatre Arts. Through hands-on practical workshops, exercises, reflection and seminars this module introduces you to the basic principles of technical theatre, which will be crucial knowledge for use throughout your degree. You work through the basic concepts of lighting, sound, video, stage & production management, along with understanding health & safety in the theatre space. The conclusion of the module is an assessment that will see you working collaboratively with the goal of staging the technical aspects of a given performance piece on the main stage of Lakeside Theatre.
This interdisciplinary module serves several functions. Firstly, you will develop an understanding of your degree in the context of the wider world and specifically the graduate jobs market. You will come to understand the employability and career-development opportunities that are available to you during and after your time at Essex, and you will begin the life-long process of continuous professional development with a firm grounding in the practical skills and reflective practice involved. The module is divided into two parts: career-development learning; and Speaker Weeks, when a member of staff will interview guest speakers about their careers in fields that are allied to the arts and humanities. These will cover a range of career areas that may be of interest to humanities graduates in general: from media, arts, journalism, education, publishing, to entrepreneurship in related areas. These weeks are intended to be inspiring but also full of practical tips and ideas, with an emphasis on showing how careers develop over time, and what pathways students can explore to get to where they want to be; as well as what kinds of extra-curricular activities students can engage in now to open more doors professionally before and after graduation. In the career-development learning part of the module, you will cover topics such as the Graduate Labour market, the Humanities graduate, self-reflection and personal development, and how to research and apply effectively for jobs. Skills such as CV writing and interview technique will be covered. Two-hour interactive lecture/seminars will introduce students to careers resources and ideas, but will also include discussion and group work.
What possibilities does radio offer a writer? What techniques are required? How can the main tools of dramatic construction be exploited for radio? Focusing on drama, study work currently being broadcast plus classic pieces. Make use of the University’s studio to record extracts of your own radio scripts.
This course offers students the opportunity to work collaboratively as part of an ensemble to create, rehearse, and realise a practical theatre project. Through guided workshops and rehearsals, students will explore ensemble-based approaches to performance, focusing on shared authorship, collaboration, and collective creativity.
This module will explore concepts and practices of performance and theatre from around the world in order to provide a theoretical underpinning and some practical grounding. It will look at the main traditional forms of theatre in Asia, Africa and Southern America. This module will foster an interdisciplinary approach: it will make clear links with anthropology, cultural studies, history and film studies and will encourage you to make comparisons between practices and ideas through the employ of a variety of material: archive, video and cinematic material, literary texts and play-texts.
Focusing on a number of different approaches to directing, in this module you learn how to work creatively and collaboratively with actors for film. You take inspiration from famous film directors and critically analyse their directing style. You cover the process of directing from start to finish, from script analysis for casting, rehearsals and film production. It involves both theoretical and practice-based sessions, allowing you to study directing in a realistic environment.
Can theatre make a significant contribution to shifting and impassioned debates about gender, feminism and identity? This module examines how the theatre, from Shakespeare's times to the present day, has explored our inherited scripts of gender, and has challenged how we perform these scripts in life and art. Here we apply gender theory and feminist criticism to examine an exciting range of plays and performance styles, and ask students to make their own piece of theatre in response. This is a module that examines gender from many intersectional perspectives, for anyone curious to understand the many ways perceptions of gender influence identity, image, expression and power.
This module focuses on three plays and enables a deep understanding of each and the different challenges they offer the actor and the director. Students are asked to negotiate their own creative voices in relation to plays and roles written centuries ago, investigating what it means to perform these plays today.
Pursue your own interests and passions by designing and carrying out your own theatre research project. Whether it’s a new approach to directing a classic play, writing a script, running workshops, or exploring an area like puppetry or theatre in education, the Independent Practical Project gives you the chance to implement your own programme of creative research, under specialist supervision from an academic staff member.
Taught by award-winning professional playwrights, this module takes you through the A-Z of writing full-length plays. In this laboratory environment we study the tools and techniques you need to write successfully for the theatre. The module examines the different approaches available to the playwright, and challenges ideas about form, structure and use of language. Studying a range of playscripts in depth, you will develop your skills through practical exercises and assignments. This module gives you the opportunity to enhance your own creative process and progress your professional career.
Nominated for module of the year, we examine here how theatre practitioners have approached the urgent political crises of the last century. We ask how theatre and human rights interact, and can they intervene in changing hearts and minds. You study a range of plays alongside the ideas of influential practitioners, plus political films and works of art. This module gives you the chance to make your original theatre pieces in response to social issues and world events. This module has been designed to enable students to integrate their subject knowledge with an understanding of sustainable development, acquiring the skills and competencies essential for addressing the urgent sustainability challenges of the 21st century.
Taking this module asks you to immerse yourself as an actor in the process of creating a role. We will explore two contrasting plays in depth and detail and look at how actors and directors in a rehearsal room create the shared imaginative world of the play, through research and exploration. We'll build on and extend your understanding of voice, text, script analysis, physicality, and controlling nerves. We'll look at key theoretical writings about acting and performance and explore them through our practice as actors in the rehearsal room, and on stage.
Study some of the ways in which Naturalism evolved and developed and trace its influence upon contemporary playwrights. This module is emphasises practical work and also investigates it theoretically.
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