The MA/MFA Performance is an exciting taught masters programme that offers a practical, versatile and interdisciplinary approach to performance-making and training. The programme provides students with an advanced and practical understanding of current performance practices, drawing on a broad range of artistic and theoretical influences. The development of new creative practice is at the core of the programme, as well as how this work might be developed and profiled in a professional context. Furthermore, MA/MFA Performance also offers students the chance to specialise in either of the distinctive areas of laboratory theatre or contemporary performance, or to combine elements from both with direct experience of a current professional arts context. The experience of these options is fed through a further process of critical and professional contextualisation, before students embark on the creation of their own major projects as the culmination of the degree. The laboratory theatre specialism focuses on performer training, dramaturgy and socially-engaged cultural actions. It also offers students the unique opportunity of a residency at Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium (NTL) in Denmark, the umbrella organisation of which internationally renowned laboratory theatre group Odin Teatret (Denmark) is a part. The premium uplift for students on the Laboratory Theatre specialism is £2,000. The contemporary performance specialism focuses on the creation of innovative and experimental performance practice, within or across the categories of radical theatre, contemporary dance and performance art/live art. It draws particularly on the acclaimed interdisciplinary ethos and context of the Manchester School of Art and Manchesters international arts networks.

Career prospects

MA/MFA Performance graduates will leave the programme able to operate as performance practitioners at a professional level, whilst understanding the vocational and critical contexts in which the field operates. This will empower them to develop a career as freelance theatre artists, or as other professionals in the sector (producers, programmers, facilitators, curators, pedagogues etc.) or to combine these identities based on their own interests/skill sets, as is increasingly common practice in the portfolio careers built by performance artists.