Programme description

Led by award-winning playwright, director and dramaturge Nicola McCartney, our MSc in Playwriting offers a high level of contact with the theatre industry. It will appeal to emerging playwrights, directors, dramaturges, performance artists and critics.

The programme focuses not only on the craft of writing for performance, but also on how a script plays out in real space and time, and in front of an audience.

You will be taught through a dynamic combination of seminars, workshops, one-to-one supervision and professional masterclasses by some of Europe’s leading playwrights and theatre artists. Previous collaborators include world famous and award-winning practitioners such as Cora Bissett, Sir Michael Boyd, Gregory Burke, Kai Fischer, Tanika Gupta, Philip Howard, Rosie Kellagher, Lucy Kirkwood, Matthew Lenton, Linda McLean, Orla O'Loughlin, Adura Onashile, Robin Soanes and John Tiffany.

A core component of the degree is a series of workshops, facilitated by Playwrights' Studio Scotland, to develop your own work with professional actors and directors.

Programme structure

Over the programme’s duration, you’ll take two 40-credit core courses on ‘The Craft of the Playwright’, and two 20-credit option courses chosen from a wide range of subjects.

Typical courses available as options include:

Time and Space of Performance
Theatre, Performance, Performativity
Tragedy and Modernity
Political Shakespeare
Theories of Intermediality

You’ll be assessed through a combination of portfolio work, essays and your final dissertation - a 100 minute, full-length play (worth 60 credits). This will be written with the advice and support of the Programme Director, and developed through two, week-long workshops and readings with a professional director and actors.

Career opportunities

Offering a high level of contact with the theatre industry, our MSc in Playwriting is an immersive introduction to the theatre scene in Edinburgh, Scotland and internationally.

Over the course of the programme, you’ll explore your individual creative voice, developing the self-motivation and focus necessary to work as an independent artist within the theatre industry.

Not only will you develop in the craft of playwriting, but in the transferable skills of dramaturgy, script analysis and working through devising.

On completion, you will have written at least two short works and one full-length piece for live performance.

The transferable skills you will gain, such as communication, research and project management, will be valuable to your career development whatever path you choose, including advanced study, if it interests you.

Our graduates have gone on to be professional playwrights but also to careers in arts management, journalism, performance art, screenwriting, teaching and socially-engaged arts practice.