Course summary

Drama at Exeter is an internationally-renowned centre for practice, research and teaching, and offers a supportive and stimulating environment for postgraduate research and practice, welcoming students from around the world. The MPhil/PhD in Performance Practice offers you an opportunity to extend and reflect on your creative performance practice. The area of study is entirely dependent upon your expertise, and could include playwriting, acting, directing, physical theatre, dance theatre, music theatre, or music performance. The major part of your PhD will be a series of creative projects designed to interrogate the research objectives of your chosen practice. Each creative project will be accompanied by an analytical commentary of normally no more than 10,000 words. Normally, the written commentaries and introductory material for a PhD in Performance Practice extend to 40,000 words. We work through creative practice, historiography, socially-engaged research, ethnography and transdisciplinary collaboration. We have a particular interest in understanding the marginalizations and exclusions of British theatre cultures and industries; Asian performance cultures and diasporic practices; and the cultural aspects of contemporary concerns such as climate crisis, healthcare and urbanization, space and rurality. We research a wide range of performance practices, from taking a performance studies lens to everyday cultural activities, to analysing the significance of mainstream and popular theatre forms. We have a well-established reputation for excellence in theatre history, contemporary performance practice and applied/community theatre. We are a mutually supportive community of staff and postgraduate students, committed to high ethical standards and to challenging reliance on colonial, patriarchal, classed and gender-based hierarchies. To learn more about modules, assessment methods, facilities and our staff research expertise please visit our course page.