What will you be learning in MAAT?

Core Modules:

Researching Performance/Performing Research

This module considers the research methods that are central to applied and socially engaged performance making and research. It addresses a range of research skills, methods, critical frameworks and areas of study that inform processes of making and creating performance in these contexts. It opens up debate around the questions and ethical considerations that arise when employing specific research methods in these contexts in order to develop informed critical perspectives on different approaches in the field.

Socially Engaged Performance: Interventions and Provocations

Working through case studies focused on pressing social issues such as the climate crisis, austerity and homelessness, this module is concerned with how creative methodologies are being employed in activist forms of socially-engaged art and digital based arts practice that are about social change. It focuses on the potential of theatrical and performance modes to pose questions and invite reflection through its ability to intervene, surprise, disrupt, subvert, transform and imagine possible future worlds. It considers how theatre-making and creative approaches to digital practice can foster networks, collaborations and movements that are about tangible change within and across communities. 

Students on the MA Applied Theatre: Arts, Action, Change may also be interested to take an optional module from other MAs in the University including

Drama and Theatre Education.

Enhancing Your Professional Profile

Rooted in advice and guidance from established practitioners in a range of settings, this module offers practical insight into the skills and knowledge you will need to develop and build your professional profile. It will explore what it means to have a portfolio career; how you establish a company and promote your work; the importance of making connections and working with collaborators; project initiation, budgeting, management and evaluation; how to shape funding applications that tap into the cultural zeitgeist and respond to different briefs and the needs of organisations whether they are in the educational, criminal justice, health, charity or international development sectors.

Final Project (written or practical)

The programme culminates in an extended independent project that is designed, managed and delivered by the student with support and guidance from a supervisor. It offers an opportunity to draw together knowledge and skills developed on the MA on a project that reflects specific interests, artistic practice and career trajectories. Students undertaking the Final Project can choose to undertake a 15,000-word dissertation or a practical outcome that may take the form of a performance, digital project or community-based output.

Optional Modules:

Theorising and Facilitating Applied Theatre: Ethics and Reflective Practice

Through a dynamic combination of theory and practice, this module investigates what it means to be a reflective practitioner by exploring diverse approaches to understanding and facilitating applied theatre projects. It provides a conceptual and practical underpinning for how and why theatre and performance modes are used with specific client groups and in different environments. Looking at key practitioners and providers in the sector, at its heart is a concern with the politics, aesthetics and ethics of practice and what it means to facilitate applied theatre projects with and for potentially vulnerable people in a variety of contexts. The module will explore strategies for initiating, making, facilitating, analysing and evaluating applied theatre to create an informed culture of practice.

* The modules mentioned above may be subject to change.

Please read ourterms and conditionsfor more detailed information.

Image credit Jade Studios