What you'll study
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For information on the Queer Performance Specialist Pathway, please visit the Performance MA/MFA web page The Queer Performance MA/MFA is not currently accepting applications. Please note, if you are a current student or graduate of the Queer Performance MA/MFA, the programme structure and content remain unchanged. |
This course offers broad training in a range of queer performance practices, delivered by renowned queer artists, theatre-makers, academics, and researchers.
Fiercely socially engaged, political, experimental, and interdisciplinary, the course provides an in-depth, comprehensive examination of queer performance practice, studying its themes, methodologies, and untapped possibilities.
By collaborating closely with other queers in a supportive context, the course develops and expands your individual practice by offering opportunities to contextualise your work while collaborating with others.
We welcome all students with an interest in engaging with queer performance, whether primarily as maker (in theatre, live art, drag, cabaret, writing, video and moving image, sound art, digital arts), researcher, critic, facilitator or producer.
To hear more about the course from Programme Director Phoebe Patey-Ferguson, watch this video.
Please note: Course content is regularly reviewed to make it relevant and current. Course modules are, therefore, subject to change
Why choose this course?
Experimentation and innovation
Be part of the world's first postgraduate training in queer performance practice, building on important histories you will innovate approaches to making theatre, live art, cabaret, digital work and new writing for contemporary audiences.
Unique approach
Through in-depth training and study in intensives and weekly sessions, you will develop your artistic and academic expertise within established contexts alongside dynamic opportunities for making solo and collaborative performance work.
Expert training
You will be taught, guided and mentored by experienced world-leading staff with international reputations in queer performance as you explore different processes and develop new skills.
Research
This course creates a pedagogical culture dedicated to providing advanced, rigorous and challenging learning and development opportunities. Develop key skills in researching and thinking through queer methodologies and articulate how queer approaches inform the creation and reception of performance.
Sharing work
You will be encouraged to share work with audiences beyond Rose Bruford, including online, in club spaces, galleries, theatres and festivals. You will create and share an original work in any form, supported by a professional mentor.
Industry contacts and networking
Development of a professional network of creative relationships.
More about the course
This course is taught over 15 months (four terms). As a cohort, you will have four intensives together, three in London and normally one residency abroad. In the intensive periods, you will spend 1-2 weeks in the studio together daily.
During term time, there will be at least one in-person taught studio class each week. You will also have lectures, seminars, tutorials, mentorship sessions and independent solo or group work which may be conducted in person or online.
Accessibility and learning styles: The course is designed with accessibility considerations across all aspects, although we will always strive to improve and collaborate on improving our access provisions.
All written assessments have optionality for alternative spoken/performed components.
Module 1 : Thinking Queerly
The programme begins with a 10-day London-based intensive at the start of Autumn term including taught sessions, artist-led practical workshops, sharing and discussion of where we have all come from, our current positions and future aspirations, and to set our pathways for evolving ideas together.
- This module will examine how performance art, drag, theatre, street performance and cabaret has played a central role in the development of trans, lesbian, bisexual and gay lives in various global cultures. And in turn, how major historical moments for LGTBQI+ communities and queer critical theory has influenced the development of performance strategies.
- We will use interdisciplinary perspectives to draw connections between artists, historical events, queer social life and theory. Students will be encouraged to question dominant narratives and methodologies of theatre and performance, and think about who has been absent or forgotten in established archives, histories and stages.
Module 2 : Creatures of the Night
Intensive: This module will also be introduced in the 10-day London-based Autumn intensive through practical workshops, shared trips and seminar discussions. It will culminate in the Winter Intensive, where you will create and perform your own cabaret-inspired event as a cohort.
- Subsequently, you will be encouraged to research, watch and share queer cabaret, drag, durational, one-to-one, music-based, digital, dance and other experimental nightlife performances. in your own local contexts or through digital practice.
- Via taught studio classes and peer support you will develop performance works for a public cabaret event in a professional venue in London at the end of the module during the second intensive.
Module 3 : Queer Dramaturgies
Residential: This module includes one normally international residency between 7-10 days with leading queer performance practitioners.
Intensive practice-based research in making/devising critical and creative performance work in collaboration with each other.
- Including options for creative writing, video, sound, design and digital performance.
- Each group will be mentored by a leading queer performance practitioner.
Module 4 : Independent Research Project
Each student will design and create a substantial research-led project such as a solo or group performance, play text, video work, digital work, sound work, written dissertation or curatorial project. This will be supported by expert 1-1 supervision and classes on key research and producing skills.
- The work in progress will be shared with the incoming cohort during the fourth intensive, held at the start of the Autumn Term.
- The final work will be performed or presented in London during a dedicated showcase in November.
Programme Director and Academic Board Governor
Phoebe Patey-Ferguson is an academic, artist and producer. Their research expertise is on international theatre festivals, rooted in the Sociology of Theatre and Performance. This work frequently intersects with their further research interests in live art, contemporary British theatre, and queer theory. Phoebe’s Doctoral thesis examined the history and practice of international theatre festivals in Britain, with particular focus on the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) and its social, political and economic context.
Phoebe is a practising live artist and frequently works as a dramaturg for contemporary performance makers. They have worked as a producer with LIFT, In Between Time (IBT), and VFD delivering international festivals of theatre and live art. Phoebe frequently collaborates with organisations to create public talks programmes and symposiums, this has recently included Buzzcut Festival, the Live Art Development Agency (LADA) and Scottee & Friends.
Read their full profile Deputy Principal
Stephen Farrier is an academic and theatre maker whose work focusses on queer performance, popular performance forms and the ethics of research. Through a long-lasting fascination with the representation of identity, he is drawn to lesser told narratives. His research focusses on creating space for erased, invisible and silenced voices and the prominence and accessibility of queer performance. He has published widely on queer performance and has presented academic work extensively in international settings.
Stephen’s work in ethics has seen him active in the sector in several ways and he is often invited to present about ethics and performance research. Stephen has extensive experience of successful PhDs supervision in the areas of gender, sexuality, queerness and identity and is regularly called on by a range of institutions to support PhD work in this area.
He helps sustain the health of his area by supporting projects and theatre companies alongside peer review and editorial work for a large range of international scholarly journals and publishers. He makes small scale work for fringe festivals, particularly collaborating with solo performers in the traditions of queer performance.
Read their full profile Professor of Theatre & Performance
Brian Lobel is a performer, teacher and curator, who is interested in creating work about bodies and how they are watched, policed, poked, prodded and loved by others.
He has shown work internationally in a range of contexts, from Harvard Medical School and the Sydney Opera House to the National Theatre (London) and the Lagos Theatre Festival, blending provocative humour with insightful reflection.
His book Theatre & Cancer was published in 2019. Brian has received commissions and grants from the Wellcome Trust, Complicité, Jerwood, UMS (Ann Arbor), the British Council and Arts Council England, among others. Brian is a Wellcome Trust Public Engagement Fellow and the co-founder of The Sick of the Fringe.
Read their full profile Associate Artist, Queer Performance MA
Travis Alabanza is an award-winning writer, performer and theatre maker from Bristol. Their writing, performance and public discourse centres on trans and Black identities. Their work is interested in audience, risk and unclear conclusions. For stage, Travis wrote and performed in their debut show Burgerz which won the Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, sold out at Southbank Centre and Traverse Theatre and toured internationally.
Read their full profile Associate Artist, Queer Performance MA
Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT) is a transwoman who works internationally but lives in Kumasi, Ghana. Fiatsi is a multidisciplinary ‘artivist’, curator, mentor, the founder and artistic director of crazinisT artisT studio and perfocraZe International Artists Residency (pIAR) which aimed at promoting exchange between international and local artists, activists, researchers, curators, and thinkers.
Read their full profile
