Performance MA/MFA

What you'll study

Rose Bruford College’s Performance MA/MFA welcomes those interested in making, thinking, or writing about contemporary performance in diverse contexts.

You’ll explore interdisciplinary performance practices across a range of fields, centring innovative performance and research methodologies that draw on socially engaged and radical approaches – from education to nightlife, theatre to activism, immersive to experimental, and beyond.

A Flexible Programme Structure

This programme will empower you to develop new creative practices and refine your existing performance skills.

Through core Shared Modules and Specialist Pathways, you’ll engage with key techniques and approaches across a diverse range of disciplines:

• Actor-Musicianship

• Theatre for Children and Young People

• Queer Performance

• Curating
• Devising

Postgraduate performance training is an opportunity to expand and extend your creative and critical viewpoints. Our flexible structure enables you to tailor your learning experience – choose to focus on a single Pathway or explore multiple areas as your interests evolve.

You’ll study alongside students from a variety of disciplines, engaging collaboratively across shared modules whilst pursuing your specialist focus. This interdisciplinary environment encourages experimentation, dialogue, and exchange across forms and practices.

Shape the Future of Performance

Guided by world-leading experts and practitioners, this programme will challenge you to engage critically with cutting edge contemporary creative industries. You’ll develop your skills across a range of settings and contexts, gaining the confidence to shape and respond to the multiple futures of performance.

Ultimately, the Performance MA/MFA will support you to further develop your creative practice, enhance your professional opportunities, or continue into advanced research and study.

MFA

Master of Fine Arts (MFA) – Second Year 

Students who wish to extend their postgraduate studies can progress to an additional MFA year, dedicated to advancing artistic practice and research. 

What the MFA Year Offers 

• A creative laboratory where students shape their professional identity and explore bold new approaches to performance. 

• Opportunities to combine independent practice-based research with placements at leading arts organisations. 

• Direct engagement with the urgent issues, ideas, and debates shaping contemporary performing arts. 

Collaboration and Community 

• Work with artists, scholars, curators, and activists across theatre, live art, museums, galleries, and other cultural settings. 

• Develop ambitious performance projects with the support of academic mentors. 

• Take part in research events and networking sessions, contributing to Rose Bruford College’s dynamic postgraduate community. 

Core Focus 

• Interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches, centred on emerging theatrical and performative forms. 

• Practice-based workshops designed to generate ideas for research and imagine new futures for performance. 
• Exploration of: 

Creative documentation and archiving 

Performance’s role within communities 

Art as a catalyst for social change 

Critical Perspectives 

• Situate contemporary practice within: 

• Histories of key venues and festivals 

• The relationship between artistic and political agendas 

• The impact of cultural policy in the UK and internationally 

• Use theory as a practical framework, linking artistic work to its political, cultural, and historical contexts. 

Graduate Outcomes 

By the end of the MFA, students will: 

• Develop innovative, forward-looking visions for their chosen field. 

• Position their work within broader cultural and historical currents. 

• Be equipped with the skills and perspectives to thrive as artists, researchers, and cultural leaders. 

Programme Specification (MFA) PDF

More about the programme

• The Performance MA/MFA course supports you to create radical, political, responsive, community-focused, socially-engaged, and contemporary interdisciplinary work. 

• Collaborative performance-making approaches are combined with research-driven practices from a wide range of fields, while also offering opportunities to dive deeply into specific areas of practice. 

• The programme fosters exploratory, research-led practices, drawing on diverse disciplines and methodologies at the forefront of contemporary performance. 

• You will develop expertise in your own field while exchanging ideas across others, becoming a multi-hyphenate artist–practitioner–thinker–maker–doer. 

• You will build a network of robust cultural explorers invested in advanced, innovative practices. Interdisciplinarity is developed as a core theatre-making tool, with a focus on innovation and work that responds to audience, place, and space.

Who is the programme for? 

We welcome students from any disciplinary background who want to expand their engagement with contemporary creative practices. The programme encourages applicants with an interest in performance in any form, including (but not limited to): 

• theatre 

• movement 

• live art 

• drag and cabaret 

• writing 

• video and moving image 

• sound art 

• digital arts 

• community practice 

• education 

• research and criticism 

• facilitation and producing

Learning and Teaching

The programme is built around experiential, collaborative, and interdisciplinary learning that empowers you to shape your own artistic practice. Through workshops, rehearsals, performances, seminars, tutorials, and self-directed study, you will work as part of a dynamic cohort exploring diverse approaches to contemporary performance-making. 

Teaching combines creative experimentation with critical inquiry, encouraging you to develop as bold, socially engaged, and ethically aware artists. Drawing on queer, feminist, and socially engaged pedagogies, the programme challenges you to question existing models and imagine new possibilities for performance and cultural transformation.  

You will learn from leading academics, practitioners, and visiting industry specialists, while developing the collaborative, reflective, and professional skills needed to thrive in contemporary performance industries.

Practice Research 

At the heart of the programme is practice research: the understanding that knowledge is created through making. Whether devising performance, exploring actor-musicianship, or developing new creative methodologies, you will generate original insights through artistic practice. 

You will learn how to document and critically reflect on your creative processes, connect practice with theory, and communicate your work to professional and academic audiences.  

By the end of the programme, you will emerge as a distinctive artist-researcher equipped to contribute to contemporary performance culture and lead innovative creative work across performance industries and beyond. 

Assessment 

Assessment is integrated throughout the programme as an active part of your creative and professional development. Rather than measuring achievement, assessment is designed to help you refine your practice, articulate your ideas, and develop through ongoing dialogue with tutors and peers. 

You will engage in both formative and summative assessment across each module, with feedback supporting critical reflection, collaboration, creative experimentation, and the generation of new knowledge through practice. The programme embraces inclusive assessment approaches that recognise diverse ways of working and multiple forms of creative expression. 

Alongside written feedback on all summative work, you will take part in tutorials and reflective discussions following practical projects, ensuring assessment remains a dynamic and supportive process throughout your studies.

Careers

Our graduates will be expected to pursue careers across a wide range of sectors, whether it’s forming theatre and production companies, working as solo artists and performers, undertaking further study such as a PhD, or innovating new forms of performance-making. 

Rose Bruford College graduates are multi-hyphenate, critically engaged performers, equipped with the agility and versatility to navigate trends and challenges in a constantly evolving cultural landscape.