Heading in colour to match square on cover

Drama
& Theatre

Department of Drama & Theatre

Undergraduate Studies
Department of Drama & Theatre

Royal Holloway is widely recognised on the world

stage as one of the UKs leading teaching and
research universities. One of the larger colleges of
the University of London, we are strong across the
sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. We
were ranked 12th in the UK (102nd in the world) by the
Times Higher Education World University Rankings
2014, which described us as truly world class.
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Department of Drama & Theatre

As a cosmopolitan community, with students

from 130 countries, we focus on the support and
development of the individual. Our friendly and safe
campus, west of central London, provides a unique
environment for university study. We have been
voted as one of the 16 most beautiful universities in
the world (Daily Telegraph).

Department of Drama & Theatre

Contents
Top-rated for teaching and research,
Royal Holloway has one of the
largest and most influential Drama
and Theatre departments in the UK.
Ouracademic staff cover a huge
range of theatre and performance
with particular strengths in applied
drama, contemporary theatre,
international performance, theatre
history, and theatre and performance
making. Ournew state-of-the-art
4m performance space, the Caryl
Churchill Theatre, sits alongside the
Boilerhouse Theatre and Noh Theatre,
providing exemplary facilities for study
and practice. Our proximity to London
gives us unrivalled access to theatres,
productions and practitioners, while
the Surrey campus offers an intensive
and stimulating creative environment.

Why study Drama?

Why study Drama & Theatre on Londons creative

campus?

Facilities

Degree structure

Teaching and assessment

World-renowned research-led teaching

10

Combining Drama & Theatre with other disciplines

10

Admissions, entry requirements and other

opportunities

11

Your future career

12-13

Staff teaching profiles

14

CONTACT DETAILS

Head of Department
Professor Dan Rebellato
d.rebellato@royalholloway.ac.uk
General enquiries
drama@royalholloway.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)1784 276315
F: +44 (0)1784 276385
@RHULDrama

MORE INFORMATION

This brochure is designed to complement

Royal Holloways Undergraduate Prospectus
and information on the departments website at
royalholloway.ac.uk/drama
It is also available as a PDF at
royalholloway.ac.uk/studyhere

Department of Drama & Theatre

Why study drama?

Performance is about communication, and we live in a society
where the arts of communication are more important than
ever before. To study Drama is to acquire immensely valuable
life and career skills, including the ability to express your ideas
individually and in groups, on paper, in performance, in person,
and through technology. It asks you to demonstrate skills in
project management, teamwork and group management, time
management, research and creativity.
Making theatre and performance requires skills in all aspects of
the personality, mixing physical skills and mental agility, critical
rigour and boundless imagination. Studying drama involves
and helps to develop the whole person.

Department of Drama & Theatre

Exploring the theatre means drawing on history, psychology,

sociology, philosophy and more: studying Drama at university is
a uniquely broad education in the arts and humanities.
From the ancient world to the present day, the theatre has
played a role in reflecting, questioning, and celebrating the
world around us. The theatre is a social practice and studying
Drama involves a profound exploration of society.

Why study Drama & Theatre on Londons creative campus?

Welcome
The Department of Drama & Theatre at Royal Holloway is part of
the most creative campus in the University of London. We offer
a great range of approaches to theatre, spanning the globe and
the centuries, offering unrivalled opportunities for students to
explore the theatrical cultures of the world. Our staffs research
is at the cutting edge of the discipline and our students find that
our mixture of creative freedom and critical rigour makes for a
stimulating, challenging environment in which to broaden their
minds and deepen their skills.
Our graduates are amazing. After three years here, it is always
so satisfying to see them go on to make a real impact in their
chosen careers, whether that is theatre and the arts, media,
education, administration or business. Over the last decade, our
graduates have formed theatre companies that have received
national and international acclaim for their work. The success
of our department can be seen in the fact that wherever in the
country you choose to study Drama, you will probably be taught
by someone who studied at Royal Holloway!

Professor Dan Rebellato

Head of Department

Top ten UK Drama department for research quality

(Times & Sunday Times Good University Guide, 2014)
Our beautiful, well-equipped campus has outstanding
facilities to support your learning. Drama & Theatre has three
major performance spaces (the Caryl Churchill Theatre, the
Boilerhouse and the Handa Noh Studio), four rehearsal rooms
equipped for performance, two workshops, design studio, and a
digital technology studio.
Every course we teach has both a critical and creative
assessment. You will have the opportunity to explore practice in
a wide range of areas, including playwriting, devising, puppetry,
dance and design.
You will work with world-leading teaching teams in areas such
as applied theatre, contemporary theatre, international theatre,
theatre history and performance-making.
We have a resident theatre company, and our location close to
London provides us with strong links to theatre companies and
individual theatre artists, local communities and a national and
international network of theatre scholars and makers. We offer
regular fieldtrips and activities in London as part of the degree.
You will be part of an energetic faculty that makes up Londons
creative campus. You will find creative connections with other
students studying Music, Media Arts, Creative Writing and
English. Our active Student Workshop is the departments own
drama society and is open to all years. The campus also boasts
numerous drama, music, musical theatre and dance societies.
Combined students applying for Drama with Creative Writing,
English, Languages or Music will enjoy an integrated degree
based upon close co-operation between our strong and
distinctive departments.

Image: Martha Pavlidou

GRADUATE VIEW

Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez, Max and Ivan, award-winning comedy writer/performers,
BA Drama & Theatre Studies.
We are completely indebted to Royal Holloway for its amazing support - none of our future
successes would have been possible without the encouragement we received during our time there.

Department of Drama & Theatre

Facilities
We have three major performance spaces:
The brand new Caryl Churchill Theatre, opened in 2013
and named after one of the most influential theatre
writers of the last hundred years, is a flexible fullyequipped modern theatre seating up to 175. This is the
space that we use for productions requiring complicated
scenery or sophisticated lighting. It is adjacent to the
Katharine Worth Building, the Georgian mansion in
which most of our offices and teaching rooms are
located. It is fully licensed for public performance.
The Boilerhouse is a converted 19th-century boiler
room that once heated the Royal Holloways Founders
Building. This is a huge and atmospheric found space in
which we have installed a sprung dance floor. It is ideal
for movement-based and environmental work, and the
cobbled courtyard outside also offers an atmospheric
performance space. The same complex houses a
dance workshop space and the digital studio. The latter
encourages the creation of mixed media work in the
Boilerhouse.
The Handa Noh Theatre is an asset unique to
RoyalHolloway, being the only permanently-standing
Japanese Noh stage in Europe. Its square wooden stage
has been used for movement work of many different
kinds, and the audience space can easily be transformed
into a performance space with broader cultural
resonances. Wealso have a well-stocked wardrobe and
amodern well-equipped workshop.

Department of Drama & Theatre

Our undergraduates have their own common room.

Youare free to book rehearsal rooms and performance
spaces outside teaching hours, so long as they are not
needed for other departmental activities. We occupy
two self-contained sites at one end of the campus, which
helps build a strong sense of community.
Youll have 24-hour access to the College Computer
Centre, and the library has built up a large stock of drama
books and videos.

Department of Drama & Theatre

Degree structure
First year (foundation courses)

Second year

The first year is designed to equip all students with a toolbox and
shared set of reference points to enable the study of theatre.
In Theatre & Performance-Making, you will encounter a
range of creative methods for making theatre and get to make
a 20-minute performance in response to a particular theatre
company. Theatre & Culture looks at the various complex ways
that theatre can reflect, question, and intervene in the culture
around it and vice versa from political theatre to applied
drama, intercultural performance to community plays. Theatre &
Text provides you with enhanced skills in reading, performing and
creating theatrical texts, while Theatre & Ideas shows how other
disciplines like philosophy, physics, politics and sociology can
inform the study of theatre and how the theatre can be a forum for
creatively interrogating those other disciplines. Youll attend live
performances and be taught by a range of staff, with opportunities
to work with visiting theatremakers to explore your own creative
and critical ideas.

You will return to each of these strands, but at a higher and more
specialist level. Students on Theatre & Performance-Making 2
will specialise in a particular creative skill playwriting, directing,
designing, devising, and more through intensive and rigorous
practice and critical study. In Theatre & Text 2 and Theatre &
Culture 2, the skills acquired in the first year are explored through
the study of a particular period, culture, genre or tradition of
writing for performance and a particular mode in which theatre
and culture encounter each other; the range of expertise in
the department is very considerable so you might find yourself
studying Indonesian theatre and Theatre in Education, or
Restoration Comedy and Augusto Boal, or Contemporary British
Playwriting and Dramatherapy, or many other combinations. In
Theatre & Ideas 2, youll explore a particular interdisciplinary
encounter between theatre and another area of knowledge
before considering some particular debates in the philosophy
of art. We consider creative practice and critical analysis to be
complementary modes of exploring the theatre, both essential,
each reinforcing the other, and at first- and second-year level, all
courses have 50% creative and 50% critical assessments.
Final year
You will have the opportunity to take much more personal
responsibility for your learning, building on the skills you have
already acquired. The centrepiece of your degree is the Final
Year Project, which may be a group performance, a dissertation,
or a special study option, each student choosing and developing
their own project with guidance from staff. As such, while all
students will continue to integrate creative and critical work, you
can choose to specialise more in one direction than another. All
of the Final Year Projects are showcased at a Finalists Festival, a
week-long programme of performances, visiting speakers, panels,
presentations, and debates, open to the public, showcasing the
richness of the departments work. Methods & Processes, is an
advanced-level option that prepares you for independent work.
Youll also take part in a Drama Research Seminar, working
in small groups with members of staff in an area of in-depth,
original and cutting-edge research in some area of theatre and
performance. Culture & Creativity looks outward to life after
the degree, bringing in leading figures in the Arts, and sending
students out to experience of the wealth of theatre and culture
available in London.
Joint honours students degrees are made up 50% of courses in
Drama and 50% in the other department (see p.10).

STUDENT VIEW

Rachel Burnham, BA Drama & Theatre

Theres a great crossover between the academic side of things and the practical, extra-curricular
side, which you can get involved with whenever you want!

Department of Drama & Theatre

Teaching and assessment

You will experience a great range of teaching styles, including
lectures, seminars, tutorials, and workshops. The most common
teaching mode is the seminar/workshop, a class that lasts for
two to three hours and contains around 18 students. This format
allows the teaching to move freely between exposition (with visual
aids as required), workshop exercises and informal discussion,
ensuring that there is a constant interplay between theory and
practice. Well-prepared students learn from each other as well as
the course leader.

Assessment takes a variety of forms, according to the needs of the

different subject areas; the only mode that we do not use is the
formal timed examination. In all first- and second-year courses
you are assessed half by creative work and half by critical work,
reflecting our departmental principle that the two approaches are
equally important, complementary and mutually reinforcing. You are
sometimes assessed as part of a group, though after the first year that
mark is always individually moderated. You accumulate, through your
second and third years, the marks that make up your final degree.

Department of Drama & Theatre

World-renowned research-led teaching

Our world-leading teaching teams shape the discipline through
their research, and this feeds directly into what you study.
We have particular specialisms in:

applied theatre: this includes theatre in education, theatre in
prisons, theatre for the elderly, community theatre, theatre and
everyday life, dramatherapy, theatre and war and more

contemporary theatre: we have particular expertise in
contemporary theatre, drama and performance in Britain,
Europe, Australasia, North America and more

international theatre: including post-colonial theatre,
interculturalism and migration, theatre and indigeneity,
Indonesian, Chinese and Japanese theatre and more


theatre history: we cover theatre in Ancient Greece, medieval
theatre, Shakespeare and Renaissance theatre, eighteenth century
theatre, melodrama, naturalism and modernist theatre, and more

performance-making: our staff includes directors, actors,
leaders of devising companies, performance artists, playwrights,
dramatherapists, applied theatremakers, designers and
technical theatre specialists.
Available courses change every year in response to evolving
staff and student interests, as well as developments in theatre
practice and the discipline. Within the limitations of class size and
timetable, you have increasing freedom as you progress through
your degree to choose courses that enable you to pursue your own
creative and critical interests.

Combining Drama & Theatre with other disciplines

One of the attractions of being on Londons creative campus is the
opportunity to pursue a wide range of exciting combined degrees.
BA Drama & Creative Writing
This is a popular degree where students take half the single
honours degree in Drama & Theatre and devote half their time
to Creative Writing. By combining these two subjects, you will
gain unique insights into the techniques used within a text by
exploring them practically in your drama work and through writing
your own pieces.
BA Drama & Dance
This exciting and rigorous programme is creative and critical in
equal measure. It challenges your mind and body and offers you
the opportunity to express your understanding of the cultures,
contexts and histories of dance and theatre in both practical and
theoretical ways.

BA English & Drama

This distinctive joint honours programme allows students to
take courses from both departments and also courses especially
for English & Drama students, including Shakespeare Page to
Stage. Students can specialise and pursue their developing
interests in relations between text and performance across their
three years of study.
BA Classical Studies & Drama
BA Comparative Literature and Culture & Drama
BA Drama & Classical Studies
BA Drama & German
BA Drama & Italian
BA Drama & Music
BA Drama & Philosophy / with Philosophy
BA Drama & Spanish
BA French & Drama
In all these programmes, you follow half your degree in one
department, and half in the other (with the exception of Drama
with Philosophy, which is split 75%/25%). Students taking drama
with a language will spend their third year abroad.

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Department of Drama & Theatre

Admissions, entry requirements and other opportunities

Interviews

Study abroad

We invite all candidates to an Applicant Visit Day, when youll

have the opportunity to take part in a workshop and a short small
group seminar with a member of staff. This is an opportunity for
you to see the department in action and sample our teaching, so
you can be sure you are making the right choice. And of course
it is also a chance for us to meet you. The Applicant Visit Day
day is not an audition and doesnt involve any testing of your
performance skills. We are looking for engaged, independent,
creative and lively students to get the most out of the degree.

There are two options for studying abroad:

Entry requirements

If you choose to remain in the department to continue your

studies, we offer MAs in Playwriting, in Applied and Participatory
Theatre, and in Contemporary Performance Practices, as well as
opportunities for postgraduate research.
royalholloway.ac.uk/drama

The standard requirement for conditional offers is AAB-ABB.

However, we encourage mature students with different forms
of qualification and applicants who come with international
qualifications or who have taken Access courses. If you feel that
our requirements are beyond your reach, not because of your
ability but because of your particular educational background,
please do not feel that there is no point in applying! We are ready
to recognise academic potential as well as achievement, and
our aim is to achieve a diverse student group. The step between
school and university is a big one, and if you are tempted to take a
gap year, you have our full support.

under the Socrates scheme, we send one student each year to

Trinity College Dublin; here you take drama courses equivalent
to those you would have studied at Royal Holloway
under a College scheme, you can compete with students from
other departments for a placement in the USA, Canada, Japan
or Australia.
Postgraduate opportunities

College Open Days

An Open Day at Royal Holloway offers a unique opportunity to
come and see the College for yourself. You will have the chance
to meet our students and teaching staff, and get a taste of what
university life is really like. Parents and friends are very welcome
to come with you.
Dates of our next Open Days are listed at:
royalholloway.ac.uk/opendays

Department of Drama & Theatre

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Your future career

While drama school allows students to hone their acting
technique, a drama degree takes a more theoretical
approach, covering topics such as scriptwriting and theatre
design, giving graduates a thorough grounding in the subject
and widening their career options in a highly competitive
field. The Guardian

A Drama degree will give you:

confidence and self-presentation skills
self-discipline, organisation, planning and self-motivation skills
analytical skills, plus critical and independent thought, through
research
ability to apply performance and production skills to
communicate with an audience
communication skills, both written and oral

95% of our
graduates are
in work or
further study

ability to handle criticism

ability to negotiate and handle interpersonal issues through the
creation of original work in groups
enhanced creativity and imagination
a bility to construct arguments and present them in
appropriate ways.

(KIS data, 2014)

All kinds of employers value the combination of intellectual,

imaginative, and practical skills that Royal Holloways Drama
degrees develop. Our very successful graduates embark on a wide
variety of careers as well as further academic study, for example
in acting, stage management, arts administration, journalism,
teaching or marketing and PR. You will gain considerable
experience in transferable skills the versatile strengths that you
can apply and make use of in many different roles and also in
technical and organisational matters, as your productions may well
involve complicated management of people, technical apparatus,
and accounts.
Our graduates move quickly into employment or to enhance their
skills with further study. Some of our most recent graduates have
gone to work with Stagecoach Theatre Arts School, Barbican
Centre, Patchwork Theatre, the Sunday Times, and Limelight, as
well as setting up their own theatre and arts companies.

GRADUATE VIEW

Lotty Englishby, Assistant Front of House Manager, Oxford Playhouse

The most important thing Royal Holloway taught me was to be confident and passionate about what I
do. The verbal presentation element of each course component gives you the confidence to articulate
your ideas, to persuade your audience and communicate your passion to a group. This has been
indispensable in job interviews, meetings and presentations.

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Department of Drama & Theatre

We work in partnership with the Colleges dedicated Careers

Service to help you enhance your employability and prepare for
the choices ahead. We host The Next Stage, a week of events
including talks on workshops on starting a theatre company, taking
a production to Edinburgh and honing your CV and interview
technique. Our students, along with those from across Royal
Holloways creative arts departments, take a lead role in the Play!
Festival of Culture, a fantastic summer showcase of original work,
held on campus in partnership with the Firestation Arts Centre,
Windsor. There are networking events with our alumni, like the
buzzing Hob Nob Night, and we offer one-to-one appointments
with a Careers Consultant, which are available throughout the
year. Drama students can take advantage of the incredible range
of employability opportunities across the year such as a part-time
jobs fair, a wide variety of skills workshops, online sector-specific
resources; plus a series of relevant themed careers weeks including
Creative and Media Careers. royalholloway.ac.uk/careers
And when you eventually move into the world of work, we like
to keep in touch with you wherever you are in the world, and
are always delighted to hear how your career is progressing.
royalholloway.ac.uk/alumni

GRADUATE VIEW

Lizzie Cooper, BA Drama & Theatre Studies, Stage Manager

What was wonderful about the second and third years is that you were able to be extremely
independent in your learning and go into areas that you were really enthusiastic about within a
module - it could just all be about you!

GRADUATE VIEW

James Pidgeon, BA English & Drama, Programme Manager, Shoreditch Town Hall
I chose Royal Holloway because of the integration of both my chosen disciplines into one course. I was
attracted to how specific bespoke modules purposefully combined the two subjects as well as being
taught by representatives from both departments. The two disciplines were treated as complementary
subjects rather than completely detached, which Id seen at other universities.

Department of Drama & Theatre

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Staff teaching profiles

Melissa Blanco Borelli, Senior Lecturer in Dance

Chris Megson, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre

Dance history and theory; devising for dance theatre; performance

ethnography; critical (race) theory and philosophy

Contemporary theatre: politics and philosophy; post-war British

theatre; naturalist and fin-de-sicle theatre; group Performance

Emma Brodzinski, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre

Helen Nicholson, Professor of Theatre and Performance

Live art; theatre and therapy; theatre and health; devising

Theatre education; performance of memory and museum theatre;

theatre and cultural practices; theatre for young audiences

Matthew Isaac Cohen, Professor of International Theatre

Southeast Asian performing arts, puppet theatre and object
performance, cross-cultural and transnational performance
Emma Cox, Lecturer in Drama and Theatre
Australian and New Zealand theatre, film and activism; asylum and
migration; museology, indigeneity and repatriation; family history

Sophie Nield, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre

European modernist theatre; place, space and performance;
historiography and critical theory; film studies
Dan Rebellato, Professor of Contemporary Theatre,
Head of Department

Helen Gilbert, Professor of Theatre

Modern and contemporary British and European theatre;

playwriting; critical theory and philosophy

Australian theatre and film; postcolonial theatre; theatre in the

Americas

Elizabeth Schafer, Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies

Lynette Goddard - Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre

Black and Asian theatre and performance; staging race on the
British stage from the renaissance to the present; gender, race and
sexuality in film, theatre and television; contemporary productions
of Shakespeare on stage and screen
Bryce Lease, Lecturer in Drama and Theatre
Performance studies; contemporary European theatre; gender and
sexuality; political theatre

Shakespeare in performance; Renaissance drama; Australian

drama and theatre
Ashley Thorpe, Lecturer in Drama and Theatre
Actor training methods in Chinese and Japanese theatre; casting
and theatrical representation; intercultural performance; research
through practice
Caroline Wake, Lecturer in Drama and Theatre

Dick McCaw, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre

Australian theatre, performance and visual culture; theatres of

the real, including testimonial, tribunal and documentary theatre;
theatre, performance and media; theories of spectatorship

Physical theatre; contemporary theatre practitioners; practical

skills in theatre

David Williams, Professor of Performance Practices

Department of Drama & Theatre

7014 09/14

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Devising, collaborative performance-making practices; directing;

dramaturgy

Department of Drama & Theatre

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Royal Holloway, University of London

Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX
T: +44 (0)1784 434455
royalholloway.ac.uk

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Department of Drama & Theatre