Manchester Metropolitan University

MA/MFA in Performance

MA/MFA Performance creates a space for asking big, daring questions about why we perform, who we perform for, and how radical performance can act upon and in the world. It offers a distinctive opportunity for graduates and artists, from experimental and laboratory theatre practices, contemporary dance, and performance art backgrounds, to create innovative new performance that plays across artistic borders.  

The course is shaped and driven by the passions and expertise of an interdisciplinary team of internationally recognized theatre makers, artists, and writers, offering two specialist routes in either Contemporary Performance or Laboratory Theatre.  

For graduates, this MA/MFA creates a bridge between undergraduate study and the professional arts world. For emerging and mid-career artists, this program is an opportunity to interrogate and transform your existing work within a supportive community of like-minded makers, with input from expert practitioners and scholars as mentors. We welcome applications from small groups of collaborating artists as well as individual makers. The Laboratory Theatre specialism is run in collaboration with the

renowned Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium (NTL) in Denmark, where students will be able to participate in professional placement opportunities at NTL’s theatre laboratory in Holstebro. Here, they will encounter and work with some truly inspiring people in an invigorating atmosphere. Students in this specialism will engage in rigorous psychophysical and vocal training from a range of international lineages and will be introduced to innovative dramaturgical strategies to develop their own expanded laboratory practice.  

The Contemporary Performance specialism promotes the development of innovative and experimental contemporary performance practice drawing on the lineage of post-modern performance and post-dramatic theatre. Students will create a range of performance projects, with their peers and professional artists, that will expose them to alternative ways of making and thinking about performance to intersect with, antagonize, disrupt, and complement their practice.

Year 1

MA Units

You'll follow a hands-on, practice-led approach to performance-making, encouraging you to push boundaries and develop your creative voice. Through your core modules, you'll explore the artistic and theoretical contexts of contemporary performance, dive into physical and vocal training traditions, and learn how to self-produce and profile your work within real-world performance settings. 

Progression onto the MFA requires that all 180 credits of the MA be passed, with at least a mark of 50% in each module.

Core modules

• Performer as Maker
• Professional Practices
• Major Project
• The Contemporary Laboratory

Option modules

• Making Performance
• Psychophysical Training

Year 2

MFA units

For students to graduate with the MFA in a bracketed specialism, they will need to carry their specialism into the MFA. For example, in the Production unit, students focusing on Laboratory Theatre will come out with MFA Performance (Laboratory Theatre).

Core modules

• Production
• Production Contexts

MA/MFA Performance graduates will leave the program able to operate as performance practitioners at a professional level, whilst understanding the vocational and critical contexts in which the field operates. This will empower them to develop a career as freelance theatre artists, or as other professionals in the sector (producers, programmers, facilitators, curators, pedagogies, etc.) or to combine these identities based on their own interests/skill-sets, as is increasingly common practice in the portfolio careers built by performance artists.

Study

• Full-time 35% lectures, seminars or similar; 0% placement; 65% independent study
• Part-time 35% lectures, seminars or similar; 0% placement; 65% independent study

Assessment

• Full-time 100% coursework; 0% practical; 0% examination
• Part-time 100% coursework; 0% practical; 0% examination