Drama school launches MA course in queer performance

A creative arts college in London is launching a postgraduate masters-level qualification in queer performance, claiming it to be the first of its kind in the world.

Rose Bruford College, whose alumni include Oscar-winner actor Gary Oldman, said the course has been designed to allow students to "create, explore, examine and expand queer performance practice".

The new course will cover elements of practice including drag, performance art, playwriting, and immersive experiences. It has been designed to be "fiercely socially engaged, political, experimental, and interdisciplinary".

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The college, which is based in Sidcup, South London, said the programme will be delivered by queer artists, theatre-makers, academics, and researchers, including Professor Stephen Farrier, a scholar of drag and popular queer performance and Head of Postgraduate School & Director of Research at Rose Bruford College, and queer theatre maker Professor Brian Lobel.

Course Director Dr Phoebe Patey-Ferguson said the course has been designed to be "as inventive and multidisciplinary as the fabulous community which it celebrates".

"Queer performance is where I consistently see the most exciting ideas for what theatre and art should be, but also for what the world should be and what the future should look like," she said.

"This distinctive new course is a space to hold radical imaginings for where contemporary performance practice might be going next – as well as celebrating the diverse histories of queer makers and thinkers. 

"Queer performance is already everywhere – on stages, screens, streets, dance floors, galleries, fields and festivals – and now it finally has its own dedicated space in the academy at Rose Bruford College."

The college said new programme will be delivered in a hybrid way, with full or part time options, via distance learning and in-person, offering the opportunity for students to continue their work as artists outside of their learning.

The course will launch in autumn, with applications now open.