BA in Drama, Applied Theatre and Education

In the Drama, Applied Theatre and Education (DATE) course, you can:

• Perform in, direct and devise theatre, and explore performance that takes place outside traditional theatre environments.
• Make theatre to change lives and inspire change in communities.
• Build industry contacts worldwide through placements and outreach projects.
• Develop skills in areas such as facilitating, devising, directing, performing, playwriting and filmmaking.

Join an international world leader in Applied Theatre

Applied Theatre at Central is highly regarded internationally, and the Drama, Applied Theatre and Education (DATE) is a world-leading course that will train you as a highly adaptable theatre maker. You will focus on performance making in diverse settings such as community centres, parks, prisons, pupil referral units, refugee camps, hospitals, playgrounds, schools and nursing homes in the UK and abroad. Such innovative work aims to bring about change in communities and participants from all walks of life.

We believe that excellent professional applied drama theatre makers are skilled practically and intellectually and come from a diverse set of backgrounds themselves. We work with you to help you meet the challenge of developing your practice and intellectual abilities. You will have the opportunity to develop skills in areas such as facilitating, devising, directing, performing, playwriting and filmmaking.

An experience tailored to you

The course offers an unparalleled breadth of experience tailored to your developing aspirations. Whilst lively debate and energetic discussion are a cornerstone of the course, you will have the opportunity to participate in professional quality, fully-realised directed productions, for example, a commissioned site-specific show and touring ensemble works, a show for young audiences, or a theatre in education show in the north of England. Alongside performance work in the community, you will have the opportunity to make and show work at Central.

Work alongside industry professionals

As you progress, you develop your own creative performance-making skills and show, in small groups, performance-based projects for specific communities and groups.

You will work alongside visiting professional practitioners, playwrights, filmmakers and applied theatre specialists from organisations which have, in the past, included Tamasha Theatre Company, Royal Court Theatre, Complicite, Talawa Theatre Company, London Bubble Theatre Company, Greenwich and Lewisham Young People’s Theatre and Synergy Theatre Project.

You will learn through a programme of performance making, formal lectures, essay writing, workshops, skills sessions, movement and voice classes, seminars, group and individual practice and placements. Being at Central means, you benefit from the specialist expertise and resources available because of the course’s distinctive positioning within a drama school.

Variation and exploration

You may have the opportunity to travel and explore the use of drama in diverse community settings. In recent years, students have undertaken projects in places such as New York, Johannesburg, Bulawayo, Hong Kong, Santiago de Chile and Mumbai. Most of this work is undertaken in partnership with international arts organisations, which work closely with course tutors and students to design, develop and deliver projects. Central has the only applied theatre courses on which students have access to funding from the Leverhulme Trust to support these distance projects (see below).

The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama was founded by Elsie Fogerty in 1906 (as The Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art) to offer a new form of training in speech and drama for young actors and other students. We became a constituent of the University of London in 2005 and are members of both the Federation of Drama Schools and Conservatoires UK.

We offer a wide range of undergraduate, postgraduate, research degrees and short courses in acting, actor training, applied theatre, theatre crafts and making, design, drama therapy, movement, musical theatre, performance, producing, puppetry, research, scenography, stage management, teacher training, technical arts, voice and writing.

We have a long history of notable alumni that have completed their training at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and gone on to be leaders in their field.

A pathway to the future

Central is a small specialist institution of the theatrical and performing arts within the University of London. With a long history of educating and training significant numbers of leading practitioners, Central aims to be a hybrid conservatoire where the creative industries and the academy come together to maximise the benefits that it can generate for the wider society.

This blended approach ensures the sustainability and outward-facing relevance of the three interlocking areas of the School: its teaching and training provision, its research and scholarship culture and its Impact and Knowledge Exchange Strategy. Through its distinguished teaching and research staff and long-term engagement with industry and community, Central continues to be an inspiring centre of excellence in theatre and the performing arts.

But we live in times of great change, and Central must now plan for a future that will embrace developments in theatre and the performing arts: the digital revolution that is all around us, the establishment of equity and inclusion as fundamental to our society and communities, the rising need to support and listen to students and staff through challenging times and safety, health and wellbeing for all. Within Central, we must seek to change through developing our structures and systems to deliver a theatre and performing arts culture that can truly embrace the future. Most importantly and given Central’s past inequities, it must face and reconcile the fact that its past efforts for equity and inclusion have not been successful enough, and it must learn from important contemporary social justice movements.

This strategy sets out a way forward for a defined period in the context of a continuing uncertain and challenging environment resulting from the pandemic, Brexit and other external factors, including concerns over government funding and student health and wellbeing. Over the next two years and through this strategy, Central will be able to respond quickly and in an agile manner to continuing change and provide an infrastructure that will enable this change and development to take place. Central will continue its work and journey towards equity and inclusion and will work with the creative industries to shape new approaches whilst supporting and sustaining its core commitment to its work in theatre and the performing arts.

Our vision

To lead an innovative theatre and performing arts culture that enriches and changes our world.

Our mission

To inspire, educate and train the performers, practitioners and change-makers of tomorrow to shape the future of theatre and the performing arts.

Our values

Values are what we stand for, what we believe and what we try to live and work by. They inform our approaches to what we do and how we work as an inclusive organisation.

Respecting

Equity and inclusion are fundamental to what we stand for. Respecting is about listening to and understanding each other as equals, empowering students and staff and being:

• socially responsible
• ethical and fair in everything we do
• empathetic
• reconciling

Enquiring

We look for new knowledge, skills and understanding through practice, teaching, research and scholarship. We are inquisitive, enthusiastic, open-minded, disciplined and thorough, supporting:

• artistic and intellectual curiosity
• academic freedom
• a commitment to lifelong learning
• self-reflection and self-criticism
• restorative justice
• rigour

Sharing

We are an outward-facing community that seeks to enrich the society that we live in, embracing:

• transparency and honesty
• collaboration and partnership
• a commitment to community
• communication and external engagement
• extensive outreach

Innovating

Whilst respecting the past, we look for the new. We are a hub in which growth and change can emerge to shape the future, creating:

• new ideas based on research and knowledge exchange
• interaction with and shaping industry
• a courageous environment and taking risks
• space for new and unexpected ideas
• a playful and joyous ethos
• a more sustainable world