Drama and Creative Writing

By combining the study of Creative Writing with Drama, you'll gain a deeper understanding of how theatre performance and creative writing interact - whether you specialise as a playwright, or choose to take the poetry or fiction options in creative writing.

Choosing to study Drama at Royal Holloway will put you at the centre of one of the largest and most influential Drama and Theatre departments in the world. You'll create performances, analyse texts, and bring a range of critical ideas to bear on both. On this course the text and the body, thinking and doing, work together. There's no barrier between theory and practice: theory helps you understand and make the most of practice, while practice sheds light on theory. By moving between the two, you'll find your place as an informed theatre-maker, and by studying a variety of practices, by yourself and with others, you'll get knowledge of the industry as a whole, and learn how your interests could fit into the bigger picture.

We are top-rated for teaching and research, with a campus community recognised for its creativity. Our staff cover a huge range of theatre and performance studies, but we're particularly strong in contemporary British theatre, international and intercultural performance, theatre history, dance and physical theatre, and contemporary performance practices.

Studying Creative Writing at one of the UK's most dynamic English departments will challenge you to develop your own critical faculties. Learning to write creatively, you'll develop your own writing practice.

Course units are taught by nationally and internationally known scholars, authors, playwrights and poets who are specialists in their fields who write ground-breaking books, talk or write in the national media and appear at literary festivals around the world.

• Complementary disciplines for the aspiring playwright.

• Explore creative skills including dance or puppetry.

• Assessment through performance and coursework.

• Specialise in different literary forms: poetry, playwriting or fiction.

• Build a portfolio, creating, critiquing and shaping your own artistic work.

Course Modules

Year 1

You will take the following modules in Drama:

• Theatre and Performance Making 1

• Theatre and Text 1

• Introduction to Creative Writing

• Why Write? The History and Theory of Creative Writing

Year 2

• Playwriting

• Fiction

• Poetry

Year 3

• Playwriting 2

• Fiction 2

• Poetry 2

• Creative Writing Special Focus (Term 1)

• Creative Writing: Special Focus (Term 2)

Optional Modules

Below is a taster of some of the exciting optional modules that students on the course could choose from during this academic year. Please be aware these do change over time, and optional modules may be withdrawn or new ones added.

Year 1

• All modules are core

Year 2

• Theatre and Performance Making: Devising

• Theatre and Performance Making: Theatre Directing

• Theatre and Performance Making: Acting for Camera

• Theatre and Performance Making: Dance and Theatre

• Theatre and Performance Making: Scenography

• Theatre and Text: Staging the Real

• Theatre and Text: Decoding debbie tucker green

• Shakespeare, Ecology and Performance

• Theatre and Culture: Theatre for Young Audiences

• Theatre and Culture: Cultures of Memory

• Dancing Bodies, Global Culture

• Theatre and Ideas: Ideas of Gender and Sexuality

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Tragedy

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Adaptation

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of the Musical

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Acting

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Money

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Casting

Year 3

• Love, Gender and Sexuality

• Race Relations in Theatre, Film and Television

• Shakespeare

• Naturalist Theatre in Context

• Creative Learning and Theatre

• Physical Theatre

• Shakespeare on Camera

• The Actor's Voice

• Actor Training in a Globalised World

• Group Project

• Final Year Project - Special Study

• Final Year Project - Dissertation

• Taught Dissertation

https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studying-here/undergraduate/drama-theatre-and-dance/drama-and-creative-writing/

Each year, you'll take two modules in each subject.

Drama explores a whole range of dramatic and theatrical forms, conventions, periods, traditions and activities. You'll learn how to get intellectual ideas across in presentations and through performance. You'll also learn to work well in teams. In your first year, you'll get a grounding in contemporary theatremaking and critical theories. In your second and final years, you'll study alongside single honours students, taking half of your modules in Drama.

In your first year of Creative Writing, you'll take two introductory modules, before going on in your second year to specialise in two literary forms. In your final year, you'll wrap up by taking one of those forms to honours level.

The course has a flexible structure: students take twelve course units, four per year. Some are compulsory, and others you can choose. In your second and third years, you'll make up the marks that count for your final degree award. You'll also take a study skills course during your first year, to equip you with writing skills to make your degree count. This course won't count towards your final degree, but you'll need to take it to pass on to second year.

You'll be assessed through examinations, essays, seminar presentations, practical assignments and creative portfolios. In Drama modules, you'll often be assessed as part of a group.