Drama, Theatre and Performing Arts

At Kent, you will develop your individual voice and hone skills to express yourself creatively through performance.

Whether you want to be a stand-up comedian, actor, director, writer, producer, choreographer, or set designer – or even start your own theatre company – you’ll have the opportunity to explore your passions at Kent.

With a wide range of topics including acting, community theatre, musical theatre, puppetry, dance, stand-up comedy, and even alternative cabaret, there are plenty of opportunities to tailor the programme to your interests.

Theatre, drama and performance have the power to connect people, bring communities together and examine big issues. You’ll explore all this when you join our warm and inclusive creative community.

Our strong connections with industry and local arts venues will give you the chance to put your learning and creativity into action through placements, internships and other opportunities.

You can see shows and even take part in them at our fantastic on-campus venue, the Gulbenkian Arts Centre – which puts on an incredible programme of theatre, dance, music and film.

You can also take this course with a year in industry or year abroad.

Year in Industry (optional)

Your placement year takes place between your second and final year. It is a great opportunity to gain workplace experience, increase your professional contacts and acquire new skills, and is a valuable addition to your CV.

You can take your placement year in the UK or abroad with a wide range of employers in areas including the arts, education and cultural heritage. While you are responsible for finding your placement, we offer support and guidance through the application process.

Tuition fees for the placement year are greatly reduced and employers may offer expenses or a salary.

The placement year is assessed on a pass/fail basis and does not count towards your final degree classification.

This can be added during your studies at Kent.

Year Abroad (optional)

Going abroad as part of your degree is an amazing experience and a chance to develop personally, academically and professionally.  You experience a different culture, gain a new academic perspective, establish international contacts and enhance your employability.

All students within the Division of Arts and Humanities can apply to spend a Term or Year Abroad as part of their degree at one of our partner universities in North America, Asia or Europe. You are expected to adhere to any progression requirements in Stage 1 and Stage 2 to proceed to the Term or Year Abroad.

The Term or Year abroad is assessed on a pass/fail basis and will not count towards your final degree classification. Places and destination are subject to availability, language and degree programme.

This can be added during your studies at Kent.

Year 2

Compulsory modules currently include the following:

• Creative Careers

  Pursuing a career in the arts not only requires creativity and talent but also an understanding of how the UK arts sector operates. In this module, you’ll learn about all aspects of the creative industries and the various career paths that exist for arts graduates.

  Through tasks and exercises, you’ll develop both practical and critical skills, ranging from writing CVs and funding applications to managing your professional portfolio and using social media and networking to boost your career prospects and promote your work.

• Theatre & Adaptation

  What do Matilda, The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time and Noughts & Crosses have in common? You guessed it: they are all book sources of highly successful stage adaptations. Theatre makers continue to transform canonical stories— such as Romeo and Juliet, the Mahabharata and 1001 Nights —into new plays, musicals, puppet shows and pantomime, while audiences flock to see them. Why are adaptations so popular nowadays? And how exactly do artists create them?

  By taking this module, you’ll discover the foundational building blocks of storytelling, and learn how these can be rearranged into new shapes. In lectures and seminars, you’ll examine how characters, story structure, language, culture, medium, genre and ideology can evolve from one version of a story to another. In our workshops, you’ll experiment with adaptation shifts in practice. You’ll also pay particular attention to the representation of race, gender and disability.

• Performance Design and Technologies

  There isn’t just one way to approaches theatre and performance design. You’ll explore different styles and methods used to design theatre, while gaining hands-on experience of how to bring a performance to life using the elements of lighting, sound, and scenography.

Optional modules may include the following:

• Acting

  What makes a good actor? Instinct? Imagination? Skills?

  Explore the theory and practice of Naturalism through key plays of the 20th and 21st centuries, comparing different leading practitioners and culminating in performance.

• Introduction to Musical Theatre Dance

  Musical theatre dance is a melting pot of African, Indian, Caribbean, and Afro-Latin movement, influenced by ballet, modern, and social dance. You’ll learn about this history and the key developers of musical theatre and jazz by dancing, as well as by analysing musicals across the 20th century. You’ll finish the module with improved dance technique and the ability to learn and perform choreography from different periods, along with a greater understanding of musical theatre and jazz dance’s multicultural history.

• Popular Performance: Alternative Cabaret

  Want to develop your skills in popular performance and become a more versatile performer? Want to find out about the origins of much of today’s live entertainment industry, by learning about the politically radical DIY performance scene of Alternative Cabaret?

  In this module, weekly workshops will introduce you to a range of performance skills including music making, performance poetry, stand-up comedy, sketch comedy and specialty acts, all of which involve learning how to address an audience directly and manipulate their responses.

• Disability and the Arts

  How can cinemas, galleries, theatres and museums become more accessible to visitors with impairments? How is disability understood and represented in contemporary culture?

• Writing for Performance

  How do you go about writing a play or text for performance? What writers and playwrights inspire you? And how can you learn from their approaches to help you find your own writing style?

Please see the course page on our website for full module details.

Year 3

You will take one of the modules 'creative project' or 'dissertation'. You will then choose 4 of the optional modules.

Compulsory modules currently include the following:

• Creative Project

  Do you feel inspired to create an original performance, in a form and style of your choice? Are you ready to apply the skills you have built across your degree to create your final show for a public festival?

  This module will give you the skills to initiate and carry out an independent project, working either as a soloist or in a small student company where you choose your own collaborators. You’ll take responsibility for devising an initial idea and bringing it to life by working with your classmates, lecturers and technical team. You’ll produce a high-quality piece of performance within real-world budget and resource limitations while applying safe and ethical working methods. You’ll gain project design and management skills that are essential for careers in the creative industries.

• Dissertation

  Have you developed a passion for a particular topic in drama, film or media? Do you love writing, researching, and exploring a subject deeply? This is your chance to develop your skills and create a piece of work about the topics you are passionate about.

  You’ll develop an in-depth independent investigation into a specific issue, guided by research questions, and establishing a dialogue with existing scholarship, practices and debates. You’ll start by conceptualising your project and work with an assigned supervisor. You’ll present your work in progress to get feedback from your peers in spring, and your final piece will be due in summer.

  By building on what you’ve learnt during throughout your degree, you’ll create a new piece of research that will allow you to pursue your interests and ideas, honing your independent critical thinking skills and further expanding your employability.

Optional modules may include the following:

• Physical Theatre - Ensemble Devising

  Do you love movement? Are you fascinated by performance that sits in the crossover between theatre and dance? Are you keen to sharpen your devising skills and create captivating ensemble performance?

• Directing Theatre, Staging Ideas

  Have you ever wanted to direct a play? When you take this module you’ll explore the art of directing in a supportive pre-professional environment.

• Stand-up Comedy

  How can I make an audience laugh? How do comedians write, hone and deliver their material? What makes a joke funny? Does it matter what comedians say, and what we laugh at?

• Psychology of the Arts

  How does art impact us the way that it does? And how do interdisciplinary researchers use the impact of art to improve people’s lives?

• Arts Internship

  Keen to gain practical experience in a professional industry setting? Thinking about how to start building professional networks beyond university? Interested in using self-reflection in practical ways towards building your future career? Then this module is the right choice for you.

• Acting Shakespeare

  Love Shakespeare? Frightened of Shakespeare? Bored of Shakespeare? All of the above?

  This Acting Shakespeare module explores the performance clues in Shakespeare’s language to enable you to perform a role where YOU know what you’re saying – and so does your audience.

• Community and Participatory Performance

  Does the idea of working with different community groups inspire you? Do you want to extend your skills in workshop facilitation? Can you imagine running your own theatre company with an outreach remit?

Please see the course page on our website for full module details.

Year 1

Compulsory modules currently include the following:

• Making Performance 1: The Fundamentals

  In this first of three Making Performance modules, you’ll experiment with space, text, physical acting and ensemble devising. You’ll encounter important practitioners and groundbreaking performances, while also gaining hands-on experience in the foundations of lighting, sound and stagecraft.

• Making Performance 2: Staging Texts

  Are you passionate about plays? Do you want to learn more about their history, and become confident understanding a variety of play texts?

  In this module, you’ll explore a range of performance texts, from Ancient Greece to the 21st century. Weekly lectures will ground your understanding contextually, and practical workshops will enable you to bring the scripts to life with embodied understanding.

• Making Performance 3: The Festival

• Popular Performance and Citizenship

  How does performance change the world, and how we see things? How do you make work that understands and engages with its audience? What are your strengths as a performer, writer and theatre maker? What are your responsibilities? By creating and analysing popular, grassroots performances in comedy, live music, storytelling and performance poetry, you’ll discover your unique strengths as a performer.

  You’ll learn to become comfortable talking directly to an audience, in your own words and grounded in your own identity. By learning to listen to audiences and respond to them in the moment of performance, and creating engaging and meaningful interactions, you’ll gain skills that are essential for a range of careers in the creative industries.

• Performance Skills

  How do you prepare your body, voice and imagination for performance? This module will help you develop your performance skills by exploring different approaches to working with breath, movement, imagination, and voice, as well as starting to look at playful ways of transforming into character, for example through mask work.

  You’ll develop these skills during practical workshops, learn about the context and background of exercises through accompanying readings and discussion, and reflect on your own development. Importantly, understanding the theory and practice of exercises will enable you to take responsibility for designing appropriate warm-ups for rehearsal and performance, which will serve you well for the rest of your degree and beyond.

• Puppet and Object Theatre

  How do you create exciting visual theatre? What skills do you need to bring objects and puppets to life? How do you use scenography to tell stories? This module offers a creative exploration of puppetry and object theatre. You’ll learn about scenic elements and staging, different types of puppets and objects, and visible or ‘invisible’ puppeteering.

  Your lectures and seminars will put puppet and object performances into historical context, while you’ll learn the art of performance in practical workshops. You’ll discover the uses and dynamics of different materials, and develop your confidence as a maker, performer, puppeteer, manipulator and/or technician.

Please see the course page on our website for full module details.