Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance Expands Its Postgraduate Programme

Rose Bruford College, one of London's leading drama schools, is to expand its postgraduate programme with a very particular international flavour. Following its success in achieving its own degree awarding powers, and the recent news that it has achieved Gold status under the UK government's Teaching Excellence Framework, four new courses with a global outlook will be introduced this year including two taught in Berlin. Auditions will continue to take place over the summer for the first intake in October 2017.

Responding to the growing demand for high quality postgraduate education in the field of theatre and performance practice, the courses have been developed in partnership with leading cultural and professional institutions. They will be aimed at theatre practitioners from anywhere in the world wishing to further develop their practice through intensive training and research. This initial offering of four courses will form part of a broader 'Global Faculty' based on collaborations and partnerships between theatre companies, educational institutions and practitioners around the world.

Central to the launch is the MA and MFA in Actor/Performer Training offered at Theatre Delicatessen's Central London premises, led by Gabriel Gawin (formerly of Teatr Piesn Kozla, Poland). The programme integrates Western European conservatoire perfomer training with highly physicalised ensemble practices that have grown out of Eastern and Central Europe over the last 60 years. Each year, the programme will incorporate an intercultural artistic expedition to research performance traditions and practice, which for the first intake will be to Georgia.

The MA/MFA Collaborative Theatre Making will be led, curated and mentored by the ground-breaking, internationally renowned theatre company Told by an Idiot. The course is aimed at those who want to explore the development of ensemble performance, whether performing, writing, directing or improvising.

Speaking about the collaboration, Paul Hunter, Artistic Director or Told by an Idiot said "We are delighted to be collaborating with Rose Bruford College in the form of creating and running a new MA in Collaborative Theatre. A shared curiosity and desire to challenge how theatre is made make this a very exciting partnership. The Idiots have always relished our interaction with students and the notion of creating our own unique programme within such a dynamic organisation such as Rose Bruford seems a natural progression."

In Berlin, an MA in Devising Theatre and Performance and an MFA Advanced Devising Practice will be run in collaboration with LISPA (London International School of Performing Arts, Berlin), a centre of professional training, artistic research, innovation and individuation recently relocated from the UK to Berlin.

The Global Faculty will be expanded with the addition of further postgraduate programmes subject to validation in 2018 with an MA/MFA Actor Musicianship, MA/MFA Theatre for Young Audiences and a new collaboration with National Theatre Institut in Connecticut. Rose Bruford College has pioneered the specialist area of training in Actor Musicianship and the new course will be led by Programme Director Jeremy Harrison building on the college's long-established BA (Hons) Actor Musicianship which Jeremy set up in 1998, and there are further plans for a USA-based MFA in partnership with the National Theatre Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Centre in Connecticut.

The new programmes have been developed by Niamh Dowling, Head of the School of Performance at Rose Bruford and Gabriel Gawin, Director of the MA programme at the college, who previously collaborated on the creation of one of the UK's most innovative and exciting programmes for Manchester Metropolitan University, a unique hybrid Masters Programme based in Wroclaw Poland with the internationally renowned theatre company Teatr Piesn Kozla (Song of the Goat).

Speaking about the new programmes, Niamh Dowling said "The achievement of our own independent degree-awarding powers and gold standard undergraduate teaching excellence award heralds an exciting new phase for Rose Bruford College as we develop new postgraduate programmes to meet the aspirations of contemporary, globally focussed theatre practitioners. With our own degree -awarding powers we can create the postgraduate programmes we believe in, embedded within the international theatre community, offering demanding professional practice alongside rigorous critical thinking and practice as research."

For more information and audition dates visit www.bruford.ac.uk/postgraduate.

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