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POSTGRADUATE

MACOLLABORATIVETHEATRE

Course Overview

Imagine a year long R&D process that delivers you to the industry as a fully-formed theatre company with a complete production that's ready to play. This is where all your learning and experience has led you. This postgraduate course, accredited by Falmouth University, unlocks the global history of theatre and gives you the tools and processes necessary to produce compelling and change-making shows.

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Develop the capacity to initiate, create and produce ground-breaking and innovative new works from conception to delivery.

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Become an industry-ready, interdisciplinary collaborator who is knowledgeable, trailblazing and entrepreneurial.

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Form a new theatre company, fortified by the mentorship of the course and introduced to international collaborations for sustainable and robust onward opportunities.

Collaborative Artists of the Future

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The course is designed by professional directors, producers, practitioners and scholars with a wealth of industry experience and a passion for original work. The course continues to be driven, taught and shaped by their first-hand, diverse contact with the current professional landscape and their up-to-date understanding of the most relevant disciplines necessary for a sustainable professional career as the industry becomes increasingly cross-media, multi-disciplinary and international.

 

​You'll develop skills to contextualise, re-frame and challenge your artistic practice in theatre and related fields, further expanding you portfolio of work. You’ll take part in practical workshops and seminars exploring technique and text to enhance professional practice. Within a small ensemble training environment, you’ll receive holistic training in the processes and practices necessary to establish thriving theatre companies. This includes creating professional pitches, funding applications and marketing plans as well as tour management.

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Presented as a supported and intensive year-long Research and Development process, the MA Collaborative Theatre course is a launchpad for the next generation of artists, makers and creatives. The culmination of training on the course is a full collaborative production and tour of devised, original work in professional performance settings throughout the UK, becoming a fully functioning company in the process.

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Studying on Fourth Monkey’s MA Collaborative Theatre, awarded by Falmouth University, will provide you with an opportunity to develop the necessary practical and creative skills of the 21st century collaborator and theatre maker to professional level. Founded upon a truly decolonised

and inclusive curriculum of international practice, global perspectives, culturally diverse approaches, theatrical legacy, historical contexts and inclusive practice, this course also embraces prospective practice and interdisciplinary collaboration. It will afford you the opportunity to practically cultivate your artistic, creative, innovative and collaborative skill, in order for you to apply these skills to your own original projects, as you create and realise your own artistic and creative process as a generative artist with artistic aptitude, practical dexterity, theoretical and creative confidence, and business acumen.

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The field of 21st century performance making requires the capacity to be versatile across and synthesise around varying and emerging media. It requires the ability to create performance texts through multiple processes, innovate through interdisciplinary collaborations and reconceive former theatrical traditions, forms and approaches. With this in mind, there is an unquestionable requirement to be able to collaboratively and creatively negotiate at a high level, accumulate a rich, diverse and broad understanding of performance practice, understand national and international approaches, bridge gaps between disciplines and art forms, acknowledge historical and emergent practice, and challenge the notion of ‘conventional’ theatre space in order to increasingly diversify audiences and patrons.

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Entrepreneurship and the ability to independently identify, design and create work opportunities in a rapidly changing and largely freelance work environment, are vital skills for building and sustaining a professional career as a collaborator and theatre maker. The training on this course

is intended to encourage you to develop and foster your own curiosity, creativity and confidence in becoming an imaginative, collaborative and innovative artist, and a skilled, knowledgeable and autonomous professional. It will also provide you with multiple opportunities to apply and test

your skills with rigour and precision, in a practice rich, industry-focused programme of study, with the guidance of experienced directors, practitioners, theatre companies, creatives and scholars.

Course Delivery

We take a maximum of 12 students to ensure a focused and personal approach to training. Contact with faculty, visiting practitioners and professional theatre companies is enlightening and rewarding with the potential to establish lasting professional relationships.

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Practitioners and creatives who have previously worked with our MA Collaborative Theatre students include:

  • Olivier Award Winning Choreographer & Movement Director, Steven Hoggett

  • Song of The Goat’s Alicja Bral

  • IROKO Theatre Company founder, Alex Oma-Pius

  • Japanese Noh Theatre practitioner, Sachi Kimura Lawson

  • Peter Brook Ensemble collaborator, Sean O’Callaghan

  • Alice Kornitzer from The Berliner Ensemble 

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The course runs from September to August and you’re expected to work independently, in the studios of The Monkey House, whilst exploring the processes and methodologies introduced to you. 

Over the year, you’ll gather the professional skills required to take your work into the industry and uncover your own artistic practice within the wider historical, socio-political and international context. Seminars and workshops range from artistic development to production design and contemporary acting techniques, helping you develop a sustainable and responsible arts practice that promotes longevity.

Onward Destinations

A primary focus of our MA Collaborative Theatre degree is your onward development and progression. We’re proud to celebrate the progression of our alumni artists and collaborators premiering their work, developed at Fourth Monkey, on the professional stage. Through our network of collaborators, our artists have been invited to share their work regionally and internationally whilst others have gone on to deliver their work at theatre festivals such as The Vaults.

FAQs

We recruit a maximum of 12 students to this course.

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