Rose Bruford College has launched a new postgraduate Masters course in Queer Performance, the first course of its kind available worldwide, training students to create, explore, examine and expand queer performance practice. This new programme is delivered in a hybrid way, with full or part time options, via distance learning and in-person, offering the opportunity for students to continue their work as artists outside of their learning.
Course Director, academic, artist and producer, Dr Phoebe Patey-Ferguson comments: “Queer performance is where I consistently see the most exciting ideas for what theatre and art should be, but also for what the world should be and what the future should look like. This distinctive new course is a space to hold radical imaginings for where contemporary performance practice might be going next — as well as celebrating the diverse histories of queer makers and thinkers. From drag to performance art, playwriting to XR, we are launching an MA that is as inventive and multidisciplinary as the fabulous community which it celebrates. Queer performance is already everywhere — on stages, screens, streets, dance floors, galleries, fields and festivals — and now it finally has its own dedicated space in the academy at Rose Bruford College.”
Rose Bruford Acting alumnus and BAFTA nominated actor David Carlyle (It’s A Sin) said: “Anything that strengthens the voice of the LGBTQI+ community is fantastic and vital. I am so grateful to have trained as an actor at Rose Bruford and am proud to be an alumni of a College that is fierce in its championing of queer voices.”
Honorary Fellow of the College and award-winning writer, performer and theatre maker Travis Alabanza (Sound of the Underground, Royal Court) added: “What’s so exciting about this MA in Queer Performance is that it’s offering the chance for our work to be archived, studied and dissected – to build rigour around a practice that has been influencing others for so long. Queer performance is a space where the most risks are taken and the most adventurous work is made, and I’m so excited at the prospect of a course that gives other people a chance to find the beauty that I’ve found in it. And I love the team at Rose Bruford College who are doing this — so who better!”
The Queer Performance course offers broad training in a range of queer performance practices, delivered by queer artists, theatre-makers, academics, and researchers, including Professor Stephen Farrier, acclaimed scholar of drag and popular queer performance and Head of Postgraduate School & Director of Research at Rose Bruford College, and Professor Brian Lobel, internationally renowned queer theatre maker. Fiercely socially engaged, political, experimental, and interdisciplinary, it provides an in-depth, comprehensive examination of queer performance practice, studying its themes, methodologies, and untapped possibilities.
Applications are now open to study Queer Performance at Rose Bruford College from autumn 2023. The College is also running online events on Friday 24th February and Thursday 30th March, open to anyone who’d like to find out more about the course.
