An actor on stage

Our Approach

We choose not to offer one orthodox Director training programme, but several of our courses provide an ideal foundation from which to develop your skills. Most directors progress to the role having first gained an in-depth, practical understanding of dramaturgy, collaborative creativity and production processes, and from working in theatre in another capacity.

MA Actor Training students

Advanced Theatre Practice, MA/MFA

This course looks specifically at directing in relation to interdisciplinary collaboration, devising, practical dramaturgies, company and text-based work.

Many award-winning directors have started out on this course, which offers particular opportunities for you to develop and nurture your craft alongside a range of practitioners wishing to play a leading role in tomorrow’s new performance and theatre-making worlds.

Find out more about Advanced Theatre Practice, MA/MFA

MA Advanced Theatre Practice students

Actor Training and Coaching, MA/MFA

These courses enable you to understand directing through a particular focus on working closely with actors, developing your knowledge through the exploration of training methodologies.

Participants will work with specialists to explore various specific approaches - encouraging their own unique pedagogic/artistic work with performers.

Find out more about Actor Training and Coaching, MA/MFA

Actor Training and Coaching students

Theatre Criticism and Dramaturgy, MA

This unique theatre and performance studies Masters course offers routes to careers in theatre dramaturgy and criticism.

Students will study theatre in London and experience the diverse theatre offerings of the city whilst developing their critical practice and scholarship.

Find out more about Theatre Criticism and Dramaturgy, MA

Acting student

Performance Practice as Research, MA/MFA

These courses enables you to consider your individual practice as research, and is ideal for those who might want to direct as part of a long term individual ‘enquiry’, professionally or within the academy.

Both the MA and MFA courses are designed for the ‘auteur’ working across disciplinary boundaries. Those with an established practice will take their work to the edges of their specialism(s).

Find out more about Performance Practice as Research, MA/MFA

Performance Practice and Research student

Applied Theatre, MA

Applied Theatre, MA encourages the facilitator-director, working in a range of community contexts.

The course has two specialist pathways: Drama in the Community and Drama Education, and Drama and the Criminal Justice System. Each encourages investigation into the possibilities and contradictions of drama and theatre practice as transformative and rehabilitative, and engages practically and critically with theories and current practices.

Find out more about Applied Theatre, MA

MA Applied Theatre student

Scenography, MA/MFA

These courses enable you to explore directing through designing via a range of collaborative, dramaturgical and technological frameworks.

Students work with designers-directors as well as choreographers, visual artists, film-makers and sound artists to develop their own authorial strategies for developing creative work.

Find out more about Scenography, MA/MFA

MA MFA Scenography student

Undergraduate Courses

Any of our undergraduate courses can give you the background and training you need to succeed as a director.

Graduates of all three of our BA degrees - Acting, Theatre Practice, and Drama, Applied Theatre and Education - have gone on to eventually become directors.

Explore our Undergraduate Courses

Students performing on stage

Notable Alumni

Michael Grandage, CBE (Acting, 1984) Theatre director and producer, Artistic Director of the Michael Grandage Company.

Deborah Warner, CBE (Theatre Practice, 1979) Director of theatre and opera.

Selina Cartmell (MA Advanced Theatre Practice, 1997) Winner Best Director, Irish Times Theatre Awards (2015).

Caroline Steinbeis (MA Advanced Theatre Practice, 2008) Director at the Globe Theatre.

Daphna Attias (MA Advanced Theatre Practice 2004) and Terry O’Donovan (MA Advanced Theatre Practice 2004) Artistic Directors of Dante or Die.

Bijan Sheibani (MA Advanced Theatre Practice, 2001) Associate Director at the National Theatre.

Orla O’Loughlin (MA Advanced Theatre Practice, 2000) Theatre director, Artistic Director of the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.

Mark Down (MA Advanced Theatre Practice, 1996) Artistic Director of Blind Summit theatre company.

Neli Ivancik (BA Theatre Practice, 2011) is a theatre director and designer at Gogol Center, Moscow.

Sam Peter Jackson (BA Acting, 2003) Writer and director of film and theatre.

Clem Garritty (MA Scenography, 2011) Director of Kill The Beast theatre company.

Michael Grandage

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