Drama and Creative Writing BA (Hons)

University of East Anglia

Overview

This unique degree unites UEA’s strengths in creative writing and in drama to give you an exhilarating immersion in writing and performance.

You will have the opportunity to study all kinds of creative writing, with a particular focus on writing for theatre, cinema, television, and radio. Alongside this, you'll be exploring the contemporary practice, criticism, and history of dramatic writing and performance. Your writing will be enriched by an awareness of theatrical and literary traditions from around the globe. 

You’ll take practical drama modules, and you’ll have full access to our professionally equipped 200-seat Drama Studio. This comprehensive grounding in acting, directing, and all other aspects of stagecraft will enable you to graduate from this drama and creative writing degree as a writer with an instinctive feel for the world of theatre and performing arts. 

About This Course

You'll gain a thorough grounding in writing for stage and screen, which will be complemented by opportunities to develop your skills in non-dramatic writing, too. Your stage and screen writing will be improved by getting to grips with the ins-and-outs of theatrical performance, while you become better able to analyse dramatic language by writing it yourself. 

At the heart of your BA Drama and Creative writing degree are scriptwriting masterclasses with practising writers, where you’ll discover the formats, conventions, and techniques of writing for different dramatic genres and media. You’ll learn by writing scenes and short scripts, offering critiques of each other’s work, and by working closely with other Drama students. 

In your second and third years, you'll be able to develop your craft as a writer by taking workshops in prose or poetry, working closely with our world-famous creative writing colleagues.   

Throughout your degree, you will gain hands-on experience by participating in production and practical project work. You’ll have the keys to our professionally equipped 200-seat Drama Studio, giving you the chance to control everything in your own productions. You’ll also be able to pursue performance and placement opportunities, including a creative industries internship in your second year, which involves a work placement in a drama-producing organisation or environment. 

At UEA, you’ll encounter an astonishing array of drama, theatre and performance. You’ll engage with major theoretical approaches, actor- and director-training, and techniques for creating and writing your own work. You’ll examine the politics of theatre and performance and its use by the State, by political activists and by theatre and performance practitioners – to solidify or challenge structures of power. You’ll also discover the cutting-edge theatre companies that are shaping the contemporary performance landscape.

You’ll benefit from our highly regarded student run Minotaur Theatre Company, which gives you the chance to gain additional performance, technical and scriptwriting experience, as well as exciting chances to share your writing at events such as New Writing Live. Find out more about life in the School of Literature, Drama, and Creative Writing on our Instagram @uealdc.

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