Drama
It’s UQ Drama: experiencing, examining, creating theatre
UQ Drama encourages students to examine, experience, and create theatre in a program that offers one of the most comprehensive canonical curriculums in Australia. By studying theatre history, theory and practice at UQ, you will be challenged to think about what constitutes performance on the stage, on the page and in everyday life. You will develop an understanding of the theatrical and literary aspects of drama, from ancient Greek classics and medieval theatre to the most recent plays from around the world. You’ll critique professional performances, review plays, compare the classics with contemporary scripts, and craft your career on a broad base of knowledge and experience. You’ll also work with leading local, national and international practitioners to develop work in our state-of -the art studio facility. As you progress through your major, you’ll also get to write, perform in, and direct plays for assessment.
1 in Queensland for arts and humanities
QS World University Rankings 2020
85 in the world for arts and humanities
QS World University Rankings 2020
Careers in Drama
Overview
As well as developing your creative practice, enhancing professional opportunities and complementing other academic qualifications, a major in Drama can lead to arts-related careers or vocations. Such possibilities include performing, directing, dramaturgy, stage management, writing or reviewing, as well as professional positions such as publicity/ marketing, arts administration, arts policy, or youth and community arts work. Other graduates find rewarding careers in teaching, research or publishing. You can also enhance your career prospects with the UQ Employability Award, for which we provide extracurricular masterclasses in playwriting, directing, dramaturgy and acting.
Graduates
Heather Fairbairn 
Heather is a UQ Drama graduate who is now a stage director, working internationally in theatre and contemporary opera. She has worked with companies including Sydney Theatre Company, Arcola Theatre, Schaubühne Berlin, Royal Court Theatre, Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), Finnish National Opera, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, La Boite Theatre Company, and Opera Australia.
She is currently co-writing and developing a new opera called O SEGREDO DO RIO [The River’s Secret] with the support of ENOA and Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon. She is also developing an English-language version of THE MAGIC FLUTE for Little Match Productions and ARTOUR Queensland.
"The UQ Drama program prepared me for a career in the theatre industry by arming me with a comprehensive knowledge of performance-making practices ranging from Ancient Greek Theatre through to Contemporary Theatre. The in-depth study of theatre history, complemented by the practical experience gained as Assistant Director and Dramaturg on production courses, provided me with a strong foundation from which to pursue a Master of Fine Arts (Directing) at NIDA and, ultimately, a career as a freelance theatre director."
Dr. Prateek 
Dr. Prateek holds the position of Assistant Professor in the Faculty of English Studies, SRM University, Andhra Pradesh, India. He joined in this position as Assistant Professor immediately after finishing his Ph.D. in theatre studies from the University of Queensland in 2018. He is also a recipient of the University of Queensland’s post-thesis fellowship. His Ph.D. thesis, Brecht in India: The Poetics and Politics of Transcultural Theatre, will be published in November 2020 by Routledge, UK. He has recently been awarded Fulbright-Nehru post-doctoral fellowship and he will be spending one year at Northwestern University, Illinois, US starting July 2021. His Fulbright post-doctoral research focuses on the scant attention that scholars have paid to local post-colonial productions of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s plays. In addition to offering a detailed analysis of some of these plays, his post-doctoral project aims to map myriad shades of their subversiveness.
Hannah Mason 
Hannah is a UQ Drama graduate who is now continuing her studies with a Master of Philosophy in festival programming. She has worked with Queensland Music Festival as both a programming intern and a marketing assistant, and project support for arts and cultural consultancy firm Positive Solutions.
Hannah’s current research focusses on exploring sustainable festival programming through an institutional dramaturgical lens. She has also maintained her involvement with UQ Drama through tutoring and mentoring roles.
"The secondment program offered by UQ Drama opened up the arts and cultural industry to me, allowing for my exploration of various career-pathways available to drama students. Having been exposed to a diverse range of approaches to theatre production and underpinning theoretical concepts, I felt confident that I could utilise this knowledge in a programming role. This experience paved the way for my current interests in festival production and established my work as an early-career academic."
Georgia Lynas
Georgia studied a Bachelors of Communication/Arts (Drama) degree and is currently the Philanthropy Coordinator at Queensland Theatre.
The Student Experience
Meet a Current Student
Bella Schwarzenecker is a third year Bachelors of Journalism/Arts student at The University of Queensland whose passion for the stage led her to Major in drama.
"UQ drama has been a fantastic experience. I love every minute of it – even when I'm not doing a performance and I'm directing on the sidelines, it's incredible."
Read Bella's UQ Drama story here.
In 2020 when COVID-19 and social distancing became familiar terms – UQ drama students (including Bella) were tasked with the challenge of performing to a virtual audience as part of the course DRAM2200 - Live Theatre Production.
You can view the performance program here.
Student Production Showcase
1. Waiting for Tomorrow
2. Embers
3. Vanguard Festival
The Vanguard Festival, developed by Dr Bernadette Cochrane, provided an opportunity to showcase the work of UQ Drama students. The majority of performances included in the festival were part of The Director’s Project – this involved final year students directing a play for students in their first year of study. You can read more about the festival here.
Research
Drama and Theatre Studies Research in the School of Communication and Arts is committed to critical engagement with theatre studies and live performance through time and across cultures. The research strenghts of UQ Drama staff cohere around two broad themes, and we welcome applications from prospective students that address and of the following:
1. Contemporary Forms of Performance
- The digital and the live;
- Representations of otherness;
- 21st Centuary Australian theatre.
2. Theatre and Cultural Production
- International performance networks;
- Dramaturgy, directing, playwriting;
- The gothic and ecocriticism;
- Australian cultural hisotry.
Further areas of staff expertise include: Shakespeare in prison, early modern theatre, adaptation, theatres of spectacle and sensation, and ghosts on stage.
Annual Research Theme
Each year our research and engagement activities coalesce around a specific theme. The theme for 2020 is, Adaptation in Performance. Reflecting on a practice that has developed both locally and globally over the past decade, theatrical adaptation now encompasses all manner of mediums–from classic plays to novels, to films, to radio plays, to video games, to comics. In parallel with this proliferation of forms of adaptation, the intersections between translation and adaptation have become ever more nuanced. As a result, the dramaturgy of adapatation remains a powerful tool for revealing the complexitiy of the paradigm.
To interrogate adaptation in performance, UQ Drama will present a series of provocation and explorations across 2020 inclduing:
- The DRAM2200 production;
- Workshops and masterclasses from visiting artists focused on adaptation;
- Contributions to theTranslation, Adaptation, and Dramaturgy Working Group of the International Federation of Theatre Research;
- Contributions to ICLA Research Committee on literatures/arts/media.
We particularly welcome applications for research Masters and Doctoral degree projects in Drama and Theatre Studies that address this theme. For more information about applying to the School of Communication and Arts, see here.
Research & Industry Engagement
Fostering industry engagement with theatre companies and communities and research partnerships with other universities in Australia and internationally is a significant research priority. Drama discipline industry engagement partners include:
- Queensland Theatre, where Emeritus Professor Richard Fotheringham was Chair of the Board until 2016, and Professor Joanne Tompkins has developed a virtual model of the Bille Brown Studio;
- Playlab, the peak agency for playwriting in Queensland, where Associate Professor Stephen Carleton is a Board member, and member of the Publication Committee;
- The Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble, UQ Drama’s resident theatre company housed in the Geoffrey Rush Drama Studio, with links through Associate Professor Rob Pensalfinito the Shakespeare in Prison Project;
- Major Australian theatreand literary databases, including AustLit, AusStage, and the Cultural Atlas of Australia;
- The Fryer Library, where the Drama discipline also notably continues the tradition of documenting Australia's dramatic heritage, maintaining a tradition begun by the Fryer initiative and continued by Eunice Hanger and others into the present.
- The Migrant Dramaturgies Network, where Dr Bernadette Cochrane is a board member. Developed in partnership with New Tides Platform (UK) and the Centre for Theatre Research at the University of Lisbon, Portugal.
UQ Drama Creative Fellowship
The Drama discipline also runs programs that bring practising artists to the UQ campus to work with students and staff. In 2015, we inaugurated the UQ Drama Creative Fellowship, which allows us to bring a leading theatre artist to the School each year to run masterclasses in our playwriting program, offer a guest lecture for staff and students across the University, and present a new play in development to students, staff, and industry.
You can find out more about this fellowship in the tab below.
The UQ Drama Creative Fellowship
About
The UQ Drama Creative Fellowship sees UQ bring a playwright or dramaturg of national or international standing to the School of Communication and Arts each year to provide students with playwriting masterclasses and dramaturgical masterclasses, along with a guest lecture on a research topic or element of craft that connects with their own creative practice.
In return UQ often provides the visiting Creative Fellow with a staged reading of a new play they are working on, using our links with industry to provide professional directors and actors for the presentation. Industry is then invited to watch the reading alongside staff and students, fostering an increased sense of UQ Drama being an important hub for the development of new work locally and nationally. We raise our own teaching program’s profile by bringing industry to the campus in this way, and provide students with unique one-on-one contact with leading practitioners.
The UQ Drama Creative Fellowship was piloted in 2015, and now, thanks to annual funding from the School’s Engagement Fund, operates as an annual event.
The most recent UQ Drama Creative Fellow was Dr Katalin Trencsényi.
As a London-based freelance dramaturg, Katalin has worked with the National Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre, Deafinitely Theatre, Corali Dance Company, and Company of Angels, among others. As a theatre-maker Katalin has worked and taught internationally: in Belgium, Canada, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and the US. Katalin is the author of Dramaturgy in the Making. A User’s Guide for Theatre Practitioners (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015), editor of Bandoneon: Working with Pina Bausch (Oberon Books, 2016), and co-editor with Bernadette Cochrane of New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014).
You can view the 2019 UQ Lecture and Roundtable presented by Dr Katalin Trencsényi below:
Previous UQ Drama Creative Fellows
- 2019 – Dr Katalin Trencsényi
- 2018 – Suzie Miller
- 2017 – Mary Anne Butler
- 2016 – Tommy Murphy
- 2015 – Angela Betzien
The play that Suzie Miller developed during her fellowship, On the Face of It (Prima Facie), went on to win the 2018 Griffin Award, and has since been produced around Australia.
Teaching Team
Awards
2019
The UQ Drama team at the School of Communication and Arts recieved the 2019 UQ Award for Programs that Enhance Learning for Building Pathways to Creative Careers
2016
The UQ Drama team at the School of Communication and Arts received one of the two Commendations for Teaching Excellence at the Teaching and Learning Awards on Monday 31 October 2016.
Experience a Virtual Drama Lesson
Meet the team
Associate Professor Stephen Carleton
Stephen is a Brisbane-based playwright and academic. His plays have been produced across Australia and won awards including the Griffin Theatre Award (2015) for The Turquoise Elephant, the Matilda Award for Best New Australian Play (2017) for Bastard Territory, and the Patrick White Playwrights' Award (2005) and New Dramatists' Award (2006) for Constance Drinkwater and the Final Days of Somerset. Those plays and others including musical Joh for PM (2017, with Paul Hodge), and The Narcissist (2007), have been shortlisted for a range of awards including the Patrick White Playwrights' Award, the Queensland Premier's Drama Award, Queensland Literary Awards (Drama), and two AWGIEs.
Bernadette Cochrane joined UQ in 2014 as a Lecturer in Drama in the School of Communication and Arts. She has taught on historical and contemporary drama, dramaturgical theory and performance-making. Her current teaching responsiblities include particular reference to European theatre of the twentieth-century, and directing and dramaturgy. Bernadette, as part of the UQ Drama team, was received the 2018 Award for Programs that Enhance Learning for the "UQ Drama: Building Pathways to Creative Careers" project. In 2016, again as part of the UQ Drama team, she received a Commendation for Teaching Excellence, Prior to joining UQ, Bernadette was a freelance arts worker with a particular focus on directing and dramaturgy. Bernadette completed her dramaturgical PhD at the University of Queensland in 2013.
Dr Chris HayChris joined UQ in 2017 as a Lecturer in Drama in the School of Communication and Arts. His teaching responsibilities include theatre history, performance production, and script analysis, and he is continuing his research project into the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (AETT) and the origins of state-subsidised performance as an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Fellow from 2020 to 2022. Between 2014 and 2016, Chris was Associate Lecturer in Performance Practices at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), Sydney, where he taught into the theoretical components of the practice-led Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degrees.
Associate Professor Rob Pensalfini
Rob has published several books and numerous articles in both linguistics and drama, including ground-breaking work on the performance of Shakespeare in prisons. He leads Australia's only ongoing Prison Shakespeare program and is the Artistic Director of the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble.
Professor Joanne TompkinsProfessor Joanne Tompkins is currently seconded to the Australian Research Council as Executive Director of the Humanities and Creative Arts panel, for a period of three years (until 2019). Her research interests include spatial theories and virtual reality; post-colonial, intercultural, and multicultural drama, literature, and theory; performance theories; and feminist performance. Her current research includes 3D visualisation and modelling of theatre spaces; the spatial theory of heterotopia; space in Australian and Canadian theatre; database of Australian performance; multicultural theories and drama, and intercultural performance.