Drama

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 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.

Awards

 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

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.
 

Dr Bernadette Cochrane

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 responsibilities  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 Hay

Chris 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.

Dr Natalie Lazaroo

Dr Natalie Lazaroo graduated with a PhD in Contemporary and Applied Theatre from Griffith University and also has an MPhil from the University of Queensland. She has written about and published on various topics such as Australian physical theatre, socially-engaged theatre, theatre for young people, and disability community performance. Natalie is also a circus aficionado with a love for static trapeze, and is part of a trapeze act called the Sisters of Sia.

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. You can also enhance your career prospects with the UQ Employability Award, for which we provide extracurricular masterclasses in playwriting, directing, dramaturgy and acting.

With a Bachelor of Arts majoring in drama, there are numerous professions possible. These include:

• acting coach
• director
• drama teacher
• dramaturgy
• playwright
• performing arts coordinator
• publicity, arts administration, arts policy
• speech and drama tutor
• stage management
• theatre manager.
• writing or reviewing
• youth and community arts work. 

Graduate Spotlight

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.