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."

Bella Schwarzenecker, Bachelor of Journalism/Arts (Drama)

Read Bella's UQ Drama story here. 

"UQ Drama opened up the arts and cultural industry to me – allowing me to explore various career pathways available to drama students. This experience paved the way for my current interests in festival production and established my work as an early-career academic.”

Hannah Mason, Bachelor of Arts (Drama) 

Hannah 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. 

"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."

Heather Fairbairn, Bachelor of Arts (Drama) 

Heather is a UQ Drama graduate who is now a stage director, working internationally in theatre and contemporary opera.

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. 

George Essex Evans Scholarship

This shcolarship is avaliabe to Honours students studying in their final year of Bachelor of Arts majoring in Drama.

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. 

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.

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.

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.