Mission Statement
Our aim is to educate tomorrow’s Theatre and Performance professionals in a dynamic and culturally diverse learning and teaching environment. TaP graduates find jobs across the industry whilst many also pursue successful freelance careers. A TaP graduate is a broad-minded, informed, articulate individual, possessed with a range of intellectual, creative and life skills to take into the future. Recent graduates have won prestigious awards as playwrights, directors, creators of new work and cultural leaders
in the UK and internationally.
We are internationally recognised as one of the finest centres for study, research and creation of live performance, with a reputation for being innovative, intercultural and interdisciplinary. In RAE2008 65% of our research activity was rated world leading or internationally excellent. We thrive on the breadth of our staff research specialisms as well as strong links with leading professionals, many of whom contribute to our teaching and learning environment. We also tap into our ever-expanding relationships with professional companies, venues, organisations and agencies across the globe. We draw on all this for the benefit of our students’ development.
Research-led teaching includes theatre history, critical theory, writing, direction, performing, physical practices, applied theatre, traditional and new dramaturgies, postcolonial theory and practice, European, Asian and African theatres and theatre technologies. The undergraduate curriculum emphasises a dynamic and interrogative relationship between theory and practice, designed to cultivate curiosity, experimentation and independence. We teach learners to learn. We focus on guiding our students to discover which ideas and practices interest them and in challenging them to develop these to a high level of competence. The department benefits from working relationships with other departments across Goldsmiths, and this in turn encourages our students to understand their own specialism as contributing to broader social, environmental and cultural fields of enquiry.
Our graduates enjoy careers as e.g. directors, writers, performers, live artists, dramaturgs, producers, administrators, programmers, marketing and development directors, technicians, publishers, teachers, researchers and scholars, as well as working in other sectors of the cultural industries: radio, film and television. Our discipline equips students with key skills such as self-presentation, self-management, working in teams and, vitally, the imagination, ability and confidence to make a difference by making things happen, from concept to execution. For this reason many of our alumni have formed their own companies and projects and gone on to take these into professionally funded operations.
Our postgraduate culture is dynamic and international. We attract Masters and Doctoral students from all over the world and many of our postgraduates are engaged in practice-led PhD research.
We currently have 190 undergraduates, 44 Study Abroad undergraduates, 100 Masters students and 26 Doctoral students enrolled across our programmes.