Please note, there are two application deadlines. The deadline for overseas applicants is 31 July 2025, and for home applicants, it is 29 August 2025. For more details, click here.
Key information
Duration: 1 year full time
Institution code: R72
Campus: Egham
UK fees*:£11,600
International/EU fees**: £26,100
The course
Theatre Directing (MA)
Learn from Katie Mitchell - one of British theatre’s leading innovators – and a team of cutting-edge researchers to realise your full potential as a creatively dynamic and intellectually robust theatre director. Hone your practice while developing critical thinking skills that will not only make you a better artist but give you an edge in a highly competitive field.
Mitchell calls our Department of Drama, Theatre, and Dance the home of her revolutionary practice, demystifying the craft of directing by offering intuitive practical techniques for conceiving and rehearsing productions based on the Stanislavskian tradition. Regardless of your background, our year-long MA will enable you to learn these techniques, combining them with our Department’s sector-leading culture of research and practice. Our staff expertise covers an unparalleled range of subjects that you can pursue as part of the course, including immersive theatre, sustainability in the creative industries, Black British theatre, site-specific performance, verbatim, adaptation, Japanese Noh, Shakespeare, ancient Greek drama, and much more.
Become a theatre change-maker
Work with one of the world’s foremost directors, Katie Mitchell OBE, alongside the Department of Drama, Theatre, and Dance’s top experts and practitioners
Combine unique practical training with robust intellectual development, equipping you with a dynamic profile of creative and critical skills
Graduate ready for a thriving career in the creative industries – and help lead the way in envisioning a new theatre for a rapidly changing world.
This programme begins with a five-day intensive with Katie Mitchell the week prior to the start of Royal Holloway’s academic year. For 2025/26, this week will be 15 September. You must be available for this intensive to participate in the programme.
In this module you will develop an understanding of how to take a prepared text into the rehearsal room, articulate a concept for a text and translate it into legible performance. You will work with actors, begin to develop a personal style and focus on how to work with a creative team and their related disciplines. You will learn how to plan a rehearsal schedule, manage the rehearsal process from the first day to final performance, and critically reflect on this process of training in relation to current directing practise.
Dramaturgy is the process of creative research that facilitates a successful transfer of source material to the stage. In this module, you will develop the multi-dimensional skills of the dramaturge in order to then propose and construct a directorial concept. You will be introduced to a broad range of contemporary directors working in Europe and beyond with a specific focus on their dramaturgical approaches and the shaping of an overriding concept. Case studies will include directors who adapt canonical 19th century plays, such as Yana Ross, or Shakespeare texts, such as Thomas Ostermeier, or adapt films or novels for the stage, such as Ivo van Hove. In addition, you will analyse the complex dramaturgical strategy of adapting multiple texts for a single performance in works by directors such as Krzysztof Warlikowski, or those who use real-life scenarios and documented histories, such as Lola Arias and Oliver Frljić. You will then have the chance to adapt a text for performance through a dramaturgical portfolio and propose an original concept.
This module explores the work of a wide range of contemporary British dramatists and directors including, indicatively, debbie tucker green, Lucy Prebble, Bola Agbaje, Lucy Kirkwood, Caryl Churchill, Moira Buffini, Tanika Gupta, Roy Williams, Nick Payne, Simon Stephens, Mike Bartlett, Rob Drummond, and Anders Lustgarten. Specifically, it enables you to situate playwriting and performance as powerful modes of intervention in the public sphere. The aim of the module is to widen and deepen your understanding of theatre as a material and meaningful intervention in the contemporary world, to enable you to identify key developments in recent British theatre, and to utilise interdisciplinary modes of research.
In this module you will develop an understanding of current trends in, and new approaches to, contemporary performance practice, including playwriting, theatre directing, devised, physical and applied work. You will collaborate with students from the other MA programmes offered in the Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance, encountering a broad range of performance making processes and contexts. You will also apply established techniques of research and enquiry to the conception of a new group or solo performance project, allowing you the opportunity to provide thought-provoking response to the practices encountered.
The dissertation offers you the opportunity to develop some of the concepts you have explored practically in written form. With a flexible format, you may employ a number of critical methodologies. The dissertation can take the form of a Director’s Log which will include documentation of your directing practice.
This module will describe the key principles of academic integrity, focusing on university assignments. Plagiarism, collusion and commissioning will be described as activities that undermine academic integrity, and the possible consequences of engaging in such activities will be described. Activities, with feedback, will provide you with opportunities to reflect and develop your understanding of academic integrity principles.
Teaching and learning are primarily by means of intensive summer workshops, including eight hours of collaborative workshop and up to three hours of supervised rehearsal time a day for three weeks. These typically combine periods of seminar discussion with practical exploration and workshops. Where possible, these are student-led, with participants being encouraged to devise exercises engaging with the relevant issues and to direct their fellow-students.
Opportunities to visit theatrical performances and rehearsal rooms are also an important part of the programme, and you will be encouraged to use these as a basis for discussion and to deconstruct the performances they have seen from a variety of critical positions.
Assessment is by a variety of means including essays (both theoretical and critical) and etudes (practical directing exercises), practical projects as well as a final dissertation of 10-14,000 words. Practical projects are sometimes carried out in a group and may include an element of assessment for an individual’s contribution to group working and direction.
• You'll take a core practical module in directing led by Mitchell, introducing you to the key professional skills whilst developing your directing technique in a rehearsal room setting with professional actors. • You'll take four further modules that provide a rigorous grounding in subjects such as contemporary British theatre, concept, dramaturgy, industry practices, and research methods. • You'll have multiple opportunities to direct throughout the year, including an extended independent project in the summer term. • Get to work in our suite of high-quality rehearsal and performance spaces, including the Boilerhouse Theatre, a converted nineteenth century ‘found space’ with a sprung, heated floor ideal for movement work, and the Caryl Churchill Theatre, a 150-seat flexible space on three levels designed by award-winning theatre architects Foster-Wilson. • Opportunities to work alongside writers and thinkers on our partner MA programmes in an environment that will foster your creative and critical development.
Normally, we require a UK 2:2 (Honours) or equivalent is required. Candidates with professional qualifications or relevant professional experience in an associated area will also be considered.
Applicants will be required to submit one academic essay that they have submitted for assessment on a previous course or an analysis of any theatre production that they have recently seen (2000 words).
Suitable applicants are interviewed.
Relevant professional qualifications and relevant experience in an associated area will be considered.
Extensive and recent practical theatre experience might compensate for a lack of the normal academic qualifications, however applicants should be aware that completing a dissertation is an important part of this degree.
International & EU requirements
English language requirements
IELTS: 6.5 overall. Writing 7.0. No other subscore lower than 5.5.
Pearson Test of English: 61 overall. Writing 69. No other subscore lower than 51.
Trinity College London Integrated Skills in English (ISE): ISE III.
By the end of this course, you will have an enhanced understanding of the tasks and responsibilities of a director, and developed your abilily to work with actors and space. You will also have gained experience in working through the research and preparation necessary to direct a piece of theatre, and have the ability to research and articulate an extended analytic discussion of theatre directing.
Our graduates have started careers in professional theatre, film and television as well as training and education. If you come to the end of the course and find yourself curious about an area of study – or want to take your dissertation topic further – the MA is a perfect grounding for a PhD, which may be fully written or include a practice-based component.
The department gives you access to other creative areas of study like dance, media and art. Part of our reputation as a creative campus comes from this cross-pollination of studies and disciplines, so you'll have a good chance to push into those fields and gain knowledge of theatres and the performance scene in London and beyond. You'll leave the MA able to navigate an intense and growing field with credibility and creativity.
* and ** These tuition fees apply to students enrolled on a full-time basis in the academic year 2025/26. Students studying on the standard part-time course structure over two years are charged 50% of the full-time applicable fee for each study year.
Royal Holloway reserves the right to increase all postgraduate tuition fees annually. For further information, see fees and funding ,and terms and conditions.
** This figure is the fee for EU and international students starting a degree in the academic year 2025/26. Find out more
*** These estimated costs relate to studying this particular degree at Royal Holloway during the 2025/26 academic year, and are included as a guide. Costs, such as accommodation, food, books and other learning materials and printing, have not been included.
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