About the Centre for Drama & Theatre Studies
Monash has always had a strong reputation for lively and innovative theatre activity, and for the ready accessibility of its student performance groups.
Today the Centre for Drama & Theatre Studies is a vigorous teaching department, with a full-time academic staff of six and an outstanding national research profile. Units range across a wide range of approaches to theatre, and aim to strike the balance between rich and exploratory performance opportunities and a strong and challenging academic program.
The ten or more public productions which the Centre stages each year in the Drama Theatre (a 200-seat flexible performance space) and the many smaller-scale productions staged in the adjacent Rehearsal Studio have generated great interest and enthusiasm among audiences from the university and the wider community; but they represent only one element in a program which, in both the Bachelor of Arts and the Bachelor of Performing Arts degrees, approaches the theory and the practice of performance processes in ways that ensure that each complements and enhances the other.
Drama can be studied through both a Bachelor of Performing Arts and a Bachelor of Arts. Both courses provide a number of pathways to the study and making of theatre. These include:
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experience in performance work, working with both established and original scripts;
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an introduction to a range of production skills;
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a broad study of the history of theatre, and of performance styles and conventions;
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an exploration of contemporary theories of performance and procedures of performance analysis;
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training in the investigation of the written text; and,
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presentation and study of musical theatre.
It is a wide program, that aims to cater for a diversity of student interests, and to create an equally exciting environment for them all.
In addition to the lively undergraduate program, the Centre offers strong postgraduate research degrees.
In 2004 the Centre launched the new Master of Theatre program.