Masters (Coursework) in Theatre & Performance Studies

Let your future take centre stage. Complete your MA in one academic year.

The Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies welcomes applications for the Master of Arts (Theatre and Performance Studies) by coursework.

Our courses develop critical thinking, research abilities and presentation skills, particularly for those who seek to work between arts practice, industry, research and community advancement. They are taught by globally recognized leaders in areas such as Asian performance, play analysis, practice-based research, digital humanities, and interdisciplinary study of literature, film and performance. Students will be trained in close critical and historically contextualized analysis and equipped with skills necessary for cultural leadership in a wide range of roles from arts organization leader, to cultural research associate, to arts policy maker. With our emphasis on digital skills in the arts and humanities, our students will be uniquely poised to apply digital tools to a variety of public, educational and industry contexts for professional activities such as archive development, interaction design and multimedia interface. Full-time students can complete the degree in two semesters, i.e. one academic year.

Admission Requirements

Curriculum

Apply for Admission

Funding

Admission Requirements

To be eligible for admission, candidates must have:

An NUS Honours degree or equivalent (e.g. a four-year Bachelors degree with at least an average grade of B or equivalent in the subject or related field); or
A good Bachelors degree (at least an average of B or equivalent) in the subject or related field; or
In exceptional cases, other qualifications and experience subject to approval by the Board of Graduate Studies; and
TOEFL (85 for the internet test or 580 for the paper test or 237 for the computer test) or IELTS,(6.0) for students who have not studied in a university where the medium of instruction is English.

Curriculum

Candidates can earn the degree of Master of Arts in Theatre and Performance Studies in a single academic year by completing 40 units or 10 courses (each course is worth 4 units). Course options are listed below.

For more information on the courses, please refer to Canvas(opens in new tab) and NUSmods(opens in new tab).

Compulsory: TPS5101 Text and Performance

Graham WOLFE

This course provides a broad-based critical and theoretical foundation for advanced study of theatre and performance. Engaging with scripts, live theatrical performances, media performances and cultural performances, the course trains students to examine and compare the critical positions and questions posed by a range of theoretical texts with different approaches, priorities and methodologies. Core topics are the mutually transformational modalities of textuality and performativity, live and mediated performance, and non-traditional critical and performance practices. Students are guided in formulating research questions and writing analytically about theatre and performance.

At least one Theatre, Film and Literature course

Choose at least one of the following:

TPS5212 Asian International Cinema

Edna LIM

In recent years, the vitality and currency of Asian cinema has resulted in texts that can no longer be viewed as merely artefacts of a particular culture or nation. This course looks at how film industries in Asia have engaged with global cinema through various forms of negotiations that assert, compromise or consume national, cultural or conventional distinctions. We assess the implications of a conglomerate Asian cinema by examining the current trend of transnational Asian films, the translatability of conventions and adaptability of ideas within Asia itself as well as between Asia and dominant cinemas like Hollywood.

Preclusion: TS5212

TPS5213 Performing Shakespeare in Asia

YONG Li Lan

Shakespeare is by far the most produced and adapted western playwright in East Asian theatre cultures. Approaches to translating, performing and re‐writing his plays have changed over time, and are now at their most diverse and experimental. Correlatively, connections and relationships between Asian and Anglophone performance histories have also matured. Using translated and annotated archival recordings, this course examines the historical contexts and theatrical concerns of East Asian Shakespeare performances, relating them comparatively to Anglophone and European textual and performance histories. It is jointly taught by NUS and The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham as a distance learning course.

Preclusion: TS5213

TPS5214 Performance Ethnography

Alvin LIM

Covering a spectrum of theories, practices, and methods of performance ethnography, students will encounter and engage in the process of translating experience into text, audio, photography or video. This graduate course invites students to engage with ethnography as a mode of inquiry that facilitates cultural exchange and engagement with all involved—participants, audiences, and ethnographers. Beyond textual descriptions of performance, this course introduces students to innovative approaches to translating performative exchanges into a different medium. Through the process of documentation, narration, location recordings, critiquing the process, and interpretation, this course will consider the ethics and politics of ethnographic representation.

TPS5215 Theatre and the Novel

Graham WOLFE

This course asks how we can better understand theatre through the lens of novels and vice versa. It explores the complex relationships between theatre and prose fiction in different eras and parts of the world. Often competing for audiences and defining themselves through antagonism, theatre and novels have also influenced each other’s development, drawing upon each other’s techniques, mimicking each other’s affordances, at times collaborating or even seeking to dissolve apparent boundaries. Focusing on several authors who have straddled theatre-making and novel-writing, the course investigates topics such as adaptation, transmodalization, theatricality, anti-theatricality, intermediality and parody.

TPS5216 Adaptations and Remakes

Edna LIM

This course explores the rich and dynamic process of adaptations and remakes across various forms of storytelling, including drama, theatrical production, literary and graphic novels, film and television. We study source texts and their adaptations and/or remakes as acts of transforming and performing the same stories through the codes, conventions and formal qualities of each medium or genre, as well as the creative, cultural and/or commercial motivations that drive the changes between them. Through critical analysis, students will understand how adaptations and remakes can both preserve and reinvent narratives as overlapping but unique performances.

TPS5232 Performance, History and Cultural Memory

LIANG Peilin

How do societies use performance to mediate between the past and the present? This course addresses the question by considering the place of performance in the forging of history, the use of performance analysis as a means of gaining insights into historical events, and the function of performance as a process of remembering. Combining historical case studies and contemporary performances from local, regional and international contexts from colonial encounters and memorial rituals to trauma plays historiography is studied alongside the ways in which theatrical and other performances play a role in both reinforcing and challenging prevailing cultural memories.

Preclusion: TS5232

At least one Creative Practices in Performance course

Choose at least one of the following:

TPS5201 Collaborative Performance Creation

Maiya MURPHY

[Please note that this module is unavailable at this time.]

Through studying collaborative performance histories and methodologies from across the globe and engaging in practical exploration, students are invited to consider the intersections of performance, power, technique, aesthetic, and context. While all performances may be considered intrinsically collaborative, this course zeros in on companies that highlight collaboration as a feature to drive or reimagine creation and performance processes. From the most politically engaged theatre to aesthetically inspired performance-making, this course thinks across place, time, and agenda to study companies that stake claims on collaborative performance.

TPS5202 Theatre and Civil Dramaturgy

TPS5203 Movement as Critique

LIANG Peilin

Without movement, there would be no performance. The way we move is shaped by prevailing ideologies, sociocultural beliefs and material conditions. Treating human movement on the stage as a mode of critical inquiry, we will examine the way movement has shaped performance style and practice. In addition, students will learn the fundamentals of the moving body, conduct physical assessment, and formulate safe movement strategies for the stage. The practical components of the course are conceived as interventions that respond to discourses relating to capitalism, efficiency and aesthetics.

TPS5204 Theatre Ecologies

Graham WOLFE

What can theatre and performance do in the face of climate change, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss? In this course, we study plays and performances, analyse case studies, and undertake creative projects to explore how ecological concerns and methodologies translate into artistic practice. Situating ecological thinking in relation to broader social and political conditions, the course also offers critical insight into Asia-Pacific-based theatre practitioners engaging with topics such as “ecodramaturgy” and “ecoscenography”. The course asks how we can better understand theatre-making itself by considering it as an ecosystem—a dynamic network of bodies, materials, spaces, and practices.

At least one Digital Skills in Arts and Humanities course

Choose at least one of the following:

TPS5241 Digital Archiving and Live Performance

Alvin Eng Hui LIM

This course introduces key aspects of the field of digital archiving in relation to the performing arts. It will discuss topics on digital media, preservation principles, policy, organisation, curation, translation and subtitling, access and copyrights. Students will learn to work with both material objects (manuscripts, posters, scripts, programmes, photographs, etc.) and digital objects (audio-visual files, text documents, databases, etc.). Theories of digital archiving and their socio-cultural meanings will also be introduced. Students will develop a prototype digital archive with the use of existing website development tools and explore the challenges and issues that archivists face when developing a digital performance archive.

TPS5242 Visualising Orientalism, Travel and Performance

YONG Li Lan

How did visualising travel disseminate orientalism as part of colonialism and thereafter? This course looks at panoramas of foreign locales in the early nineteenth century, travel photography, plays and travelling troupes to examine how visually performing the going or coming from abroad has shaped artistic paradigms. Students gain competence in researching and assembling visual materials. They discuss the modes by which viewers enact movement across geographical locations and connect cultural terrains. A digital project equips students with the reflexive skills for scaffolding, designing and presenting a journey through the visual mediums of theatre, film, photography and digital media.

TPS5243 Data Analysis and Visualization for Theatre Research

HOU Yumeng

Theatre performances are increasingly advertised, documented and discussed online. Scholars have a new opportunity to gather this digital data to better understand the history and current trends of theatre performances. This course provides an introduction to data analysis and visualization, and does not require a technical background. Our objective is to understand how data can complement more traditional modes of scholarship, such as historical and ethnographic research. While the examples will mostly come from theatre studies, the techniques learned in the course are applicable to the analysis of all types of cultural data, such as literature, film and popular culture.

TPS5244 The Automatic Artist

Douglas EACHO

Why would an artist automate their own practice? Today’s popular fascination with the aesthetic outputs of generative AI – alternately “slop” and profound, comic and apocalyptic – spurs this seminar’s turn to a longer history of automation in the arts. Topics will include surrealist automatism, aleatory aesthetics, robotics, conceptual writing, video art, and photography; throughout we will focus on live and media arts. Questions of the gender, racial, and economic politics of automation will be central to our discussion. The final weeks of the seminar will be devoted to contemporary artistic work with large language models and machine learning.

Recognised courses from other programmes/departments

ENC5244 Shakespeare in Culture and the New Millennium

This course introduces students to representative plays of Shakespeare by considering the relationship between form and content, between genre and theme, in works written for performance on stage. It provides us with a point of entry into the social, cultural, and political world of Shakespeare’s England, inviting critical consideration of the significance of Shakespeare’s plays for his 16th- and 17th-century audience. It also offers opportunity for us to consider the cultural and ideological implications of selected stage and/or film adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, adaptations that showcase this iconic playwright’s relevance to audiences historically and culturally distanced from him.

Preclusion: If undertaking a Graduate Degree Coursework or Graduate Degree Research THEN ( must not have completed EN5244 at a grade of at least D)

Please refer to the NUSMods page for more information on availability.

ENC5883 Screen Culture in Southeast Asia

David TEH

What’s distinctive about moving images in Southeast Asia? Are they vehicles of a convergent ‘global’ culture, or a medium for difference, resistance and critique? As video becomes integral to everyday social and economic life, and screen culture reaches beyond the bounds of national cinema, so should theory and criticism. This interdisciplinary course draws on cultural and media theory, art history and anthropology, as well as film studies, exploring a range of fiction and non-fiction material including indie and experimental film, documentaries, video art and installations. Students will engage critically with this region’s screen cultures, via both historical and contemporary perspectives.

HY5415 Theatres of Memory: Performing Public History

Jean Inn Tay

This course surveys how societies gain new understandings of the past through performances in the public sphere. A broad spectrum of performances across various cultural contexts will be explored, including theatre and dance, historical re-enactments, public rituals, immersive exhibitions, films, and digital sites such as video games and social media. This course equips students with a toolkit with which to interpret, analyse, and reflect on the dramaturgical strategies and techniques that shape the stories told in these performances, examining how they enhance historical consciousness and negotiate the distance between past and present for the communities involved.

Please refer to the NUSMods page for more information on availability.

Maximum of one Independent Study course

Subject to the approval of the Department, instructor, and MA Coursework coordinator, students may take up to two 4000-level courses in Theatre and Performance Studies. Please note that space in these courses will be limited.

Candidates who have completed equivalent courses which were not used towards obtaining another degree prior to admission to the Master of Arts in Theatre and Performance Studies may apply to the Department for an exemption of course(s), subject to a maximum of 50% of the MA requirements.

GPA Requirements

Candidates must obtain a minimum Grade Point Average (GPA) of 3.00 for all examinable courses. The candidature of a student will be terminated if they:

Obtain a GPA of less than 2.5 for two consecutive semesters; or
Obtain a GPA of less than 3.0 for three consecutive semesters; or
Fail more than two courses

Residency

Candidates must fufil 50% residency in Singapore.

Applying for Admission

Unless there are special circumstances, we prefer that students begin their studies in the first semester in August each year.

For the Masters by Coursework programmes, students planning to begin in August must have submitted their application between 1 November of the previous year and 15 January of the current year.

Click on the button below for more information about admissions and the application process.

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Fees and Funding

In general, MA coursework programmes do not have scholarships. As such candidates must ensure that they have the financial resources to support themselves for their entire programme of study.

However, there are options for graduate financial assistance such as travel grants for conferences and support for fieldwork. Please click on the button below for more information on course fees and funding.

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Graduate (Coursework)