Humanities and Social Sciences

School of Communication, Arts and Critical Enquiry

Theatre and Drama Program

Theatre and Drama welcomes students who have a passion for making theatre. Our course is designed for students with a range of abilities including beginners through to experienced students who want to learn and improve their skills. It provides opportunities to perform, direct and write plays, and to work behind the scenes. Students gain insights and techniques for their own theatre-making through learning about the historical conditions of theatre production and the innovations of current practitioners.

What is Theatre and Drama?

Theatre is a time-based, live art form. In Western culture its history stretches back to the ancient Greeks. Since then every age and society has found new ways to express itself through the medium of theatre from the Elizabethan court masque to the “dirty realism” of some recent plays at La Mama for example.

Teaching and Research

At La Trobe, Theatre and Drama are taught with a variety of different approaches and across a range of histories, genres, styles. The Program specializes in Aboriginal and Australian theatre and drama, Shakespeare, community theatre, youth theatre, modern European drama (Ibsen, Chekhov, Brecht, Beckett) and realism, multicultural theatre, creative writing and performance, puppetry, physical theatre and circus, post-modern theory and performance, queer theory, gender and performance encompassing women’s theatre work, women playwrights and feminist drama, and critical theory (semiotics, feminism, performative theory, audience studies and reception theory, anthropology of theatre). Postgraduate studies can be taken in all these areas of specialization as well as performance as research approaches.

Teaching is conducted through performance making and viewing, lectures, seminars and workshops, and reading and reflective writing and is available at both the Melbourne (Bundoora) and Albury/Wodonga campuses.

Theatre going is an important part of all theatre and drama subjects and reviews of performances are part of the required written work. Students are guided by staff members who combine specialist academic knowledge with work in professional theatre.

Career Opportunities

Our graduates rate this course very highly for overall satisfaction according 82% in the most recently available figures on exit surveys. Graduates work in a broad range of careers directly or indirectly related to their theatre and drama studies. Recent graduates can be found running festivals, heading up government departments, leading theatre companies, acting in the theatre and on film and television. They teach drama in schools and universities, report on the arts in newspapers and journals, work in youth and social welfare organizations and in a myriad other areas where skills acquired or enhanced in their studies of Theatre and Drama at La Trobe can be applied.

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