Bachelor of Arts - Drama (Honours)

BA (Hons) Drama studies and makes theatre: performance practice and devising, theatre history and theory, applied and community theatre, and production skills, developed across three years toward substantial practical projects.

The course’s centre of gravity is making work collaboratively — students devise, rehearse and stage productions, taking multiple roles across performance, direction and production — which builds the versatility that theatre careers outside the audition circuit require.

Applied theatre is treated seriously rather than as a minor strand, reflecting where drama graduates find sustainable work: schools, healthcare settings, prisons and community organisations all commission theatre practitioners. This course records five entry opportunities, September and January alike, across the listed cycles.

Applicants and families should be clear about what this degree is: a broad study of theatre as an art form and a social practice, not conservatoire actor training, which DMU offers separately through its acting route recorded elsewhere in this sheet. Students here devise, direct, produce and facilitate as well as perform, and that breadth is what makes the degree employable, since drama graduates working in education, community arts, production and arts administration far outnumber those making a living from performance. Building facilitation and production experience alongside study is the practical difference between employment and disappointment after graduation. Leicester’s community theatre and festival calendar gives students production credits within the city itself, which strengthens applications far more than campus-only experience.

Income typically combines facilitation, teaching and production work at £19,000–£23,000 early on. As a completed honours degree the course confers Graduate Route rights for 18 months under post-2026 application rules, with dependants excluded throughout taught study.