Playwriting MA

Year of entry: 2025

Course length: 12 months Full-Time

About the course

Our MA Playwriting course is an intensive one-year programme designed to provide a genuine gateway into a writing career in the theatre and performance industries.

Over the course of the year, you will work with leading industry practitioners to develop your playwriting, pitching and dramaturgical skills.

This is a hands-on course, involving four taught units and a dissertation. Taught units, assessed by plays and reflective pieces, include:

• Playwriting and form • Playwriting and structure • The Festival Play • The Working Playwright

These are example course units based on 2024/25 options and are subject to change each year.

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Develop skills in writing for performance across a diverse range of contexts, genres and themes.

Work with active leading playwrights Anders Lustgarten, Chloe Moss and Tim Price, as well as attending seminars with Jeanette Winterson.

Our graduates are among the most targeted by top UK employers

(High Fliers 2024)

Where will your degree take you?

We will prepare you for a successful career in playwriting and writing for performance, and you’ll have access to individual career guidance and training to help you secure work. The industry focus of the programme ensures that you will be equipped with the practical knowledge to manage your career as a writer, and the ability to pitch your own initiatives, as well as work both as an individual writer and collaboratively with others. Additional possible career paths include work as literary officers and agents, and within publishing, art journalism, dramaturgy and producing.

Chloë Moss

Lecturer (Playwriting)

Chloë Moss is an accomplished playwright and screenwriter. Her celebrated play This Wide Night 2008/2009 (Clean Break, Soho) won the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn prize and was subsequently produced off Broadway, starring Edie Falco. Chloë has written numerous other shows including The Gatekeeper 2012 (Royal Exchange Theatre), Fatal Light 2010/2011 (Soho Theatre) and Christmas is Miles Away 2005/2006 (Bush theatre and off Broadway).

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