Drama and Creative Writing with a Placement Year

Drama and creative writing are disciplines that share a deep concern with story, voice and the capacity of language to illuminate human experience. Drama explores how performance creates meaning in space and time, how bodies, voices and staging choices shape what an audience feels and thinks. Creative writing develops the craft of finding exactly the right form, structure and language to bring a story, character or idea to life on the page.

Studied together, they challenge you to think about storytelling from multiple angles and to move fluidly between writing for the eye and writing for the ear and body.

At the University of East Anglia, this four-year full-time programme with a placement year brings together two disciplines in which UEA has deep and distinctive traditions. You will study dramatic literature and performance practice, engage with the history and theory of theatre, workshop your own fiction, poetry and dramatic writing, and receive expert feedback on your creative work in an environment that takes writing seriously as an art. The placement year gives you the opportunity to work in a professional context, whether in theatre, publishing, arts administration or another creative setting, gaining experience that enriches your creative and professional development before you complete your degree.

Graduates from drama and creative writing programmes move into theatre and performance, scriptwriting for screen and radio, literary publishing, education, arts journalism and criticism, copywriting, community arts and cultural management. Many build portfolio careers that combine creative practice with other professional work. UEA's reputation in creative writing in particular means graduates enter a community and network that extends well beyond the degree itself.

Postgraduate study in creative writing, drama or theatre studies is a well-trodden path for those wanting to develop their practice further.