Theatre and Performance Studies

Exploring culture and identity through performance

Delve into a vibrant spectrum of drama and performance, including theatre, dance, and live art. From political rallies to sacred rituals and pop stars, we explore how performance shapes culture, history, and personal identity.

The Theatre and Performance Studies program at the University of Sydney attracts global academic visitors and boasts renowned research staff in theatre, dance, dramaturgy, and more.

Our graduates pursue diverse paths, from professional theatre, dance, and production management to drama teaching, arts administration, and beyond while others leverage the discipline's insights and research skills in fields like law, medicine, public administration, social justice, and foreign affairs. Many of our students pursue postgraduate study and become tertiary-level educators.

Our study offering

Theatre and Performance Studies

Theatre and Performance Studies looks at a broad range of aesthetic, social and everyday performances across theatre, dance or live art and the stage, to the performative dimensions of politics, sport, cinema and popular culture. Explore a range of different approaches to performance making, engage with professional artists-in-residence and learn how to document performative events and build these observations into a detailed critical analysis.

Undergraduate

*Available to all students studying the Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Economics and Bachelor of Visual Arts, as well as all combined Bachelor of Advanced Studies degrees.  

Postgraduate Research

Current postgraduate research

Current Projects

Faryad Ali: The Relationship between Traditional Performance Forms and Post-Colonial Theatre: A Study of Kurdish Theatre’s Hybridisation (M.Phil.)
Neil Anderson: Rudolf Steiner’s Art of Acting (PhD)
Lawrence Ashford: Towards a Poetics of Interactive Theatre: Recognising Audience Agency over Narrative (PhD)
James Dalton: A Doctor Prepares: An Ethnographic Account of Medical Students Learning to Perform as Junior Doctors (PhD)
Tess De Quincey: What can a Body Weather Body do? (PhD)
Samuel Dobson (PhD): Skillful Coping, Improvised Music, and the Role of Mental Content: A Phenomenology of the Improvising Double Bassist
Adrian Howe (PhD) Othellos and their Trials: Shakespearean Dramaturgy
Jesse Jensen-Kohl (PhD) From the Pram to the World Stage: The History and Development of Circus Oz
Bridget Mac Eochagáin: Radicalising Rape on Stage (PhD)
Margie McCrae: How has Marian Street Theatre for Young People (MSTYP) (1973-2023), Sydney’s longest-running children’s theatre, played a significant role in the local theatre ecology, and contributed to the development of children’s theatre in Australia? (MA(Res))
Hayden Moon: Performance and performativity of Intersectionality both on and off the stage - creating safe spaces in which to perform intersectional identities. (PhD)
Adam Moulds: The Rogue Less Travelled: Writing for Performance at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (PhD)
Izabella Nantsou: The Subsidy Question: Community Theatre and the Integral State (PhD)
Lucinda Petchell: Embodied Cities, Citied Bodies: Assembling Urban Research through Movement (PhD)
Jimena Puente-Trevino: Los Empeños de una Casa (The erros of a house): Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Mexico City 17th Century theatre) (MA Research)

Completions since 2022

Joseph Appleton (2024): Enduring Unpredictability (Losing the Present) (PhD)
Aine De Paor (2022): Staging Ireland Down Under (PhD)
Peta Downes (2024): Independent or Entrepreneur? The impact of economic rationalism on Australian fringe theatre practice (PhD)
Melissa Fenton (2022) Behind the Red Curtain: An Ethnographic Exploration of the Global Musical Theatre Industry as a Workplace (PhD)
Rowan Greaves (2024): White Faces and Nervous Laughter: Subversive Comedy in Australian Performance (MA Research)
Jeremy Johnson (2024): Diane Cilento: Karnak and The Spirit of Performance (PhD)
Jiva Lath Namsal (2024): Theatre of Nepal: Dynamic Interplay of Activist Aesthetic and Embodied Knowledges (PhD)
Sean O’Riordan (2024): Shakespeare is Good for You – ‘An Olympic Course in Acting’ – Shakespearean performance techniques as training tools in contemporary acting conservatoires (M.Phil.)
Kerrie Roberts (2022): Shakepeare’s Hereditary Queen (MA Research)
Garry Seabrook (2022): The Complementarity of Being: A Reconceptualization of reality, the Present Moment, and Human Embodiment (PhD)
Lillian Shaddick (2024): Leisurely Seeking Duende: Meaning making through the embodied experience of flamenco dance (PhD)
Toby Wong (2024): Performing exoticism in a globalised world: Puccini’s operas in the 21st century (MA Research)
Ting Zheng (2024): Transformational Role of the Dramaturgy between Drama Production Teams, Critics and Audiences in the Transitional Society of China (PhD)

Our research

Our focus includes the expansive realm of performance and its intricate production and reception processes. Our areas of expertise include:

Australian theatre and dance history
Performance-making processes: theories of acting, dramaturgy, ethnography of rehearsal
Historical rehearsal processes and performance practices in Europe
Performance and health
Performance and social change
Placemaking and embodiment
Creative practice as research

Our facilities

Interior of the Rex Cramphorn Performance Research Studio — The Rex Cramphorn Performance Research Studio

The Rex Cramphorn Performance Research Studio is our fully-equipped studio facility available to external practitioners through our artist-in-residence program. “The Rex” is located on Level 1 of the John Woolley Building (A20). The studio can be accessed directly from Manning Rd.

Experience artistic collaboration at the Rex Cramphorn Performance Research Studio, where professional artists join forces with our staff and students to advance research in theatre and performance studies. Refer to the What's On Calendar to stay updated on our projects and events.

The Rex Cramphorn Studio, named in honour of a brilliant theatre director and innovator, with significant ties to the discipline, is a versatile open space. This rectangular studio offers practitioners ample room for rehearsals, workshops, and performances, adapting to various formats with ease.

The Studio boasts a main sprung floor and a small foyer area with a kitchenette and toilets. There is also a mezzanine level housing toilets, changing rooms, and showers. The studio is well-equipped with a semi-flexible lighting grid, rated rigging positions, a new LED theatre lighting package with control, a ceiling-mounted data projector, an audio control desk, and a PA system.

Studio size specifications: Length 12.7m | Width 8.5m | Height 4m.

Students in the Rex Cramphorn Performance Research Studio — 'Dangerous Performances' students taking Denis Beaubois’s 'Wind Workshop' (Beaufort scale) in the Rex Cramphorn Performance Research Studio (incl. r. Tripta Daryanani), 2022. Photo: Denis Beaubois.

Student participating in Denis Beaubois' Memory Workshop — Participants in Denis Beaubois’s 'Memory Workshop' (selective forgetting) in the Rex Cramphorn Research Studio, 2022. Photo: Denis Beaubois.

Participants in the Public Actions workshop — (L–R) Seini SistaNative, Joshua Di Mattina-Beven, Luke George, Nichole Pingon and Gideon Peyten-Griffiths in Luke George’s 'Public Actions' workshop at Carriageworks, 2022. Photo: Richard Manner.

Playwright discussing a performance with the director. — TaPS students look on as award-winning playwright Suzie Miller (left) and director Andrea James (right) put the final touches on the script to 'Jailbaby', produced by long-term TaPS partner Griffin Theatre Company. Photo: Stefanie Zingsheim.

Students carrying a log for a performance. — First-year students enrolled in Placemaking and Performance in a workshop led by Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Luke George. Photo: Lawrence Ashford.

Female performer rehearsing in a studio with a stage prop. — Patricia Wood (pictured) and Alex Spence share final development of 'Sonar So Far' for the TaPS Research Seminar. Photo: Barbara Campbell.

Male performer on stage, holding a microphone. — Regroup Autotune: Performance collective member Mark Rogers in a showing of 'Autotune' at the end of the collective’s four-week residency working with third-year students enrolled in Performance Studio (offered again in 2025). Photo: Lucy Parakhina.

Performers at a smoke ceremony. — Yellamundie Moogahlin: Yuin elder, Uncle Dean Kelly conducts the smoking ceremony for participants of Yellamundie Festival 2023, produced by Moogahlin Performing Arts at Carriageworks on Gadigal land. Darug and Gumatj clan woman, and dancer with Jannawi Dance Clan, Dharpaloco Yunupingu bathing in smoke while third-year students enrolled in Dramaturgy wait to enter (Dramaturgy unit of study offered again in 2025 to coincide with the next Yellamundie Festival). Photo: Jamie James.

Artist-in-Residence

The annual program of artist residencies in the Rex Cramphorn Performance Research Studio is curated and managed by the Placements and Project Coordinator, Dr Barbara Campbell. Artist residencies are offered with the expectation that artists engage with the teaching and research programs of the discipline; this may include student observation, skills workshops, research collaborations with academics, seminar presentations for postgraduates, or invitations to showings.

Expressions of interest for the 2025 Rex Cramphorn Studio Artist-in-Residence program will open in September 2024 and close in late November. Contact Barbara Campbell (barbara.campbell@sydney.edu.au) if you’d like to discuss how your project can be integrated within the discipline’s teaching and research programs prior to submitting your EOI.

Journal: About Performance

The discipline publishes a peer-reviewed journal, About Performance, which provides an international forum for analysis, theory and critique by academic researchers and performance makers. We welcome articles that bring theoretical perspectives derived from other disciplines to bear on performance practice. The journal is published annually, and each issue is devoted to a single theme.

Distributed via Informit Humanities & Social Sciences Collection and ProQuest Central. Editor: Ian Maxwell.