ROSE BRUFORD COLLEGE – LAUNCHES NEW POSTGRADUATE TEACHING CENTRE AND OTHER UPDATES

@RoseBruford College – London’s International Drama School

Practice Based Postgraduate Programmes

Innovative, Contemporary, And International In Focus

• LAUNCH OF NEW POSTGRADUATE TEACHING CENTRE IN SOUTH EAST LONDON – PART OF NEW PARTNERSHIP WITH LEWISHAM COLLEGE
• LAUNCH OF NEW MFA CONTEMPORARY DIRECTING PROGRAMME
• TOPHER CAMPBELL JOINS AS NEW PROGRAMME DIRECTOR OF MA/MFA IN COLLABORATIVE THEATRE MAKING

Rose Bruford College, one of the UK’s premiere drama schools, will start a new year of Postgraduate teaching on 11 January 2021, after students’ arrivals were staggered to enable the 2019 intake to complete their final productions live for industry, which had been delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

An internationally renowned series of practice-based courses are available to postgraduate students of all ages and stages of life from the UK and abroad, including MA and MFA courses (over one or two years respectively). October 2021 sees the launch of a unique new MFA Directing programme for both Stage and Screen which will be offered alongside existing disciplines:

• Actor / Performer Training
• Actor Musicianship
• Collaborative Theatre Making
• Devised Theatre and Performance (MA) / Advanced Devising Practice (MFA)
• International Theatre Practice and Performance
• Theatre For Young Audiences

In a new development for 2021, all Postgraduate teaching will now take place in a new and dedicated Postgraduate Centre, part of the Lewisham College campus in South East London, with multiple studio spaces and a 90 seat black box theatre as part of the resources available to a year group of approximately 50postgraduate students. This is part of the recently announced partnership between Rose Bruford and Lewisham College, with a new creative and performing arts provision including a range of courses for 16-19s, which are designed to nurture young creatives and performers to develop skills in performance, production, art and design.

Students on previous courses had been taught at the Rose Burford Lamorbey Park campus near Sidcup, and across the world in collaboration with a global network of institutions, theatre companies and practitioners, including London International School of Performing Arts (arthaus.berlin/Lispa) in Berlin, The Moscow Art Theatre School in Russia and the National Theater Institute in Connecticut, USA.

Topher Campbell has also been announced as the new Programme Director of the Collaborative Theatre Making MA / MFA. Campbell has over 20 years of outputs spanning broadcasting, theatre, performance, writing, experimental film and site-specific work. His focus has been on sexuality, masculinity, race, human rights, memoir and climate change. This course encourages students to think critically about the world they live in and asked to explore themes and ideas that question and provoke as much as they enlighten and entertain, and as such will develop theatre practitioners who are embarked on making new and challenging work through performance, directing and dramaturgical training in the collaborative theatre making process.

Topher Campbell said,

“I am very excited to be joining the team at Rose Bruford College. Being able to contribute to the evolution of education towards a more equitable environment that truly welcomes all is important to me.  I am very much looking forward to working with the college, and also with their highly motivated next generation of Theatremakers.”

Niamh Dowling, Head of the School of Performance, joined Rose Bruford College, in 2015 with a remit to develop a strong international programme of practice-based courses. With an MA from Goldsmiths College, Niamh trained as a teacher of The Alexander Technique and with Monika Pagneux in Paris, Nancy Topf and Eva Karczag in New York. She collaborated closely with Teatr Piesn Kozla in Poland for fifteen years and more recently she has been training in systemic approaches to leadership. Her specialism is in movement for actors and she has developed a unique approach to teaching movement to a range of performers including actors, dancers, singers and musicians. International work as a Movement Director has included leading workshops in the UK, Europe, USA, Asia, South and Central America and Russia working on projects and productions in New York, Hong Kong, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Singapore.

Niamh Dowling said,

“You cannot do a postgraduate MA or MFA Programme without your life changing for ever! Programmes at Rose Bruford College are taught by working professionals in the industry and will give students intensive teaching, skills, practices and the opportunity to train and perform. Above all these programmes will inform, challenge and nourish them both personally and creatively within an open and talented community. Based now in London, with its combination of theatrical history and challenging, our courses enable the creation of contemporary creative work in theatre making, music, writing, directing, acting and art and design. Students will meet other peers and professionals who came to London to find an alive and vibrant place to be freed of constraints, to find their voice to represent themselves and others, to meet new collaborators and to come to understand their true identity as an artist. It is this opportunity we offer the new postgraduate students that will join us from October 2021, and in the years to come.”