international postgraduate school
MA Devised Theatre And Performance
The MA Devised Theatre and Performance (DTAP) offers an intense, practice-based one-year research program from September to June each year at arthaus.berlin, an international training and research centre that combines the vision of a holistic teaching philosophy with the creative research of a performance laboratory. At the core of arthaus.berlin's approach is the practice of embodiment - the lived interconnectedness of body and world - as a pathway to personal authenticity, creative autonomy, and artistic originality, and as a pre-condition to defining your role and purpose as a creator of original work.
MFA Advanced Devising Practice
Students in the first year of the two-year MFA Advanced Devising Practice (ADP) at arthaus.berlin complete modules 1-3 of the MA Devised Theatre and Performance. The MFA program adds a second year of practical work in Berlin which builds on the embodied foundations of the first year, sharpens your skills as a performer and strengthens your confidence as a change-maker by offering you multiple, distinct thematic research modules. These practice-based modules deeply investigate specific theatrical territories, their underlying dynamics, and their potential applications and relevance to the shifting performative paradigms of contemporary global culture. The modules are led by the core team and also integrate master classes with international practitioners.
Both programs are built around 6 different fields of practice :
Body Awareness +
The practice of body awareness incorporates components such as Alexander Technique, UNFOLD Method, movement, rhythm, contemporary dance improvisations and voice, as an exploration into one's own human-animal presence. These approaches help students to gain access to body-based learning paths. The practice stimulates listening and looking for ways to tap into deep creative resources, waking up the students' expressive instincts and their physical, vocal and spatial awareness.
Practice of Embodiment+
The practice of embodiment offers students a movement-based, playful, and poetic approach, which explores the relationship of the human body with the worlds around and within. Regular improvisation sessions invite students to foster a dialogue between their imagination and their moving body, while movement analysis deepens an understanding for the connection between movement and creation. The aim of this practice is the emergence of a writing and/or generating process from the body, which leads the students towards a deeply embodied creative autonomy.
Ensemble Process +
Ensemble process aims to prepare students for some of the inevitable challenges of collaborating with others. We wish to become more conscious of our own expectations and patterns of behaviour which don't allow us to be in genuine contact with ourselves and with others. Through playful rhythm work, ensemble singing and other de-centering exercises and practices, students are encouraged to find in themselves a good balance between individual and group-facing attitudes, which is essential for the healthy functioning of a collaborative ensemble.
Collaborative Devising+
Several times a week, students spend time working in the studio to devise and create new work in collaboration with each other. This practice takes the form of a laboratory, where the students test and try ideas, which they will present to each other and to facilitators on a regular basis for feedback and discussion. Progressively over the season, the research and devising time will increase, and this leads to longer projects which can then be shared with an invited audience.
Performance Research+
Performance research aims to foster critical and theoretical analysis of the work students are making and exploring. Through a cross-disciplinary approach ( discussions groups, movement laboratory and project work ), students are exposed to the world of performance from a diversity of perspectives ( historical, socio-political, aesthetical, philosophical ). In addition, students will explore the work of major theater makers of the 20th century and their implications and influences in the field of the performing arts.
Reflective Practice+
Reflective practice offers students ways of reflecting on their personal and creative process through non-verbal forms of expression such as painting and drawing alongside verbal forms such as writing and speaking. The practice offers an inter-modal approach towards that part of one's own journey as an artist which is non-linear, chaotic and beyond intellectual understanding. It therefore offers potential new pathways towards more embodied ways to document and share one's creative processes.
The MA/MFA comprises 5 Modules :
Module 1 - The Poetic Body+
Studio research centres on pre-performative embodiment practices. Regular movement, body and voice work sessions create the foundation for explorations into playfulness, the Neutral Mask, and physical identification with and transposition of the natural world into visible form.
Weekly group devising experiments are focussed on the collaborative process and investigating the link between practice and form.
Module 2 - Embodied Writing+
Embodied writing at arthaus.berlin combines three strands: developing an awareness of somatic sensing, developing a creative resonance practice of generating work via multiple modalities, and embedding work in a contextual relationship to contemporary performance discourses.
Students explore current methodologies and debates within the arts and investigate how their own work is linked to those influences and dynamics.
Module 3 - Life to Art+
Regular movement, body and voice practice continues, and studio research turns towards the construction of dramatic spaces and performance.
Investigation into rhythm, structure, composition and dynamics as they manifest in architecture, music, painting and poetry form the matrix for longer-form group devising projects. Animality, chorus and mask work are explored as entry points to the creation of characters and text.
Module 4 - Advanced Devising Practice+
(MFA only) The practical work of the MFA second year includes multiple thematic research workshops, totalling 12-16 weeks of facilitated studio work, which investigate specific theatrical forms.
Each research workshop, as a stand-alone intensive, will also include a limited number of external participants who apply to join the degree cohort for that module. Following each workshop, MFA students develop group devising projects from the workshop experience.
The MFA second year may also be completed as a certificate program by those who have already completed the DTAP MA as a first year.
Module 5 - Independent Research Project+
Students finish both the MA and the MFA by creating an independent research project, equivalent to a dissertation or thesis, effectively sharing the discoveries of their practical and theoretical questions and explorations over the course of the degree.
Students are invited to create work in whatever form best serves their research - this could include live performances, workshops, exhibitions/installations, performance lectures, or digital work.
- for September 2024 Entry:
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