Programs | Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies | Faculty of Graduate Studies (FGS)

MA/PhD Program in Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies at York University emphasizes our collective interest in theatre, dance, performance, and cultural politics. Internationally renowned faculty offer advanced seminars and mentor student research in one of the English-speaking world’s most active cities for theatre, dance, and the performing arts.

MA in Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies

PhD in Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies

Combined MA/MBA Program

Why Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies?

York’s MA/PhD program is a leader in the field of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies graduate training, both in Canada and internationally. Our curriculum, taught by internationally recognized and award-winning faculty, is guided by an innovative, socially engaged, and interdisciplinary vision for graduate research.

We encourage our students to develop a rigorous interdisciplinary understanding of theatre, dance, and performance by taking courses and working closely with, supervisory faculty who come from diverse backgrounds in a range of disciplines including Theatre Studies, Performance Studies, Anthropology, Business, Cinema & Media Studies, Dance Studies, English, Environmental Studies, Humanities, Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies, Nursing, Sociology, and Visual Arts (to name but a few). Critical interdisciplinarity recognizes the importance of thinking across multiple disciplines to come to grips with the complexities of performance, while also recognizing the political, institutional, and conceptual challenges posed by intersectional models of analysis.

Our location within the School of Arts, Media, Performance, and Design (AMPD) is essential to facilitating this interdisciplinary approach and distinguishes us from other national and international programs. Our MA and PhD students take courses offered by the School’s graduate programs in Art History & Visual Culture, Visual Art, Music, Design, and Cinema & Media Studies. The School’s curriculum is planned collaboratively each year to facilitate fluid movement among the programs and high-level interdisciplinary conversations across the arts. Students also benefit from regular collaborations between AMPD programs in the form of joint Summer Institutes, Speaker Series, and Professionalization Seminars. While our students’ home base is Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies, being part of this larger and extremely dynamic community of arts-based thinkers and practitioners significantly enriches their graduate experience.

We are passionate about bridging the divide between theory and practice in the study of performance, and many of our graduate courses explore how performance practice serves as a vital form of critical inquiry. These courses take place in our state-of-the-art studios and in diverse cultural spaces throughout Toronto. Many of our MA and PhD students have developed innovative research projects in which practice-based research plays an integral role.

Graduate students in TDPS also have ample opportunities to engage in performance practice through workshops, professional placements, and participating in shows staged and curated in AMPD and the Department of Theatre, Dance & Performance. Please visit Practice-Based Research for more details.

Our program provides exciting professional placement and fieldwork experiences for students at both MA and PhD levels. Students receive course credit for placements with leading theatre, dance, and performance companies, artists, festivals, and conferences, both in Toronto and abroad. These placements often lead to fantastic jobs in the arts and culture sector and meaningful long-term artistic collaborations with some of the world’s most celebrated performance creators and researchers. They also provide unique occasions for conducting fieldwork related to student’s particular areas of study. See Placement Experiences for more information.

Program Specializations

The program’s fields of specialization, which structure our curriculum and degree requirements, collectively highlight faculty strengths and our collective interest in exploring intersections of theatre, dance, performance, and cultural politics. They include: Canadian Theatre, Dance, and Cultural Politics; Postcolonialism and Globalization; Cultural Policy and Theatrical Economies; Gender and Sexuality; Embodiment and Cultural Memory; Environment and Cultural Geography; Performance and Popular Culture; Critical Pedagogy and Community Engagement; and Intermediality and Technology.

These areas foreground the spirit of political inquiry and practice-based experimentation central to the particular faculty research projects and centres that are connected to our program.

The history of government funding in Canada at the local, provincial, and federal levels
Regional and Alternative Theatre Structures in Canada
Language Politics in Canadian and Quebecois Theatre
Theatre and Indigeneity
Canadian Theatre-Makers as Cultural Producers
Festivals and Street Performers
Canadian National Identity and Imagined Communities
Theatre, Multiculturalism, and Diaspora
Canadian Theatre Criticism
Canadian Actor Training
Canadian Theatre Dramaturgy

Postcolonial Theatre and Theory
Intercultural Theatre and Performance
Canadian and First Nations Theatre
African and Caribbean theatre
Theatre and Performance in the Americas
Critical Race Theory
Race and Ethnicity in Theatre and Performance
Minoritized Cultures in Theatre and Performance (Black, Asian, Latina/o, Jewish)
Theatre and Performance and Diaspora
Global and Transnational Performance (mega-musicals, anti-globalization protest)
Theories of Nationalism, Transnationalism, Globalization, and Post-Nationalism

Arts and Public Policy
Public and Private Funding of the Arts
The role of theatre and performance in urban development, tourism, and cultural industries
Theatre and Performance as Commodities
Commodification and circulation of performing bodies
Theatre as a Business and the Administration of Theatre
Theatre as Work and the Working Conditions of Theatre
Cultural Materialist Analysis of Theatre
Theatre Spectatorship and Consumption
Performance as Affective or Immaterial Labour
The Circulation of Theatre, Theatre as Cultural Export
The Performativity of Politics and Politicians
Celebrity Culture
Theatre Training and the Professionalization of Performance

Feminist, gay, lesbian, queer, and trans theories, histories, and dramaturgies of performance
Artistic and cultural works by/about feminist, gay, lesbian, queer, and trans subjects
The performance of gender and sexual identities in everyday life
Historical production of gender and sexuality on and off stage
Feminist and Queer Activism
Performative intersections of gender and sexuality with other determinants of identity such as race, ethnicity, class, ability, employment, religion, nationality, and age

Theatre and Performance Archives and Repertoires
Memorials as Performance
Acts of Memorialization
Performing the past (historical reenactment, plays about historical subjects)
Theatre Histories, Cultural Histories, and Historiography
Performance of Diasporic and Exilic Identities
Theories of the body and embodiment
Trauma, violence, and performance
Theatre as testimony and witnessing

Theatre and Nation-building
Theatre, Space, and Place
Cultural Dimensions of Performance Space and Architecture
Importance of Cultural Location in Staging Theatre
Representations of Rural and Urban Landscapes
Urban Theatre Ecologies
The Theatricality of Cities
Performance as Public Art Practice
Theories, Histories, and Dramaturgies of Site-Specific and Environmental Theatre
Urban Performance Interventions
Promenade or Peripatetic Theatre
Performance on the streets (protests, parades, street theatre, strikes, etc.)
Theatre, Language, and Cultural Geography
Theatre, Performance, and Ecology
Theatre, Performance and Environmental Activism

Hip Hop and Urban Dance Studies
Celebrity Culture and Audience/Fan Studies
Material Culture and Performance
Popular Theatre and Performance Forms (e.g., circus, burlesque, clown)
Popular Dance Performance and Transmission
Afrodiasporic and Globalized Forms
Digital Ethnography
Sports, Race, and Popular Culture

theatre, performance, and social justice
theatre, performance, and civic engagement
theatre, education, and critical pedagogy
theatre for youth development
community-based theatre
performance and online community
collective and collaborative forms of theatre (including devised theatre)
theories, histories, and dramaturgies of activist theatre and performance
audience outreach as community engagement
applied and research-based theatre
performance ethnography

theories of intermediality in theatre and theatre as intermedial form (experiments with film, projection, sound, etc.)
histories and dramaturgy of performance art
theatre, performance, and digital media
tensions between the live and the mediatized
online and networked theatre
performance and social media (blogs, Facebook, YouTube, etc.)
performance and locative media (cellphones and GPS)
education and intermediality, new spaces for learning
interactive and immersive performance
intermediality and activist performance
histories and dramaturgy of technology in theatre
performing objects and puppets

Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies Handbook (2024-2025)

Learn More

The Graduate Program in Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies at York is an exciting environment to pursue innovative, socially engaging, career-ready education. Contact our Graduate Program Assistant to learn more.

How to Apply