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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.

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

More information coming soon!

  • 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

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.