Performing Arts

Performing arts is a discipline that trains you across the full range of live performance, bringing together dance, drama, and musical theatre to develop the versatile skills and artistic intelligence that contemporary performance demands. The best performers rarely inhabit a single register: the ability to move between forms, to collaborate in diverse creative processes, and to adapt to different audience contexts and production styles is what distinguishes a genuinely employable and artistically confident performing artist.

At the University of Sunderland, this part-time degree allows you to personalise your studies between dance, drama, and musical theatre, following your evolving interests and aspirations rather than being fixed from the outset in a single discipline. A year abroad is incorporated into the programme, giving you the opportunity to study performance within a different cultural and educational environment, encountering traditions and approaches that will enrich your own practice. Studying part-time gives you the flexibility to pursue your training at a pace that accommodates other commitments, and many students use this time to begin developing their professional networks and portfolio of work alongside their studies.

You will develop technique through regular practical classes, engage with the history and theory of performance, and build the professional confidence needed to work in the industry. The programme is designed to produce versatile, experienced, industry-ready practitioners, and the combination of practical training and intellectual development prepares you for the varied realities of a performing arts career.

Graduates go on to work as performers in theatre, dance, musical theatre, television, and film, as well as in arts education, community arts, arts administration, choreography, and directing. Many pursue further professional training or postgraduate study. The creative, collaborative, and communicative skills performing arts develops are also valued in careers in the wider creative industries and beyond.