Theatre and Creative Writing

Theatre and creative writing are two art forms that share a fundamental preoccupation: the shaping of language and action into meaningful human experience. Theatre asks how stories are told through the body, the voice, space, and collaboration. Creative writing asks how thought and feeling are given form on the page.

Studying them together is not simply a matter of combining two subjects but of discovering how they illuminate each other, how the demands of performance sharpen your writing and how a writer's attention to language deepens your understanding of what happens on stage.

At Brunel University London, this three-year full-time degree allows you to explore the richness of theatre and performance while developing your own creative writing practice. You will study dramatic texts, performance theory, and the history of theatre alongside the craft of fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and other written forms. Practical work in the studio and workshop is central to both strands: you will make and perform theatre, give and receive feedback on writing, and develop the discipline of working regularly in both creative modes.

The combination builds intellectual agility, the ability to move between analytical and creative registers, to collaborate on one project and write alone on another, and to communicate with precision across very different contexts.

The skills this degree develops are genuinely wide-ranging. Close reading, persuasive writing, collaborative working, critical analysis, and the ability to think imaginatively about how to reach an audience are all capacities that employers in many sectors value. Graduates go on to careers in theatre, writing, journalism, broadcasting, publishing, arts education, community arts, and the wider creative industries.

Further training in teaching, arts administration, or postgraduate study in creative writing, theatre, or drama is also a common next step for those who wish to pursue specialist roles.