Master of Arts (by dissertation) — Theatre postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

The prompt book for my honours production ended the run twice as thick as it began. By closing night, the original script was almost hidden under pencilled cues, crossed-out blocking, sticky notes about a door that would not stay shut, and a margin note in my handwriting that simply read: 'Lerato waits now. Keep it.' That note recorded a pause an actor had discovered in the third week of rehearsal, which changed how the final scene landed. I want to use a Master of Arts by dissertation to study what such documents capture of devised theatre, and what they lose.

My BA Honours in Theatre and Performance combined practical courses with theory, and I was drawn to the moments where the two met awkwardly. In a course on twentieth-century performance I read Peter Brook's The Empty Space, and his distinction between 'deadly' and living theatre made me wonder how anyone could record the living part without flattening it. For my honours project I stage-managed a forty-minute devised piece created by six fellow students over eight weeks. Alongside the practical work, I wrote an essay analysing the prompt book as a record of process. I compared three versions of the script, my rehearsal reports and short interviews with the cast, and argued that the prompt book tended to fix decisions as if they had always been intended, erasing the improvisations and arguments that produced them. My supervisor encouraged me to think about whose choices become visible in a record, and that question has stayed with me.

Since graduating I have worked front of house at a community theatre in my area, which hosts amateur companies, school productions and touring work. Selling tickets and managing the foyer is not glamorous, but it has taught me how audiences arrive, wait and leave, and I have watched the same production change noticeably between Thursday and Saturday. Several of the amateur groups keep their own rehearsal notebooks, and two directors have let me look through them, which showed me how differently companies record their work. Some write almost nothing; one keeps detailed diaries going back years. I have not treated these as research material, but they have sharpened the questions I would like to ask properly.

To cover my rent I also work part-time in a call centre for an insurance company. The job has little to do with theatre, though it has made me a careful listener and a patient note-taker, since every call must be summarised accurately within minutes. I sing alto in a community choir, where learning parts by ear from section leaders rather than from sheet music has made me curious about knowledge that lives in people more than in documents.

For my dissertation I would like to examine how small South African companies working in devised or collaborative modes document their rehearsal processes, and how those records shape later accounts of the work. I expect to draw on performance documentation theory, including debates about whether performance can be preserved at all, and to combine close reading of rehearsal materials with interviews. I am aware that a dissertation-only degree demands self-direction. I am used to working steadily around two jobs, I kept my honours project on schedule while managing a rehearsal calendar for six people, and I enjoy the slow work of reading archives and transcribing conversations.

I would bring practical knowledge of how rehearsals are actually run, an ordinary but useful familiarity with community theatre, and a clear starting question. I hope supervised research will help me turn the observations in that thickened prompt book into a rigorous piece of scholarship.