Master of Arts (by coursework & dissertation) — Applied Drama & Theatre Studies postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Halfway through a reminiscence session at the care home where I coordinate activities, a resident named Doris put down the photograph of a seaside pier I had handed her and said she would rather talk about the factory canteen where she met her husband. Within ten minutes four residents were arguing cheerfully about the price of a cup of tea in 1962, and one man who rarely joins in was acting out how the manager used to inspect the queue. I had planned the session around the prompts. The residents had planned it around what mattered to them. Moments like that are why I want to study applied drama formally: I can see that participatory performance works, but I want to understand more rigorously why, for whom, and with what responsibilities attached.

My undergraduate degree combined drama and psychology, and the two disciplines often pulled in different directions. Psychology asked me to define outcomes and measure them; drama modules asked what happens when people rehearse alternatives to their own situations. The most useful thing I did was hold both questions in my final-year project. With two classmates, I devised a forum theatre piece with clients and volunteers from a local housing advice centre, drawing on Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. We built a short scene about a tenant trying to get a landlord to repair damp, then invited audience members to stop the action and replace the tenant. Over three performances, people tried out phone scripts, written complaints and asking a neighbour to come along. My written analysis argued that the most valuable interventions were not the triumphant ones but the hesitant, practical ones, because they showed what was actually possible on a Tuesday afternoon. My supervisor pushed me to be honest about the limits too: we had no way of knowing whether anyone changed what they did afterwards, and I want a master's to give me better tools for asking that question responsibly.

Working in the care home for the past three years has given me a different kind of preparation. I plan a weekly programme on a small budget, adapt movement and music sessions for people with dementia or limited mobility, and keep notes for families and care staff. I have learnt that consent in participatory work is rarely a single yes; it is renegotiated each week depending on someone's mood, pain or memory. I have also learnt to share authorship. After the canteen session, I began recording residents' stories, with their permission, and shaping them into short read-aloud scenes that staff and visiting grandchildren perform. Residents correct the details, and they are strict about it.

Outside work I help marshal and set up our local parkrun on Saturday mornings. It has little to do with theatre, but it has taught me how a community event depends on many unglamorous tasks done reliably, and how a friendly word at the right point keeps people coming back.

Through postgraduate study I hope to deepen my understanding of the theory behind applied practice, including debates about efficacy, ethics and who benefits from participatory arts. I am particularly interested in how applied drama is used in contexts very different from my own, and I expect that studying alongside practitioners from other backgrounds will challenge some of my assumptions about what participation looks like. For a dissertation, I would like to examine how older adults exercise creative control in reminiscence-based performance, and whether facilitators unintentionally steer stories towards comfortable nostalgia. Doris has already given me my first piece of evidence.