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

Personal statement example

The script I read from at the insurance call centre where I work has a line marked "pause, allow customer to respond". New agents rush it. After two years I have learned that the length of that pause decides whether a frightened caller reporting a car accident tells me what actually happened or simply agrees with whatever I say next. I did not expect a customer service job to sharpen my thinking about performance. It has, and it is part of why I want to study theatre and performance at postgraduate level, with a focus on listening, voice and the audience's attention.

My undergraduate degree in Drama gave me a broad grounding in acting, directing, theatre history and performance theory. I enjoyed text-based work, but I became most interested in pieces where the audience's experience was shaped by sound more than by sight. In my final year I co-devised an audio walk with three classmates, following the route of a student bus between residences and lecture venues. We recorded interviews with students, drivers and a security guard, then layered their voices with ambient sound we captured along the way. Listeners walked the route wearing headphones, timing their steps to cues in the recording.

My main responsibility was editing and structuring the sound. I learned practical things quickly: that a voice recorded indoors sounds wrong when heard beside a busy road, and that listeners need roughly ten seconds of quiet after a strong statement before the next cue, or they stop walking to catch up. We ran the walk for about forty people over three afternoons. The feedback forms showed that many listeners remembered the security guard's account of night shifts more vividly than any scripted material. That made me curious about how testimony works in performance, and how editing can shape a speaker's presence while also risking distortion.

My reading since graduating has followed that question. Peter Brook's The Empty Space made me think again about how little is needed for theatre to happen, and whether a recorded voice in a listener's ear counts as the kind of encounter he describes. Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed interested me for the opposite reason: his forum theatre asks audiences to step in and change the action, which is very different from the guided, private listening of an audio walk. I would like to explore the space between those positions, where audiences are attentive and moved but not necessarily free to intervene. I am aware that my reading is still uneven, and I want the structure of coursework to fill gaps, particularly in performance analysis and research methods for working with interviews ethically.

Outside work I sing bass in a community choir that rehearses in a church hall on Thursday evenings. Most of our repertoire is learned by ear, as few members read music. Watching the conductor teach a part line by line, adjusting for people who are tired after work, has taught me a great deal about rehearsal as patient, shared labour. It is also simply something I look forward to every week.

The call centre has given me reliability and stamina. I work rotating shifts, meet monthly quality targets and have been asked to help newer colleagues sit in on calls. These habits will matter in a programme that combines coursework with a dissertation, where I will need to manage reading, practical work and writing over a long period.

For my dissertation I hope to examine how recorded testimony is used in site-specific or audio-based performance, possibly developing a small practical component alongside written analysis. I am ready to test that idea against rigorous reading and supervision, and to let it change as I learn more.