Course details

Summary

Postgraduate certificates provide the opportunity for continuing professional development in the same area as an original degree. A postgraduate diploma can often lead to a master's degree.

Postgraduate certificates are available to graduates who wish to build on an earlier degree, and who have appropriate practical, professional or scholarly experience. Some are available only on a part time basis. Waikato University offers specialist postgraduate certificates as well as postgraduate certificates.

Theatre Studies

A major in Theatre Studies at Waikato is a rich and challenging pathway to an arts degree with a wide range of vocational applications. Explore performance, and learn about the evolution of theatre and the creation of performance works.

Waikato's Theatre Studies programme takes a theory-through-practice approach to teaching and learning the art of theatre. We take the live encounter of a theatre performance as our starting point, encouraging you to explore and extend your own dramatic practice.

Many papers in the programme provide opportunities for the practical study of performance, while others examine the theories that have shaped and informed theatre over the ages. Two papers have public performances at their core, with the study process mirroring the creative process of page-to-stage, or idea-to-stage, that results in the performance. You'll learn about, and potentially add to, New Zealand's rich array of theatrical forms, established and traditional, and new and experimental.

Practical tutorials, seminars and rehearsals take place the theatre laboratory space, the New Place Theatre/Te Tapere Hou, and the Playhouse Theatre within the University's purpose-built Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts, which is also the venue for public performances.

Careers for Theatre Studies graduates include employment within community and professional theatres, local arts councils, schools, film production companies, and arts agencies such as Creative New Zealand and New Zealand On Air.

Career opportunities

• Actor
• Arts Administrator
• Director
• Stage Manager
• Teacher
• Theatre Technician

Entry criteria

A recognized bachelor’s degree with a B/B+ grade average. You must also have a major in the relevant subject area with a B/B+ grade average.

English language requirements:

IELTS - 6.5 overall (no less than 6.0 in writing); iBT (internet based TOFEL) - 90 with a score of 22 in writing; Pearson PTE Academic- 65 with English language requirements no less than 58 for each communicative skill; From Waikato Pathways College - Successful completion of Level 8 with a B grade average in the Certificate of Attainment in Academic (CAAE) programme.