MA Professional Performance (Musical Theatre)
Train at the highest level in this intensive master’s course. Enhance your technique, follow your passion, and devote yourself to your art. MA Professional Performance (Musical Theatre) is built for emerging performers looking to refine their craft through immersive, vocational training at our dedicated Essex Campus.
This course prepares you to become a triple-threat performer. You’ll receive rigorous training in singing, acting, and dance, delivered by our team of professional choreographers, musical directors, and acting coaches.
With expert mentorship from industry professionals – including exclusive agent panels – regular masterclasses with performers and industry leaders will give you genuine insider knowledge and career guidance. You’ll graduate as a flexible, adaptable performer, with a minimum of 25 contact hours per week and outstanding facilities supporting you every step of the way.
Course Specification
Mode of attendance: Full-time (one year)
Awarding institution: BIMM University
Campus delivery: Essex
Language of study: English
Final award: MA Professional Performance (Musical Theatre)
Minimum Requirements
A degree (normally 2.2 or above) in a creative industry-related subject or significant experience in a relevant field. Overseas students where English is not their native language may be required to meet a minimum English language requirement of an Academic IELTS 6.5. We require a minimum of 6.0 to be achieved in each band.
All applicants will be required to attend an audition and demonstrate their ability in their chosen pathway.
If you meet certain criteria, you may be eligible for a contextual offer with reduced entry requirements.
Progression
Graduates emerge as confident, versatile performers ready to excel in their chosen specialism, whether pursuing acting roles in theatre, film, and television, establishing careers as professional dancers across multiple genres, or working as triple-threat musical theatre performers. With intensive training at dedicated campus locations and access to outstanding facilities, you’ll develop the technical excellence and creative adaptability to work across diverse performance platforms, from intimate studio productions to major professional venues. Through expert mentorship, industry connections, and comprehensive vocational training, you’ll transform your artistic passion into a sustainable professional career in the competitive performing arts industry.
Year 1
All students take the following core modules in their first year of study. Full module detail is subject to final approval.
Core module (30 credits) in the Autumn Trimester
Core module (30 credits) in the Autumn Trimester
Core module (30 credits) in the Spring Trimester
Core module (30 credits) in the Spring Trimester
Core module (60 credits) in the Summer Trimester
This is your pilot season. Your bold idea. Your first production. Your creative proof of concept. In this core module, you step into the studio as both maker and researcher – where movement, staging, and rehearsal aren’t just tools, but ways of thinking. Whether you’re directing or choreographing, you’re not just learning how to make work – you’re discovering why your work matters.
With the support of a specialist mentor, you’ll test your instincts, build your methods, and take real creative risks. You’ll meet industry stakeholders – directors, choreographers, producers, dramaturgs, and other creative partners – to see how they shape the process. Draw on what resonates, challenge what doesn’t, and refine your own approach. Working with fellow students, you’ll develop and share studio experiments, exchanging focused feedback while keeping ethics, sustainability, and wellbeing at the heart of your practice.
It all leads here: a short, high-impact pilot that puts your idea on its feet and asks – does it work? Does it move? Does it say what you want it to say? Your pilot becomes more than a showing. It’s your pitch, your blueprint, your launchpad for a longer work. A bold, practice-based proposal backed by research, process, and intention. Throughout, the focus is on creative sustainability – so you don’t just leave with work in progress, but with a process that can carry you forward.
Welcome to Creative Assemblies – the space where your collaborative practice begins. This module places you at the centre of artistic partnerships, inviting you to explore how ideas take shape, evolve, and thrive through dynamic exchange. You’ll work with performers, producers, technicians, and creatives across sound, film, design, and staging – discovering how these relationships shape your practice and artistic identity.
A key feature of this module is CoLab – a focused one-to-one collaboration experience where you’ll develop, test, and refine original work alongside a professional partner. This moment is yours to build trust, navigate process, and make work that matters – with real stakes, real people, and real creative momentum. Alongside this, you’ll join larger group projects, dive into hands-on workshops, and explore real stories of creative partnerships that worked – and why.
You’ll sharpen how you listen, lead, and adapt, while gathering the moments, evidence, and artefacts that form your Assembly Notes – a living record of how you collaborate. By the end of the module, you won’t just understand collaboration – you’ll know how to lead it.
Year 2
This is Wired to Create – where the art of direction and choreography meets the pulse of technology. This module is your sandbox, your soundstage, your control room. It’s where raw studio ideas – a gesture, a beat, a moment – meet a wide range of digital tools that can reframe, sharpen, or completely transform them. Light, projection, sound design, live-feed, green screen, streaming, motion capture – not just effects, but solutions. You’re not adding tech for decoration – you’re using it to answer questions your rehearsal alone can’t solve. Simple.
Or is it? You’ll step into rehearsals and workshops that test what happens when the camera becomes a choreographic partner, or when light and shadow rewrite the emotional arc of a scene. From planning to shooting to post, you’ll be supported by technical artists and specialist mentors, developing work that’s bold, integrated, and completely yours. By the end, you’ll have built more than a project – you’ll have built fluency. Technology becomes part of your toolkit, part of your method, part of your voice as a director or choreographer. Not decoration.
Not an add-on. A dramaturgical choice – wired into the way you think and create. It all comes together in The Plugged-In Project – your final opportunity to fuse creative process and technology into one coherent piece of work.
Creative Business Lab is where artistic identity meets professional strategy. Through business labs, creative clinics and industry-led workshops, you’ll explore how directing and choreography translate into sustainable, market-aware practice. The focus is on clarity, positioning, and presentation – refining how you communicate your work to audiences, partners, and stakeholders.
You’ll engage with current sector models in finance, marketing, and funding, analysing how creative ideas circulate within professional contexts. Guided by industry specialists, you’ll test and prototype business concepts that extend from your artistic practice, developing tools that articulate both creative and commercial value. The module culminates in The Creative Exchange, a public showcase where you’ll present your professional concept or project to invited industry audiences.
This event is both an exhibition and a live dialogue – a business platform to share your vision, receive feedback, and strengthen your professional voice within the creative arts landscape.
Year 3
The Creative Practice Project is your final platform – the culmination of your MA journey and the moment your creative vision steps into the professional world. This is where concept becomes craft, and ambition becomes reality.
You’ll design, produce, and deliver a major project that reflects your specialist focus in directing or choreography. Whether realised as a live production, digital work, partnership initiative, or creative research venture, the emphasis is on independence, creative leadership, and industry presence. Working closely with your mentor, you’ll evolve your project from concept to professional delivery – demonstrating the vision, discipline, and innovation that defines a graduate of Professional Creative Practice.
Course Fees
Please visit our Fees page for information on access to Student Loans. Please note, UK students eligible for loans are able to borrow the full course fee for Performers College degrees.
Alumni Discount
Eligible BIMM University alumni commencing a postgraduate programme with an intake year from 2024 will receive a £1,000 discount on their tuition fees.
Career Support & Graduate Destinations
You’ll receive tailored career advice, participate in showreel creation, and have direct introduction to a panel of industry agents.
Take a look at our exciting graduate success stories here.
Application Process
Applying for a masters is easy, but if you have questions, we’re here to help!
Any questions?
Our enquiries team is always available to answer your questions. Just call 01273 840 346 or email [email protected]
