Music, Theatre and Performance Studies

For the music specialization see: Popular Music, Sound and Media Cultures

For the theatre and performing arts specialization see: Theatre, Culture and Media

Within both the music and theatre specialization, we highlight those phenomena which most impact the organization, experience, and creative potential of music and theatre makers and audiences in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. MA students examine the current constitution of music or theatre organizations, as well as the impact of broader processes such as globalization, digitalization, urbanization, festivalization, and mobility upon expanding forms of creativity. Because humans continue to shape creative experience within cultural fields, these two specializations aim to uncover how music or theatre remain relevant for understanding broader relations between culture, society, and the arts.

We examine these and other processes in historical contexts and in our musical and theatrical present, where economic crisis in recording and performing industries has led to vast rearrangements of musical and theatrical labour and changing conceptions of the public sphere. Because this program highlights the complexity of the contemporary popular music, art music, and theatre professional worlds, students enter arts professions with specialized knowledge and skills, which ensure that they are highly employable.