Drama (with Foundation Year)
 Drama (Major).jpg)
UCAS Code: Combined Honours only – see combinations tab|Duration: 4 years|Full Time|Creative Campus
UCAS Campus Code: L46
Work placement opportunities|International students can apply|Study Abroad opportunities
About the course
Explore performance in the heart of the city of Liverpool. Learn about the origins of drama and develop your skills in making new work.
Liverpool Hope’s creative community is internationally renowned and world-leading in drama research and practice. You will develop your acting skills, your ability to facilitate drama sessions, as well as improving your critical writing skills. We make use of the many theatre venues in Liverpool, from the traditional Everyman/Playhouse to the experimental Tate Liverpool as well as our own Capstone Theatre, several well-equipped studio theatre spaces dedicated for student use, and our very own Hope Theatre Company – of which you could play a part.
Throughout your time at Liverpool Hope, you will be asked to explore drama in relation to your own skills and interests, helping you to understand the critical place of drama in the 21st-century. Our motto is to ‘educate in the round’, meaning you will develop transferrable social skills to take to future employers and make a difference in the workplace.
Course structure
Teaching on this degree is structured into lectures, where all students are taught together, practical workshop/seminars of smaller groups of around 15-20 students, and tutorials which typically have no more than 10 students. For the Drama part of your Combined Honours degree, in your first year of study there are approximately 6 teaching hours each week, which reduces to approximately 5 teaching hours in your second and third years.
On top of teaching hours, you will also be expected to spend a number of hours studying independently each week, as well as rehearsing for practical and group assessments.
Assessment and feedback
There are a variety of assessments that you need to complete, including coursework comprising of essays, reviews, and self-reflective writing. Practical work is assessed through presentations and live performances. In your final year, you will complete a dissertation.
Foundation Year
The Foundation Year is a great opportunity if you have the ability and enthusiasm to study for a degree, but do not yet have the qualifications required to enter directly onto our degree programmes. A significant part of the Foundation Year focuses upon core skills such as academic writing at HE level, becoming an independent learner, structuring academic work, critical thinking, time management and note taking.
Successful completion of the Foundation Year will enable you to progress into the first year (Level C) of your chosen honours degree. Further details can be found here.
Year One
Introductions to Drama
In your first year, you will be introduced to key texts (for example, from ancient Greece, Shakespeare, Willy Russell) and approaches to staging drama, its histories and contemporary practices. Liverpool has a rich, creative history which we use to help equip you with essential subject-knowledge as well as developing your understanding of making creative work within a major world city. You will be busy devising your own work too in seminars and tutorials using a wide range of drama techniques and practices from our in-house experts and invited speakers from the fields of professional theatre.
Year Two
Explorations in Drama
Your second year invites you to investigate the key areas of drama production today: traditional theatre work, applied theatre practices and contemporary performance. Your lecturers, who publish and practice in these areas, will guide you through the exciting opportunities offered to artists within these areas as well as equipping you with the diverse backgrounds and rich histories of these practices. You also begin to investigate a ‘signature practice’ – meaning, you get to start thinking about what kind of theatre artist you would like to become in the third and final year of your degree.
Year Three
Advanced Studies in Drama
Your final year gives you the opportunity to specialise (or ‘develop your signature practice’).
Advanced Playing the Classics gives you the opportunity to adapt a classical play for a contemporary audience.
Advanced Community and Applied Drama gives you the opportunity to set up a theatre company and deliver a drama programme for a group or community in the city.
Advanced Contemporary Performance affords you the opportunity to work towards solo and group performances, performed for public viewing.
All areas enable you to acquire the performance and project-management skills to stage your new work effectively.
You will also undertake a dissertation study supervised and supported by a leading thinker in the field of drama from within the school of Creative and Performing Arts.
Entry requirements
There may be some flexibility for mature students offering non-tariff qualifications and students meeting particular widening participation criteria.
Careers
There is a range of career opportunities available to Drama graduates. For many of our students, their degree will lead to a PGCE, and a rewarding career in teaching. Other graduates choose to work with young people or communities across a range of settings, as applied drama practitioners in the areas of youth work, addiction and recovery, and theatre-in-education. For some, professional training in drama therapy will offer a pathway to using healing aspects of drama as part of the therapeutic process. Many of our graduates take up front-line roles across the creative industries; as actors, performance-makers, stage-managers, writers, and directors. Some choose to form their own theatre companies, creating touring or site-specific performances across the UK. Jobs in creative development, audience engagement, and arts management are also exciting destinations for graduates. Or, if you wish, a Drama degree equips you to take up the challenge of postgraduate study.
Enhancement opportunities
SALA
The Service and Leadership Award (SALA) is offered as an extra-curricular programme involving service-based experiences, development of leadership potential and equipping you for a career in a rapidly changing world. It enhances your degree, it is something which is complimentary but different and which has a distinct ‘value-added’ component. Find out more on our Service and Leadership Award page.
Study Abroad
As part of your degree, you can choose to spend either a semester or a full year of study at one of our partner universities as part of our Study Abroad programme. Find out more on our Study Abroad page.
Tuition fees
The tuition fees for the 2025/26 academic year are £9,535* for full-time undergraduate courses.
If you are a student from the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands, your tuition fees will also be £9,535*.
The University reserves the right to increase Home and EU Undergraduate and PGCE tuition fees in line with any inflationary or other increase authorised by the Secretary of State for future years of study.
*subject to Council approval.
Additional costs
As well as tuition fees, you will also need to consider the cost of your accommodation each year whilst you study at university. Visit our accommodation pages for further details about our Halls of Residence.
Scholarships
We have a range of scholarships to help with the cost of your studies. Visit our scholarships page to find out more.
International tuition fees
The International Tuition fees for 2025/26 are £14,500.
Visit our International fees page for more information.
Course combinations
This course is only available with Foundation Year as a Combined Honours degree with the following subjects: