Drama and English Literature

Drama and English literature is a pairing that places performance and the written word in productive dialogue with each other. Drama developed as a written form long before it became a primarily theatrical one, and English literature has always included plays among its central texts. Studying the two together invites you to think about how texts move between the page and the stage, how performance choices shape meaning, and how literature and theatre have intersected across the centuries from the Greek tragedians and Shakespeare through to contemporary playwrights and performance makers.

At Anglia Ruskin University, this three-year full-time programme places performance at the heart of the drama strand. You will work on public productions and smaller-scale projects, exploring drama practices and texts from the twentieth century onwards and developing your own original work. Performance experience is not optional or peripheral: it is treated as a core form of knowledge alongside critical and textual study.

Alongside this, you will read widely in English literature, developing the close reading and analytical skills that a serious engagement with literary texts requires. The combination allows you to bring each discipline to bear on the other, reading plays as literature and approaching literary texts with an awareness of how they might be performed or staged.

Anglia Ruskin's locations in Cambridge and Chelmsford place you within reach of a rich arts and cultural ecology, and the university has connections with regional theatre and creative organisations.

Graduates from combined drama and English literature programmes work in theatre, film, broadcasting, education, publishing, arts administration, journalism, community arts, and the wider creative industries. The analytical, communicative, and creative skills the degree develops are valued across a range of professional contexts. Postgraduate study in performance, theatre studies, creative writing, or English literature is a natural next step for those who wish to pursue a specialism.