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The closure of the MA Dramaturgy and Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths represents a significant disruption to the structured pathways through which emerging dramaturgs have accessed formal training and peer mentorship. The practical and collaborative nature of this specialised degree ensures it is a crucial contributor to the profession, developing the next generation of dramaturgs and maintaining the rigorous standards that have shaped UK dramaturgical practice. 

The skills dramaturgs offer the theatre-making profession - the ability to hold complex creative processes, to ask difficult questions, to facilitate collaboration across disciplinary boundaries - are essential to the future of storytelling across all platforms in this country and beyond.

The cessation of this degree programme represents a damaging and short-sighted understanding of its vital place within the ecology of our own profession, and neglects to recognise the widespread influence of its alumni upon the thousands of artists who have benefited from its training in the last 25 years.

The Professional Futures working group will respond strategically and thoughtfully to that loss and others like it, ensuring that the profession continues to develop the next generation of practitioners, and maintaining the rigorous standards that have shaped UK dramaturgical practice.

We will  map the current landscape of dramaturgy training and development provision - both formal and informal and those programmes recently closed; identify critical gaps that the loss of these MA programmes creates, and to design practical interventions that support emerging and aspiring dramaturgs in developing their craft; create a space for intergenerational sharing, learning and exploration based on experiences of being a professional practitioner in this field; build on our professional network to offer a space for re-imagining best practice, skill building, and sharing for the future across the sector.

We need to keep making the argument that dramaturgy is not a solitary craft but a relational one, developed through sustained collaboration and reflection across multiple projects and partnerships. Skills development is dependent on practice, collaboration and dialogue.

This is a moment of challenge, but also of possibility. The professionalisation of dramaturgical support and development does not rest solely with higher education institutions. But their loss will be sorely felt. Professional dramaturgs, playwrights and lecturers are those who best understand what the work requires, what emerging practitioners need, and what the field stands to lose if we do not act. We are also those best placed to offer new ideas and solutions together with the performing arts sector across the UK. The Professional Future’s working group is one such place to start.

David Lane (Head of Drama Writing at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School) and Hanna Slätnne (Dramaturg, theatre-maker and co-founder of the Dramaturg' Network).

At this month's AGM, you elected two exceptional new members to the Dramaturgs' Network Board. Get to know the people who will be helping to champion and support you in 2026 and beyond, and see what we accomplished together this year.

Say hello to Bri Leung and Clodagh Chapman.

Bri Leung is an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, writing and sculpture. Using humour and parody she explores how art history, pop culture and personal relationships form identity. Drawing from internet culture, performance theory and her own lived experience, she asks how we are afraid of existence yet desperate for it.

She also works as a dramaturg and facilitator, supporting artists to develop process led projects that centre embodied knowledge, experimentation and cultural nuance. She has performed and exhibited at Studio Voltaire, The Yard Theatre, Hoxton Hall, Greatorex Street and Pleasance Theatre.

With the Dramaturg Network, Bri aims to contribute more to its growth and visibility through improving its online social media presence. She aims to help shape and support networking events, and share insights on inclusive practice surrounding diaspora and queerness.

Find out about Bri's previous work

Clodagh Chapman is a dramaturg, writer, and director from London, currently based in Manchester. She has worked across a range of independent projects and was nominated for the d’n Fellowship 2024. She has read for the Bush Theatre and the George Devine Award, and has taught at the University of Salford and the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama. 

She is also Programme Adviser at Sheffield DocFest and has hosted and curated panels, Q&As, and events for the BFI, HOME, and Sheffield DocFest.  Her debut short screened at BAFTA-qualifying festivals worldwide, and she is now in post-production on her latest short for BFI NETWORK.

With the Dramaturgs' Network, Clodagh aims to foster more connectivity between dramaturgs across the UK through regional events, advocating for early-career dramaturgs in the independent theatre sector, and finding ways to connecting dramaturgs with allied workers in film and TV.

Find out more via Clodagh's website

We are delighted to announce Rosie Wyatt as the recipient of the Dramaturgs’ Network 2025 Dissertation Prize.

Rosie received the award for her MA thesis - The Disappeared Woman and Dramaturgical Intervention During the Script Drafting Process - completed as part of the MA Theatre & Performance: Dramaturgy at Birkbeck, University of London.

Rosie’s research explores how dramaturgical intervention during script development can support playwrights to challenge, rather than reproduce, harmful tropes of victimised or “disappeared” women.

Working with the first draft of Fog by playwright Duncan Gates, Rosie’s thesis combines dramaturgical protocol, interviews, literature review and analysis of recent UK productions. The thesis reframes the missing-woman trope by exposing its links to gender-based violence and proposing dramaturgical strategies that enable more critical and transformative storytelling.

As part of the prize, Rosie will receive a complimentary annual Dramaturgs’ Network membership. In 2026, Dramaturgs’ Network will also collaborate with Rosie and Birkbeck’s School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication to present an event exploring her research during Arts Week.

Dr. Molly Flynn, Rosie’s thesis supervisor, said:

“It has been an honour to work with Rosie on this ambitious and original project that stages a crucial intervention in the development of a trauma-informed dramaturgical practice. Working closely with the author on his work-in-progress text, Rosie's work unraveled many of the pervasive tropes of true crime narratives and in doing so illuminated how diffuse and destructive the depiction of violence against women has come to be in the genre and in popular culture more broadly. There is no doubt in my mind that this thoughtful and thought-provoking research is only the first step in the development of a new and nuanced trauma-informed approach to dramaturgy and new play development, an initiative that this project has already proven to be both politically urgent and aesthetically innovative”.

Alongside her academic work, Rosie is an award-winning actress whose career spans theatre, television and radio. Her credits include work with the RSC, National Theatre, Off-Broadway at 59E59, Netflix, the BBC and BBC Radio. She also works extensively as a dramaturg and script reader, including for the National Theatre, and is a Future Light Dramaturg for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting.

We congratulate Rosie on this achievement and look forward to exploring the important conversations her work brings to the field of dramaturgy in 2026.