Chapter 6 - The Shakespeare’s Globe/King’s College London MA Shakespeare Studies

Summary

In 2001, King’s College London and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre created a collaborative Shakespeare Studies Master’s degree programme – the first Master’s in Shakespeare Studies to be taught jointly by a university and a theatre – that has run for twenty years and continues to thrive. This chapter is an edited conversation between four of the academics who have taught on the degree programme – two based at King’s, two at the Globe – in which they address the unique nature of the Globe as a combined theatrical/educational organisation, the origins of the collaboration between King’s and the Globe, and the value it has brought to both partners. The conversation turns to the pedagogical value of the degree, the difference it has made not only intellectually but also to the employability of its alumni, and the impact it has had on the cultural sector in London and beyond. The participants also address the difference this collaboration between an experimental theatre and a university has made to the research orientation of the academics involved and, finally, they discuss the question of the reproducibility of the degree and the conditions that need to be in place for an educational collaboration of this kind to be sustained.