Rose Bruford College (RBC), a performing arts school in England, has received backlash after it was revealed that it is offering a master’s degree in “Queer Performance.” The degree course describes itself as “the first of its kind worldwide” and is directed toward “training students to create, explore, examine and expand queer performance practice.”
The college claims prominent alumni, such as Gary Oldman and Dr. Who's Tom Baker, but it has now reduced itself to offering a 15-month course beginning in the fall, which is predicted to cost £11,000 for United Kingdom students and a staggering $22,000 for students outside the country, per Fox News.
RBC’s website said that the program is “fiercely socially engaged, political, experimental, and interdisciplinary,” and that it provides an “in-depth, comprehensive examination of queer performance practice, studying its themes, methodologies, and untapped possibilities.”
However, the course has received a lot of backlash, with some suggesting that it does not provide professional development in the way that master’s degrees should. Conor Holohan, the campaign manager at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “Far too many Brits are taking up Mickey Mouse courses like these with few economic prospects."
The course is apparently segmented into four parts, including “Thinking Queerly,” “Creatures of the Night,” “Queer Dramaturgies,” and then an independent research project. However, specializing in a certain type of performance can limit career prospects for performers, with actor David Cann saying that zoning in on a “particular style of work” could prove detrimental if that style happens to go out of fashion.
Fox News reported that one element of the course has to do with analyzing “performance art, drag, theater, street performances, and cabaret” and how it played a pivotal role in the “development of trans, lesbian, bisexual and gay lives in various global cultures.”
The course director is Phoebe Patey-Ferguson, who appears to be widely known in queer circles. In 2017, she took part in a performance that saw one 22-year-old graduate student ingest 3,000 photos of herself, with Patey-Ferguson reading aloud the Instagram captions before the student ate them.
Patey-Ferguson said of the course: "This distinctive new course is a space to hold radical imaginings for where contemporary performance practice might be going next — as well as celebrating the diverse histories of queer makers and thinkers.
