Welcome to the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies

The Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Toronto offers rich, diverse, and rigorous academic programs for undergraduate and graduate students. Located in the downtown core of Canada’s largest city, the Centre is the perfect place to experience and to become involved in cutting edge research, innovative pedagogy and artistic practice. The Centre is a part of Canada’s largest university, with one of the best research libraries in North America and one of the finest faculties. With a lab invested in performance, AI and technology (BMO Lab), Institute for Dance Studies, Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research, as well as the Theatre, Youth, and Digital Media Lab and two performance venues, the Centre supports the creative and intellectual explorations of our students and faculty. It is a place where you meet some of the best scholars and artists in the world.

A Special Message to Prospective Students on the Use of GenAI Tools

Drama, Theatre and Performance is an embodied discipline, powered by breath and carried in language. Within the study and practice of DTPS (as within the study and practice of any Humanities discipline), artists and scholars alike seek to explore and articulate the most profound human truths. This pull towards truth and this need to articulate the truths we discover are aspects our admissions committee looks for from those who apply to the CDTPS. Recent history within our program has demonstrated that admissions applications have not benefitted and will not benefit from any intervention by large-language models or other AI systems. 

The use of large-language models and other AI systems (e.g., chatbots, writing programs, translation software, etc.) in academic research and scholarship is pervasive. We understand that for many reasons, applicants may wish to use such technologies in their graduate applications to CDTPS. However, because of their training data, LLMs typically reduce writing to statistical norms in prose. They thus obscure what is distinctive in the writing and thinking of individual applicants, but it is these distinctions that we value most. We therefore strongly discourage the use of any AI in graduate applications. We are most interested in your authentic voice and distinct perspectives: what you have seen, read, thought, and imagined in the study of drama, theatre, and performance. Thus, our review of applications will prioritize distinctive and individual language that articulates who you are as prospective student and future colleague.