Historically, drama was taught in British universities in English departments, as a branch of literature. With the foundation of a dedicated undergraduate drama course at Bristol in 1947, the subject broke free, emerging as a separate discipline, about plays in performance rather than texts in the study. A key figure in that transformation was Peter Thomson, the first professor of drama at Exeter University, who has died aged 88. As he put it: “Drama is a subject that demands deeds as well as words.”
When Peter took up a post as an assistant lecturer in the second drama department, at Manchester University, in 1964, he found that tensions still existed between traditionalist academics and the practical approach of other lecturers, including the theatre-in-the-round advocate Stephen Joseph. Peter insisted that theory and practice were two complementary routes to the same end.
