Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts
University of the Philippines Diliman
ABOUT THE
DSCTA
DSCTA
Through the Years
The Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts (DSCTA) was instituted in 1959 as the Department of Speech and Drama. After the UP Board of Regents approved its separation from the Department of English (now Department of English and Comparative Literature), it dedicated itself to the systematic teaching, research, and performance of oral communication.
In 1977, the UP Department of Speech and Drama changed its name to the Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts for two primary reasons. First, the change was initiated to terminate the notion that the study of speech is limited to issues of voice and diction, or confined to the art of public speaking. Second, the change was necessary to reflect Theatre Arts as a thriving discipline in Philippine Humanities.
Today, the DSCTA immerses its undergraduate and graduate students in both the theoretical and practical aspects of human communication, theatre arts, and performance studies. Its faculty come from diverse academic backgrounds, pursue multidisciplinary research projects, and lead various scholarly and creative projects.
Vision and Trajectory
Vision and Trajectory
The DSCTA is a forward-looking, public facing, institutionally integrated, and socially engaged academic department dedicated to the study and practice of communication, theatre, and performance.​
Forward-looking. Producing and adhering topioneering, cutting-edge, and up to date scholarly, pedagogical, and creative practices in the fields of communication, theatre arts, and performance studies
Forward-looking. Producing and adhering topioneering, cutting-edge, and up to date scholarly, pedagogical, and creative practices in the fields of communication, theatre arts, and performance studies
Forward-looking. Producing and adhering topioneering, cutting-edge, and up to date scholarly, pedagogical, and creative practices in the fields of communication, theatre arts, and performance studies
The DSCTA is a forward-looking, public facing, institutionally integrated, and socially engaged academic department dedicated to the study and practice of communication, theatre, and performance.​
Forward-looking. Producing and adhering topioneering, cutting-edge, and up to date scholarly, pedagogical, and creative practices in the fields of communication, theatre arts, and performance studies
Public facing. Linked with various communities— academic, socio-civic, political, and industry-driven— that can enrich and be enriched by the research and scholarship, creative and artistic outputs, and pedagogical and administrative expertise of DSCTA faculty and students
Institutionally integrated. Aptly recognized by and actively contributing to the related and relevant intellectual traditions and paradigms in and beyond the UP System
Socially engaged. Committed to responding to social concerns and assisting various sectors in coming up with perspectives, projects, and programs that can improve their systems and operations and empower them to realize meaningful, impactful, and enduring change in their respective contexts
Speech Communication
We are the Speech Communication Division of the Department. We lead in the development of knowledge and competence in understanding the study of human interaction and its use of verbal and nonverbal symbols in order to impact different communicative phenomena.
In our latest curricular revisions, we have introduced four strands: performance, rhetoric, interpersonal communication and instructional communication. These strands reflect our research, scholarly, and pedagogical agendas, which guide our students in being and becoming responsible, creative, engaged, and critical communication practitioners and scholars.
Graduates of our BA (Speech Communication) program are expected to demonstrate high level of scholarship, critical thinking, creative expression, social responsiveness, and ethics in education, training, public relations, government and non-government institutions, and other communication-related industries.
Moreover, our MA (Speech Communication) program aims to advance the field of Speech Communication, particularly in knowledge building and critical research. It is designed to provide graduate students and professionals, mostly in the field of the academe, a deeper understanding of the fields of Rhetoric, Performance, Instructional and Interpersonal Communication.
Theatre Arts
We are the Theatre and Performance Studies Division of the Department. Originally part of the discipline of speech and drama, the division was formally instituted and recognized in 1974 when the Department of Speech and Drama was renamed to the Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts.
Our roster of regular faculty members consists of acclaimed theatre practitioners and esteemed academics trained in prestigious institutions here and abroad.
The division aims to be the University’s premier center for theatre and performance practice and discourse. To achieve this, the division provides students the knowledge and competencies to come to terms with the complexity of recasting the theatre and performance as transformative concepts.
The division has four academic programs exploring the reciprocal relationship between theory and practice.
The Associate in Arts (Theatre) is a craft-oriented program designed to train prospective theatre practitioners in the creative industries.
The curriculum of the Bachelor of Arts (Theater Arts) program is leaning towards intellectual praxes through practice-based-research and performance-led-research activities and critical interrogations of theatre and performance as socio-cultural idioms for the understanding of the self, society, and culture. To date, we offer five areas of specializations: theatre and performance studies, performance, dramaturgy and directing, theatre management, technical theatre and design.
The Master of Arts in Theatre Arts program is designed for those who want to acquire a solid theoretical and scholarly foundation in theater. To date, we offer two tracks: the theatre practice track and the theatre studies track. The former requires 39 units of course work and a creative project approved and evaluated by the theatre faculty members and invited theatre artists as panel members, while the latter requires 33 units of course work and 6 units of a master’s thesis.
Our PhD in Performance Studies is designed for students to familiarize the epistemic and methodological traditions of Euro-American, Asian, and Philippine theatre, oral studies, rhetoric and performance scholarship, as well as to identify specific trajectories of individual research projects. We are also envisioning to produce interdisciplinary research projects across the wide spectrum of speech, theatre and performance studies.