BA (Hons) Drama: Performance, Politics and Society

This module introduces a range of theoretical perspectives that can be used to analyse diverse forms of performance including theatre, live art, play texts, dance, and performance in the expanded field. The module also examines historical and contemporary contexts and issues to shed light on creative and theoretical developments and the work of specific playwrights, performance makers and theorists. You'll be asked to engage in analysis of individual plays and performances, considering the contextual influences of history and culture as well as genre and form. A variety of approaches are covered, which can be used either individually or in conjunction, with the intention of providing you with the tools necessary for rigorous critical and conceptual interpretation. This module will provide the conceptual basis for further and more detailed study in Years Two and Three of the degree programme. This module also introduces you to a range of academic study skills through a series of special classes as well as an essay sample submitted to your personal tutor. 

 The module will:

• Encourage the ability to think critically about performance (on page and stage), and spectatorship
• Identify cultural influences as they relate to theatre production
• Promote critical evaluation of diverse forms of performance
• Provide an analytical and comparative approach to evaluating critical theories

This module introduces the concept of 'dramaturgy' as the process of thinking about all the different elements that constitute a theatre experience: the composition of performance. It also looks at different 'dramaturgies', that is, different ways of telling stories through performance, exploring a range of methodologies post Stanislavski and integrating a diverse range of texts.

The module will encourage you to understand the different roles in creating work, and to start putting ideas on their feet; introduce you to different ways of decoding a play, discovering its embedded clues and meanings and exploring how writing is composed; encouraging you to consider carefully how rehearsal and preparation processes can lead to creating 'in the moment' live performance in front of an audience; explore how ethics and politics inform dramaturgical decisions, particularly with regard to issues of representation; and examine how harnessing the creativity of individual members of a theatre-making team, facilitating new collaborative theatremakers.

Therefore, the module is primarily concerned with interpretation and collaboration.  We will work both analytically and practically, exploring the necessary constant dynamic between the two (praxis), and students will be expected to read a range of theoretical texts, experience live performance and undertake other appropriate research (e.g. online) to provide context to their studies, and put this into action in a practical presentation. 

It will be taught by experienced theatre-makers, mainly in seminar-workshops involving analysis of text, practical exercises, lecture inputs and discussion.

This module addresses various approaches to imaginative, physical, and vocal training of the actor drawing from a wide range of Twentieth Century key practitioners. You'll be introduced to a selection of approaches to ensemble training that will include the core skills and principles needed for this practice.  In tandem will explore key research strategies, and you will carry out your own experimentation and critical questioning.

Practical exploration of the ensemble is complimented by seminar discussions and film screenings that assist you in making links between historical, contemporary and cultural precedents and what you are discovering in your own training and experiments. The film screenings on the course provide an introduction to the type of work made by a range of ensemble practitioners during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  Each practical session is framed thematically in relation to ensemble practice. The seminars focus on the investigation the work of a selection of key historical Twentieth Century pioneers of ensemble training and practice. Their work, and methodologies, will be examined within their respective historical, socio-political and cultural contexts. Practitioners include, for example, Eugenio Barba, Pina Bausch (Laban, Wigman and Jooss), Augusto Boal, Michael Chekhov, Jerzy Grotowski, and Jacques Lecoq (and Suzanne Bing), Konstantin Stanislavsky, SoulWork and Kristine Landon-Smith and their heritages in companies such as: Black Mime Theatre Company, Cardboard Citizens; Complicite; Forced Entertainment; Frantic Assembly; Improbable; Progress Theatre; Station House Opera; Sasha Waltz and Guests; Song of the Goat; Tamasha, and Ariane Mnouckhine. 

Through this symbiotic practical and theoretical work, you focus on how meaning is generated in performance, and begin to ask basic questions about Theatre Making, to explore further in your own work and your analysis of material created by other artists. 

One departmental visit will take place in the autumn term to a London venue to see the work of a company working integrally with the idea of the ensemble, or for whom ensemble training is a core process.  Students will be asked to write a 1000-word essay critically analysing the work of their ensemble company drawing on the texts studied on the module.  This component enables you to begin to acquire a critical vocabulary with which to discuss, and reflect on, your own performance-making and practice as research.  In the final post-show evaluation seminar, you will be guided to understand how to apply such a methodology to the development of your own company's practical performance, and the critique of others' work.

This module aims to introduce you to the fundamental principles of Scenography. The term Scenography derives from the Greek sceno-grafika and can be understood as 'writing in space'. The practice of Scenography is concerned with the dramaturgical exploration of space, the parameters of which might be described as all that exists in the performance space pertaining to the senses, for example, the visual/aural language of the performance. Scenography can be understood as a relational practice that occurs between/betwixt the design(ed) elements. This module will allow you to explore Scenography as a complex system of signs by which we can both examine and imagine the potential of space, through decoding/encoding the performative space.

This module will allow you to explore Scenography as a complex system of signs by which we can both examine and imagine the potential of space, through decoding/encoding the performative space.

You'll practically explore and critically examine Scenography as a dramaturgical system through 5 Scenographic Disciplines:

1. Costume
2. Lighting
3. Set and Object
4. Sound
5. Stage Management

Through these disciplines, you'll be introduced to a range of key concepts, practitioners, and practical processes relating to Scenography.

Theatre Making 1 is the culmination of the first year's work for BA Drama and Theatre Arts and Performance, Politics and Society and draws on the experiences in the other first-year units.

It is an opportunity to explore theatre-making in a creative and inventive way, applying analytic and research skills to the practical realisation of performance pieces.  You'll build on your knowledge of different performance styles, approaches and traditions gained in the year: a presentation of exciting and innovative work, consolidating and building on the learning outcomes the first year of study. In this respect, it provides not only a culmination of the first year but a springboard for your next two years' work.

You'll gain practical experience of the relationship between the different roles that make up theatre-making teams, with an opportunity to share the demands of these roles as a collective. Team-working is at the heart of this project, exploring the dynamics of leadership, decision-making and the relationship between operational/organisational concerns and the realisation of an artistic vision. 

The module is based on mounting a programme of short `scratch' performances shared with peers.  Each performance will demonstrate a company's exploration of a set stimulus.  Although it is expected that performances are executed with polish and professionalism, they are also performative expressions of ideas that should have a further creative life.  Therefore, the presentations that accompany each performance are crucial in articulating each company's artistic vision and demonstrating an understanding of the processes that could realise that vision. 

Each student explores self-nominated roles within performance, direction, dramaturgy, scenography and stage management. It is expected that each performance group is assessed on its collective contribution and achievement in lighting/sound design, scenography, costumes and the devising process which can include the management of a basic script, from the stimulus provided. For Health and Safety reasons, all students operating any equipment or rigging set must have attended a relevant session with a qualified member of staff.

This module will focus on the relationship between play, plays and playing in socially-engaged and political theatre. `Play' as a concept will be explored from many perspectives, including its importance in creative learning, play as a tool for devising theatre, playfulness in performative relationships to audience and the `play' as a written text for interpretation.'

You'll explore the process of creating ensemble performance in response to studies of key play methods and devised/written plays, and playful storytelling, studied on the module and how they can be interpreted in contemporary contexts. Performances can be in any space that is, or is not, designated as a theatre and you'll explore playfulness in this context and the type of encounter designed for spectators.

In this module, you'll explore key issues in community, applied, and political drama and performance through a focus on critical analysis of case studies. Weekly topics will address a wide range of forms and genres. The plays, companies, and performances discussed will be evaluated through the application of relevant theoretical frameworks, with an emphasis on influential philosophical and ideological trends of the 20^th and 21^st century.

You'll consider a thematic topic each week through the study of a related performance and will analyse the work with reference to assigned critical readings. Topics will include, for example, theatre for development, postcolonial theatres, youth theatre, feminist and queer performance, and others, and these will be contextualised within an exploration of post-structuralism, globalisation, neoliberalism, post-Cold War international relations, and other global political issues. This module will provide broad subject knowledge alongside fundamental skills in research and critical reflection, and will prepare students for further and more detailed study in subsequent years.

This module continues to embed study skills introduced in Critical Dialogues A with the integration of an introductory session on research and writing methodologies.

This lecture/ seminar series introduces you to key aspects of modern and postmodern thought, culture and theatre. It aims a) to examine historical and cultural contexts, and b) to explore and analyse the theoretical and culture concerns and practices which have been understood as modernist and postmodern. It is interdisciplinary, considering not only practices in theatre but in other areas of cultural production. 

Questions of Performance delivers training by introducing students to practitioners’ theories practically and critically, through options of learning and teaching clustered around questions, methodological enquiries and issues that guide contemporary practice such as, ‘character,’ ‘image,’ ‘self,’ etc. Students are asked to broaden their historical, theoretical and embodied knowledge of Twentieth Century and contemporary practice, to contextualise their learning within current performance practice and/or debates in performance studies, and to begin to formulate their own research questions.

Students will work in small groups (3 or 4 students per group) to research a Company whose practice interests them, in order to co-write a 15-minute paper that they will present. (Company to be agreed with convenor)

The students are tasked with researching:

• The history of the Company’s artistic practice
• The impact of the sociopolitical contexts within which their work has developed
• Their core audiences/participating groups and individuals
• Mission statements/Vision. How these have developed and how they are arrived at
• Decision making structures within organisations, and how this may have changed over time
• Working practices (ie terms and conditions)
• Structures (How many staff are there? How many are full time? How are freelancers managed and supported?)
• Key policies (ie child and vulnerable adult safeguarding, equal opportunities etc)
• Methodologies

Students will be expected to make direct contact with organizations and to interview a range of personnel (artistic and administrative). Support will be provided by departmental staff to develop links with existing partners and other relevant organisations. Students should visit the Company or participants, and observe meetings/workshops/rehearsals. They should access relevant documents such as Annual reports, reviews, websites, and social media. They should also access academic writing that references the Company. Each student will keep an individual research log, which will evidence their participation in the group's research process. This will include informal reflections on key sources, methodologies, and observations/interactions with the Company.

Students will be assessed as a group for the presentation, but individual marks will be adjusted based on evidence of each student’s contributions.

Students will be taught through a variety of modes of delivery:

Lectures and presentations will introduce contemporary contexts that artists and arts organisations work within. Indicative contexts include primary, secondary and special schools; the criminal justice system; independent living centres for disabled people; youth and community organisations; voluntary sector organisations and charities.

Workshops will use interactive learning techniques to explore the ethical and aesthetic issues that artists and arts organisations consider when designing, delivering and evaluating projects. Students will work with relevant documentation; such as safeguarding policies, trustee’s reports and school curricula. (For example, students may work in-role as a team designing a project for young disabled adults in transition to independent living or designing an arts-based curriculum for young offenders).

Seminars will offer students the opportunity to focus on praxis; working with their peers to create presentations and provocations that explore how theory relates to practice.

Having had a grounding in some of the contexts in which Performance, Politics and Society students might work and some of the issues they need to be aware of, this module will teach students some of the key methods and methodologies used within these creative contexts such as Theatre of the Oppressed techniques, the aesthetics of access in disability arts and intergenerational practices. The focus will be on workshop facilitation and students will be assessed on this core vocational skill.

 Students will be taught through a variety of modes of delivery:

• Masterclasses led by experienced lecturer-practitioners in 'applied theatre' will explore how a variety of performance facilitation techniques are tailored to different contexts
• Seminars will explore the theoretical underpinning of facilitation practice. Students’ own research into case studies will be presented and analysed in the light of theory

Students will all have an opportunity to pilot their own workshops with peers, receiving both peer and lecturer feedback.

Our academic departments are developing exciting elective ideas to allow you to broaden your education, either to develop vocationally orientated experiences or to learn more about contemporary society, culture and politics. You’ll be able to choose safe in the knowledge that these modules have been designed for non-subject specialists and to bring students from different disciplines together. For example, you may want to take introductions to areas such as Law, Education, the digital industries, the creative industries,think like a designer or understand the history and politics behind our current affairs.

Lots of students join Goldsmiths because they want to make a difference in society, to bring about positive change and develop skills and experiences which will allow them to access exciting careers. Goldsmiths’ Social Change module will allow you to do work on group projects with students from other departments to bring about change. You’ll be introduced to the UN’s Sustainable Development goals and core project management theories and practices allow you to work across a number of weeks towards a final Festival of Ideas where you’ll report work back to the academic and local community.

This module offers students the chance to go beyond 'soundbite' Brecht and study this key dramatist in more detail. This module will study the career of Brecht, including the political world his drama and drama theory evolved through. Placing his work in a philosophical, historical and artistic context, this module will look at Brecht's importance for his period, his influence in post-war theatre and relevance in contemporary practice. 

While the idea of 'postcolonial theatre' is problematic because of the imported discourses and terminology of postcolonial studies in general, the term postcolonial still provides a useful discursive framework for engaging with the drama, theatre and performance practices of the former colonies of Great Britain and other European countries. This course will introduce students to the debates and issues about the scope and frame of the postcolonial field and its critical theory. It will specifically look at the relationship between postcolonialism and postmodernism; the shifts and tensions in the centre-periphery relations; issues of cultural oppression and cultural imperialism; issues and strategies surrounding the politics of culture, identity and representation. Underpinning all our explorations will be the ideas of seminal thinkers such as Franz Fanon, Edward Said, Albert Memmi, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Homi bhabha and Gayatri Spivak.

This module addresses historical and contemporary links between avant garde theatre practices and political activism. It expands and deepens the study of artistic practices begun in Modernisms and Postmodernity A, with a focus on the activist elements of theatrical movements and parallel political organisations.

Through the critical analysis of 20th-century case studies, you will develop an understanding of the adoption of avant garde techniques from Dada to Live Art to 'In Yer Face' realism.

You will consider particular theatrical protest performances drawn from organisations including Bread and Puppet Theatre, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, El Teatro Campesino, Solidarity, Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, ACT-UP and more.

Through targeted critical readings, you will situate their analyses of these performances within recent scholarship on the efficacy of political performance in a globalised, postmodern world.

This option focuses precisely on this dual nature of Beckett's work and offers students a chance to study and questions modern/ postmodern tensions with Beckett as a continuous and problematic case study. Students engage with the breadth of philosophical argument found in these readings: aesthetics, politics, philosophy of history, existential ontology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language. 

This module investigates the relationship between modern women playwrights (writing in English) and the ways in which their work intersects with the tenets of feminist thought. Each week two polemical pieces: one on social history or feminist theory, the other on drama or theatre will be analysed in tandem with the play under discussion. 

In these modules you will investigate contemporary notions of identity and culture in the UK and around the world in relation to an increasingly globalised world. Contemporary Britain is perceived as progressively more multicultural; at the same time, there is an evolving awareness of the impact of global trends in society and culture. These and other factors are challenging our extant notions of individual and collective identity and culture, as well as community.

Culture and Performance begins with a single module taken by all students in the Autumn term – 'Culture and Performance: Critical Cultural Theory'. This 10-week module introduces students to key theoretical perspectives on the function of performance for the negotiation and perpetuation of cultures and societies. Students will become familiar with current debates on interculturalism, multiculturalism, nationalism, and the globalisation of cultures, through a diverse range of historical and contemporary case studies. In weekly seminars they will be encouraged to interrogate and debate their own creative and political relationships to performance cultures of various kinds. This module will equip students with the necessary theoretical tools to effectively position themselves as artists within global, postcolonial, multicultural, and/or intercultural communities.

The Major Research Project is an opportunity for final year students to develop greater depth of subject knowledge through a sustained focus on a topic of their own choosing. The research project may be pursued as EITHER a purely theoretical project resulting in a 10,000-word dissertation; OR as practice-as-research, resulting in a substantial practical project linked to a 6,000-word dissertation. Whichever route is undertaken, the major research project requires a more sustained and focused application of the research skills acquired in previous years of this degree course.

Supported by appropriate instruction from lectures and tutorials, this module also develops independent research skills, provides a chance to engage with material of personal interest, and offers the possibility of laying claim to a specific area of study. That chosen subject may build upon skills and knowledge gained during the degree or it may pursue suitable material not substantially addressed elsewhere on the course. It may be that the chosen subject area corresponds to a staff research interest; most importantly it should be an area for which the student feels both enthusiasm and curiosity.