Overview
You will begin your degree by developing a range of practical, dramaturgical, and critical abilities. In your first year you learn technical and design skills, begin ensemble work together and start to think about what it means to perform and make theatre in today’s world. These skills are brought together in a festival of work in the summer term.
As the degree progresses, students can choose from a wide range of options and are given more independence in building their own creative work. Supported throughout by regular meetings with a personal tutor, you develop specialist knowledge of practical methods and approaches to theatre-making, manage production schedules, company budgets, and theatre design processes, and can make professional connections through work placement.
By your third year, you are able to examine complex ideas in depth, whether as an independent scholar writing a dissertation or as an experimental theatre-maker, working on your final degree productions for a public festival. These final productions often act as a springboard into the professional sector.
Year 1
In the first year you study the following compulsory modules:
Module title |
Credits |
Critical Dialogues A
Critical Dialogues A
15 credits
This module introduces a range of theoretical perspectives that can be used to analyse diverse performance texts. Students will be looking at how historical and contemporary contexts and issues shed light on creative and theoretical developments and the work of specific playwrights, performance makers and theorists. Students will also be analysing individual plays and performances in seminars, considering the contextual influences of history and culture as well as genre and form. A variety of approaches will be covered with the intention of providing students with the tools necessary for rigorous critical and conceptual interpretation.
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15 credits |
Critical Dialogues B
Critical Dialogues B
15 credits
This module introduces a range of key theoretical perspectives that can be used to analyse a range of playtexts. The module also examines some of the major interventions in theatre over the centuries in order to assess the creative developments and outcomes in the light of key playwrights and theorists. Students will be asked to engage in textual analysis of individual plays, 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 the student 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.
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15 credits |
Introduction to Dramaturgy
Introduction to Dramaturgy
15 credits
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 a 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 students 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 students 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.
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15 credits |
Scenography
Scenography
15 credits
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. 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 will practically explore and critically examine Scenography as a dramaturgical system through 5 Scenographic Disciplines:
- Costume
- Lighting
- Set and Object
- Sound
- Stage Management
Through these disciplines you will be introduced to a range of key concepts, practitioners, and practical processes relating to Scenography.
Phase 1 of this module occurs over the first 3 weeks of the Spring term and allows for you to engage in a wide spectrum of Scenographic Disciplines. You will experience Introductory Workshops which will engage you in the principles, techniques and management strategies employed in scenographic practice. You will be introduced to a range of key concepts, terms and practical processes through a range of technical and creative workshops. This will give you hands-on experience and a rudimentary understanding of a wide range of technical/creative scenographic skills/tools in 5 Scenographic Disciplines: Costume, Lighting, Set and Object, Sound, and Stage Management.
Phase 2 runs from week 4 to week 9 (omitting week 6 - reading week) of the Spring term and allows you to engage more fully with an elected Scenographic Discipline through Specialist Workshops (please see specialist option details for further information).
You will also work in collaborative Student Companies throughout the term towards your practical assignment in Self-directed Research and Rehearsals (see Timetable). You will devise a short Scenographic Exercise together, as well as develop a Presentation (see Assessment Details). You will each take a specific role in contributing to the project dependent on the Scenographic Discipline you have elected. Each company, therefore, will comprise of a team of specialists in a range scenographic practices.
There will be Supervised Rehearsals and Tutorials in which a tutor attends and observes your company, offers feedback on your work, consults you on your process and guides you in areas where you may have questions. These will be timetabled and organised in advance and it is the responsibility of the company to make sure they use the time with the tutor wisely. The technical team will guide your work in the Scenography workshops by arrangement, (please ensure to make specific appointments).
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15 credits |
Theatre Making 1
Theatre Making 1
30 credits
Theatre Making 1 is the culmination of the first year’s work for B.A. Drama and Theatre Arts 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.
Students build on their 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.
Students gain practical experience of the relationship between the different roles that make up theatre-making teams, with an opportunity to undertake 2 distinct roles. 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.
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30 credits |
Processes of Performance: Encounters with Space
Processes of Performance: Encounters with Space
15 credits
This module will focus on how performers and spectators socially and culturally encounter space. This includes exploration of space as a tangible entity, space as an internalised experience, and space as resonant with readings from different cultural, historical, political, psychological perspectives.
This module explores the process of creating site-specific ensemble performance in response to a chosen space and spectators. Your company is able to choose from a range of interesting spaces in which you can locate your performance and learn how to work creatively within, and in response to, your chosen environment and site.
Space generates its own narratives and meanings, and in both theory and practice, you explore different approaches to working with non-traditional theatre spaces or alternative spaces. You will consider how space impacts upon reception, our relationships to the audience, and on how it is integral to the making and meaning of a work.
Such work can be called environmental, site-specific or site-sensitive, but integral is an emphasis on the site as a prime location of material, process and engagement.
A series of five lectures and related film screenings at the start of the spring term will introduce various ways of interpreting spaces through different critical frames, practices and case studies, and this will be further explored in the practical/seminar sessions. The practical component of this module will develop imaginative, physical, and vocal skills along with further improvisational and devising strategies for ensemble group composition in a site-specific context. Physical training methodologies expand to include more internal ways of connecting to space, time, body, spaces and atmosphere, history and narrative, as well as techniques to encourage a playful, physical freedom in connection to surfaces, bodies and architectures. In addition methods of working with voice and text allied with physicality, within the context of the ensemble and site-specific practice, will be developed.
Students will also attend a set number of master classes during the term. These training methodologies assist in developing your approach to working environmentally and site-specifically, either indoors or out within the Goldsmiths campus.
There will be one departmental visit in the spring term to s show in a London site to see a company working in relation to site/space/place. Students will be asked to write a 1000-word essay analysing the show and drawing on the language of Performance Analysis and Site Specific Practice, which are introduced and explained on the course. This component enables you to begin to extend your critical vocabulary with which to ‘read’ the entirety of a performance in relation to site/space/place, and to articulate your responses accordingly. 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.
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15 credits |
Processes of Performance: The Ensemble
Processes of Performance: The Ensemble
15 credits
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 will 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 and contemporary precedents and what you are discovering in your own training and experiments. The film screenings at the start of 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, Peter Brook, Michael Chekhov, Jerzy Grotowski, and Jacques Lecoq (and Suzanne Bing) and Konstantin Stanislavsky, and their heritages in companies such as: Black Mime Theatre Company, Cardboard Citizens; Complicite; Forced Entertainment; Frantic Assembly; Improbable; Robert Wilson; Station House Opera; Sasha Waltz and Guests; Song of the Goat; and Ariane Mnouckhine and Théâtre du Soleil.
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.
The screenings of key footage are framed through an introduction to the language of Performance Analysis and models of Ensemble Practice, drawing upon the primary reading texts by: Rose Bonczek and David Storck (2013); John Britton (2013); Colin Counsell and Laurie Wolf (2001); Dŭska Radosavljević (2013); and Jon Whitmore (1994).
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 analysing the show and drawing on the language of Performance Analysis and Ensemble Practice, which are introduced and explained in the seminar discussions. This component enables you to begin to acquire a critical vocabulary with which to ‘read’ the entirety of a performance, and to articulate your responses accordingly. 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.
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15 credits |
Year 2
In the second year you take two compulsory modules:
Module title |
Credits |
Theatre Making 2
Theatre Making 2
30 credits
Theatre Making 2 sets students the task to put the skills and ideas introduced in Questions of s Performance into independent creative practice. Students develop practical and conceptual abilities and specialist skills in a chosen area of theatre making and work within companies to create and develop collaborative, research-led, full-fledged and fully-technical responses to set source material and given set restrictions.
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30 credits |
Modernisms and Postmodernity A
Modernisms and Postmodernity A
15 credits
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.
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15 credits |
You also choose modules from the following options:
Modernisms and Postmodernity B
You choose one option module from a range available within the Department. The modules on offer may differ from year to year as they reflect staff interests, but modules recently offered include:
Module title |
Credits |
MOPO B: Postcolonial Theatre |
Theatre and the Artistic Avant-Garde
Theatre and the Artistic Avant-Garde
15 credits
This module explores the relationship between visual art and theatre in both the pre-war, historical avant-gardes- such as Futurism, Dada and Surrealism- and some of the post-war, neo avant-gardes. Apart from obvious points of contact such as stage design, we will try to understand the relation between theatrical writing and performance, through art and visual imagery.
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15 credits |
Women, Feminism & Playwrighting
Women, Feminism & Playwrighting
15 credits
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.
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15 credits |
Samuel Beckett: Performance, Writing and Philosophy
Samuel Beckett: Performance, Writing and Philosophy
15 Credits
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.
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15 Credits |
Bertolt Brecht and Political Theatre
Bertolt Brecht and Political Theatre
15 credits
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.
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15 credits |
Modernisms and Postmodernity B: Activism and the Theatrical Avant Garde
Modernisms and Postmodernity B: Activism and the Theatrical Avant Garde
15 credits
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.
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15 credits |
Postmodern Gender, Identity, and Queer Theory
Postmodern Gender, Identity, and Queer Theory
15 credits
How do social identity categories function politically in contemporary society? What role does gender play in promoting social and political norms? Can the performance of transgressive genders and sexualities create challenges to these norms, or do we inevitably reproduce dominant frames of power and belonging? This module responds to these questions with an introduction to third wave feminism and queer theory.
The module's broad emphasis on the trangressive performance of identities will enable you to gain a comprehensive understanding of key debates in postmodern gender theory and practices.
Through an examination of plays, theatre companies, activist groups, and social performance, you will learn to apply critical concepts to the form and content of relevant performances.
Key theoretical scholarship will be considered each week alongside related play texts, videos or documentary sources. Weekly lectures will provide detailed context and provocations for further discussion/debate. Topics addressed will include late 20th and 21st century gay and lesbian theatre, postmodern feminist performance art, and queer identities broadly defined.
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15 credits |
Elements of Theatre History
The aim here is to develop an understanding of the relationship between a work and its historical - social, cultural, intellectual - context. You choose two option modules from a wide range within the department. Options are likely to change from year to year depending on staff interests, but modules offered recently include:
Module title |
Credits |
Elements of Theatre History: American Theatre in the Mid-20th Century
Elements of Theatre History: American Theatre in the Mid-20th Century
15 credits
This module is designed to give students a detailed overview of American Theatre in the 20th Century- its texts and contexts. By looking in depth at nine plays alongside a number of key groups and movements such as the Provincetown Players, the Black Arts Movement and the American Avant Garde, and through student led presentations, we will gain a sense of the diversity and development of American Theatre throughout the century.
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15 credits |
Elements of Theatre History: Shakespeare & Renaissance Theatre
Elements of Theatre History: Shakespeare & Renaissance Theatre
15 credits
This option provides a detailed examination of a range of the dramatic works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the English Renaissance to develop a broad understanding of themes, forms and issues (political, historical, theoretical and religious) characteristic of English culture during the reign of Elizabeth I and James I.
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15 credits |
Elements of Theatre History: Classical Greek Theatre
Elements of Theatre History: Classical Greek Theatre
15 credits
Ancient Athenian drama lies at the roots of the Western dramatic tradition. This course explores Greek plays in their original performance context and in the context of modern theatre. It examines the social, political and religious role of theatre in ancient Athenian society, and reflects on some of the ways in which Greek theatre has been translated, adapted and re-imagined in later cultures.
Over the course of the module, we’ll study example by each ancient playwright whose works survive to the present day (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides), as well as exploring the satyr play, and Aristophanes’ comic reflections on tragic playwriting. We’ll also consider ideas of ‘performance reception’, comparing these ancient plays in their historical context with the ways in which modern theatre-makers have revised, contested and transformed ancient dramatic texts to address their own societies.
The following plays will be discussed: Aeschylus: Oresteia, Aristophanes: Frogs, Euripides:
The Bacchae, Cyclops, Sophocles: Women of Trachis, Oedipus Tyrannus
The following modern versions of ancient plays will also be studied: Martin Crimp: Cruel and Tender, Yael Farber: Molora, Tony Harrison: The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, Neil LaBute: a gaggle of saints.
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15 credits |
Elements of Theatre History: Theatre of Revival and Revolt: 20th Century Ireland
Elements of Theatre History: Theatre of Revival and Revolt: 20th Century Ireland
15 credits
Theatre in the island of Ireland has had a profound influence on the development of modern drama, producing some of the most influential writers – and performances – of the 20th Century: a list that includes W. B. Yeats, G. B. Shaw, J. M. Synge, James Joyce, Sean O’Casey, Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, Brian Friel, Tom Murphy and Marina Carr. This module explores how Irish theatre has been intertwined with political conflict and crisis from the Irish Revival, through the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland (1968-1998), to the neoliberal boom-and-bust economy of the Celtic Tiger. Broadly, it will seek to explore the political problematics of theatrical representation and enactment: as W. B. Yeats famously pondered in his poem Man and the Echo: ‘Did that play of mine send out/ Certain men the English shot?’ The module will begin with the theatre of the Irish Revival in the early decades of the 20th century. The Abbey Theatre’s close and not always comfortable associations with a cultural nationalist movement that would culminate in the War of Independence (1919-1921) are considered here in depth. After looking closely at the conservative mid-century Ireland and the work of Samuel Beckett and Brendan Behan, the module then returns to theatre produced in times of conflict, particularly focusing on plays addressing the violence in Northern Ireland. The module will then move on to playwrights and productions that address issues that have arisen in recent decades – gender politics and the crisis in Irish national masculinity in 1990s theatre (Marina Carr & Conor McPherson); sectarianism, paranoia and the peace process in Northern Ireland (Owen McCafferty) – before concluding on contemporary queer performance in the Republic and Northern Ireland (Stacey Gregg, Panti Bliss).
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15 credits |
Elements of Theatre History: Russian Theatre
Elements of Theatre History: Russian Theatre
15 Credits
Three seminal figures in the Russian theatre of the first half of the twentieth century have had an extraordinary impact on the development of world theatre to this day: Konstantin Stanislavsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Evgeny Vakhtangov. This course focuses on their different views of the theatre, their directorial principles and their collaboration with actors, playwrights and designers in the context of unprecedented political and social upheaval. The plays selected here were indicative of the changes taking place, and of fundamental importance to the revaluation of theatre practice during this time.
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15 Credits |
Elements of Theatre History: Spanish & Catalan Theatre
Elements of Theatre History: Spanish & Catalan Theatre
15 Credits
This module concentrates on texts from two periods which are particularly rich in the history of Spanish Theatre: 1580-1680 and the 20th/ 21st Century. The texts analysed in this course will be studied within a political-historical context, while questions of staging will also be covered in relation to the specificity of theatrical art in Spain. The module culminates in the study of two plays written in Catalan and the work of a Catalan performance group which often dispenses entirely with text.
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15 Credits |
Elements of Theatre History: African Theatre
Elements of Theatre History: African Theatre
15 credits
The study of the history of theatre and performance in Africa requires the recognition that in dealing with theatre in Africa, one is dealing with a variety of traditions of performance. These traditions have developed mostly along parallel trajectories, and only sometimes intersecting each other’s paths. This course will therefore look at the major traditions of drama, theatre and performance in Africa; it will specifically look at the indigenous oral theatres and performances, the popular/ travelling theatre tradition, the Western-influenced and mainly university-based literary drama and theatre tradition, the interventionist theatre-for-development practice, and video drama genre. The course will look at these theatres and performances, both as products and shapers of their historical, social and cultural contexts and processes. It will examine the impact of colonialism on the development of theatre in Africa, as well as the responses of these theatres to key historical facts and events in Africa. Examples will be drawn mainly from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe.
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15 credits |
Elements of Theatre History: British Alternative Theatre History
Elements of Theatre History: British Alternative Theatre History
15 credits
This module will provide you with a historical overview of alternative theatre practices in Britain since 1968. Weekly topics will address the diversity of alternative theatre practice in the late 20th century, including, for example, experimental, political, community, black and asian, gay and lesbian, and disability theatres.
The study of each particular performance, company, play or practice will be contextualised within the political and social issues of its time period. In this way you will gain a sense of the rich diversity of theatrical responses to major events of the time period. In addition, you will engage in readings and activities that further their understanding of theatre history as an academic practice.
You will be introduced to particular historiographic approaches and methods, including the treatment of various source materials such as biographies, recorded testimonies, archived documents, published reviews, and oral histories. These skills will be practiced through the development of a small digital archive project, which will provide a basis for your final essay.
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15 credits |
Elements of Theatre History: Polish Theatre
Elements of Theatre History: Polish Theatre
15 Credits
Contact between British and Polish theatres stretches back at least to Jacobean players performing in Gdansk (with Henry Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffmann [1631], for instance, partly set in “Dantzike”, after the city’s Prussian name of Danzig), through Edward Gordon Craig’s interest in the work of Stanislaw Wyspianski in the early twentieth century, to students participating in training workshops today with such companies as Teatr Zar or Song of the Goat.
Once part of the “other Europe” during the Cold War, Poland is now at the heart of the EU, with Polish one of the major “second languages” of the UK also. Cultural dialogue depends on a shared awareness of key points of reference and this module will offer an introduction to aspects of Polish theatre history, not least as part of a history of translation into English. Each week, in both tutor- and student-led presentations, different themes will be considered, such as: repertory and “alternative” approaches to literary theatre; ensemblebased, physical or visual theatres; forms of actor training and the diversity of playwriting; individual directors’ “visions” and themes from the “national canon”; the Polish-Jewish heritage; the interplay of aesthetics and politics, of Romanticism and avant-garde, of past and present.
As the module material is in English, we will be considering what a theatre history beyond “national” borders means, through the example of the different artists whose work will be considered (from Mickiewicz to Staniewski; or between Kantor and the Theatre of the Eighth Day).
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15 Credits |
Elements of Theatre History: Francophone Theatres from Africa, the Caribbean and Canada
Elements of Theatre History: Francophone Theatres from Africa, the Caribbean and Canada
15 credits
Students will examine the ways in which playwrights, directors and companies from France and from its former colonies negotiate questions of identity, emancipation, resistance and artistic innovation.
France is currently living through one of the most convulsive periods in its post-war political history. The after burns of its colonial past and the role it played in the bloody Algerian War of Independence (1954-62) are still felt on a daily basis, with tensions running high between the state and police, and what are perceived as ‘immigrants’, even though they have lived in France for three or four generations.
Urban planning and the relegation of the immigrés to the banlieues – huge tower blocks outside city centres – only exacerbate the situation. This module looks at playwrights and other theatre-makers both from France and from Africa, the Caribbean and Canada who tackle France’s colonial past, and its postcolonial present. All the theatre-makers analysed on the module illustrate how today questions of identity and ethnicity in France and in its former colonies, are live, unresolved, and fluid.
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15 credits |
Questions of Performance
You choose two option modules which introduce you to practitioners' theories practically and critically, through options of learning and teaching clustering around questions, methodological enquiries and issues that guide contemporary practice.
Module choices may change year to year based on staff availability and areas of research, however modules available recently include:
Module title |
Credits |
QoP: Character I
QoP: Character I
15 Credits
This module asks the question: how does an actor approach, construct or otherwise create a realistic human being on stage? We will begin at the beginning, with the father of modern acting theory and practice- Konstantin Stanislavsky.
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15 Credits |
QoP: Self
QoP: Self
15 Credits
This option introduces a range of practical skills for exploring autobiography as a starting point for writing monologues and plays, story telling, devising, creating theatre and performing.
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15 Credits |
QoP: Gendered Performance
QoP: Gendered Performance
15 Credits
This option questions received definitions of gender, and considers gender as a mode of performance which is primarily unstable and capable of change. Throughout the module, students begin to contextualise their own gender performativity and explore new ways of creating performance practice, leading to a group presentation.
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15 Credits |
QoP: Emotion
QoP: Emotion
15 Credits
In this option students explore the different acting approaches to emotion working on specific body posture, facial expressions, breathing patterns, physical actions, psychological gestures, singing, image-scoring and examines how emotion can be used as a means to create a role.
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15 Credits |
QoP: Voice/ Text
QoP: Voice/ Text
15 Credits
On this module, students explore the development of voice and text work as used by major theatre companies in the UK, beginning with the mid 20th century methods of Clifford Turner and Greta Colson. Workshops address relaxation, posture, breath, voice and articulation, and then apply this experience to the performance of text using monologues, duologues and small scene work.
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15 Credits |
QoP: Questions of Community
QoP: Questions of Community
15 Credits
What does the word community mean? What makes a community? Drawing on the rich history of community, or applied theatre practice, students consider different techniques and approaches, and interrogate these, using experiential practice within a theoretical context. This course asks questions about your role as a performer, writer, director and facilitator and all the point in between.
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15 Credits |
QoP: Time
QoP: Time
15 Credits
Through the experience and perception of time, we consider rules, structure, games, methods, drawn from 20th and 21st century artists and theatre practitioner, and examine ensemble, character, narrative, devising, acting, and, of course, play with time, in time and out of time.
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15 Credits |
Year 3
You study two compulsory modules:
Module title |
Credits |
Culture and Performance: Critical Cultural Theory
Culture and Performance: Critical Cultural Theory
15 Credits
In the Culture and Performance 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 students 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.
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15 Credits |
BA (Hons) Drama & Theatre Arts Dissertation
BA (Hons) Drama & Theatre Arts Dissertation
45 credits
The Dissertation is an opportunity for final year students to extend themselves by looking at a single research subject of their own choosing. The dissertation requires a more sustained and focused application of the skills acquired in the writing of shorter essays, developing techniques of organisation, analysis and argumentation. 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. The dissertation is supervised by a member of the staff team.
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45 credits |
You also choose modules in the following options:
Culture and Performance B
You choose one module in the Spring term which gives you the chance to apply the skills developed during Culture and Performance: Critical Cultural Theory to a particular theatrical/artistic movement. Recent option modules include:
Module title |
Credits |
Culture and Performance B: Art and Japan
Culture and Performance B: Art and Japan
15 Credits
This module explores art-making as a philosophical practice with particular reference to art that has been created in Japan, created by those of Japanese origin, or inspired by Japanese culture. The particular perspectives investigated cover art practice that engages with aesthetic and philosophic notions such as an 'art of spectatorship', the notion of 'daily life as art', the concept of emptiness and the concept of 'void'; and art that engages with 'nature'.
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15 Credits |
Culture and Performance B: Theatre as a Learning Medium
Culture and Performance B: Theatre as a Learning Medium
15 Credits
This module examines the theory and practice of harnessing theatre for pedagogical purposes. Focusing particularly on work with young people in schools and other settings, we study the history and current practices of educational theatre practitioners, assessing their efficacy in delivering learning outcomes for young people. As well as studying significant practitioner such as Augusto Boal and Dorothy Heathcote, we also study key play texts and case studies of leading theatre companies.
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15 Credits |
Culture and Performance B: Modern Black, British and American Drama
Culture and Performance B: Modern Black, British and American Drama
15 Credits
This module takes up the two strands introduced in Culture and Performance in Term one, namely black American and British drama from the twentieth century to the present. The texts studied investigate points of convergence and divergence in representing blackness and black people’s experiences on both sides of the Atlantic. From the American perspective the chronological starting point is Angelina Weld Grimke’s legacy and how the drama produced throughout the 1920s prefigures the later influential cultural activism of the 1960s Black Arts Movement and continues women playwrights’ longstanding associations with experimental writing. In the British context, the initial investigations reside imperfectly in white writers’ representations and the dominance of black performers from abroad due to the absence of any plays penned by a black writer in Britain before the 1930s.
The module initially creates a broad contextual and generic scope which is narrowed to single-authored studies in the latter half. This enables students to access key informing debates as historically specific, but also to inter-weave these in order to construct a continuum in theatre histories which have been characterised by absence, sporadic inclusion or distortion. Attention to single authors enables detailed application of these ideas to a body of the dramatists’ work and requires the reading of no fewer than two of their plays each week. From time-to-time, there will be comparative analyses of plays by white peers bearing in mind the dominance of white-centred experience in both nations’ artistic contexts and theatre complexes. Theorisation models will expose students to Afro-centric and Euro-centric examples. By virtue of the newness discursively of the field of Black British writing and drama in particular, the module is to be viewed as a series of incisive snapshots aimed to facilitate student interest with the expectation that further research will add to the emerging critical mass. In particular, the historical dominance of Caribbean-derived experiential models from the 1970s-2000s is later contoured by the increased Nigerian-centring theatrical presence of neo-millennial playwrights which, although beyond the scope of the module in any detail, students are welcome to pursue this as a research area for the assessed essay.
Given the political and ideological conditions of enslavement and colonisation heritages, the module acknowledges the shared ground of racial oppression (amongst other inhibitors) but aims to explore the nuanced and distinctive politicised aesthetics which have emerged across the century as responsive to the very different locations of the United States and the United Kingdom.
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15 Credits |
Performing War: Representations of Conflict on the Modern Stage
Performing War: Representations of Conflict on the Modern Stage
15 credits
Along with love, warfare has been one of the most constant themes since the earliest European theatre. Rather than just studying theatrical representations of war, this module examines how theatre might contest war, condemn war, and seek peace, justice and respect for human rights.
Significantly, given the context of the ‘Culture and Performance’ umbrella under which this module will be taught, students will examine how theatre might challenge the ways in which elements of performance – spectacle, theatrics, mise en scène – are militarized by the military, states and the dominant media during times of war.
The module asks the following questions:
- To what extent can/does theatre reveal the atrocities of war that tend to be omitted from more mainstream formats, which tend to glorify or sanitise war?
- To what extent is it appropriate to stage these atrocities?
In each case, the module will situate the play within the historical, geographical and cultural contexts in which it was written and produced. Given current debates around viewing images of beheadings, or chemical gas attacks in the news, and the theatricality intrinsic to the creation of these images, these questions concerning the ethics of spectatorship are timely and urgent.
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15 credits |
Theatre Making 3
You choose an option which gives you the opportunity to study a theatrical from in depth, and to apply your acquired knowledge and skills in a group-based project. Autumn term taught sessions develop into project planning. In the Spring term, rehearsals lead towards productions, performed outcomes and events. Genres range from text-based to devised performance and Live Art.
Options offered include:
Module title |
Credits |
TM3: Devised Community Performance
TM3: Devised Community Performance
45 Credits
In this option, students work in groups to devise a piece of theatre or performance inspired by the student's creative relationship with a particular community. The community may be defined by a geographical location or social setting, they might have a shared experience, interest or socio-cultural identity, the community might be temporary, permanent or in motion. The relationship will be nurtured through research, meetings, interviews and workshops. The aim of the final performance may be celebratory, activist, educational or seek to raise awareness, document the history of the community or being about political/social change.
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45 Credits |
TM3: Devised Performance
TM3: Devised Performance
45 Credits
This option explores various methods of devising using different types of stimuli, such as texts (both theatrical and non theatrical), objects, space, images, play, task systems and more. Students develop strong collaborative working practices and experiment as an ensemble in relation to both methodology and final performance aesthetic. You take the responsibility to study the context, content, practical tools , and compositional, dramaturgical and collaborative strategies of devising through your own practice and research.
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45 Credits |
TM3: Live Art/ Performance Art
TM3: Live Art/ Performance Art
45 Credits
The Live Art/ Performance Art module takes the shape of an experimental performance laboratory. This module examines alternative performance practices, critically and practically. You are introduced to a range of key artists, companies and practitioner in addition to a broad range of methodologies and compositional strategies for generating Performance and Live Art works.
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45 Credits |
TM3: Text and Performance
TM3: Text and Performance
45 Credits
This module focuses on the creative interaction between writing, dramaturgy, directing and performance from generating your own written text to the live theatrical event. Texts may include new plays, radical re-workings of existing texts, adaptations from other media, verbatim and playwriting. Although students will choose to specialise as writer, dramaturge, performer or director, the collaborative process will always be enabled and emphasised.
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45 Credits |
Work placement
Level 6 students may also take an optional work placement module
Module title |
Credits |
Work placement
Work placement
15 credits
This module aims to provide experiential learning opportunities that will enhance your academic studies and offer the opportunity for personal development. It will allow you to:
- Learn skills relevant both to academic achievement and to discipline-related career opportunities
- Gain effective personal development programmes
- Experience life in the workplace and gain valuable employment experience
An advantage of this model is that it draws on the expertise of the department of Theatre and Performance in facilitating students’ academic development and of the Work Placement Manager in working on their personal development.
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15 credits |
Teaching style
This programme is taught through scheduled learning - a mixture of lectures, seminars and workshops. You'll also carry out performance and production work, and will attend lab sessions.
You’ll be expected to undertake a significant amount of independent study. This includes carrying out required and additional reading, preparing topics for discussion, and producing essays or project work.
The following information gives an indication of the typical proportions of learning and teaching for each year of this programme*:
- Year 1 - 24% scheduled learning, 76% independent learning
- Year 2 - 15% scheduled learning, 85% independent learning
- Year 3 - 18% scheduled learning, 81% independent learning, 1% placement learning
How you’ll be assessed
You will be assessed by a range of methods depending on your module choices. These include coursework assignments such as essays, portfolios, research statements and exams, as well as practical assignments such as practice-based presentations and oral presentations, and in your third year, a 10,000-word dissertation, and participation in a public performance festival.
The following information gives an indication of how you can typically expect to be assessed on each year of this programme*:
Year 1 - 31% coursework, 13% written exam, 56% practical
Year 2 - 55% coursework, 45% practical
Year 3 - 70% coursework, 30% practical
*Please note that these are averages are based on enrolments for 2020/21. Each student’s time in teaching, learning and assessment activities will differ based on individual module choices. Find out more about how this information is calculated.
Credits and levels of learning
An undergraduate honours degree is made up of 360 credits – 120 at Level 4, 120 at Level 5 and 120 at Level 6. If you are a full-time student, you will usually take Level 4 modules in the first year, Level 5 in the second, and Level 6 modules in your final year. A standard module is worth 30 credits. Some programmes also contain 15-credit half modules or can be made up of higher-value parts, such as a dissertation or a Major Project.
Download the programme specification. If you would like an earlier version of the programme specification, please contact the Quality Office.
Please note that due to staff research commitments not all of these modules may be available every year.
For 2021-22 and 2020–21, we have made some changes to how the teaching and assessment of certain programmes are delivered. To check what changes affect this programme, please visit the programme changes page.