Unit information: Performance 1: Practice in 2008/09

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Unit name Performance 1: Practice
Unit code DRAM11002
Credit points 30
Level of study C/4
Teaching block(s) Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director Ms. Pam Tait
Open unit status Not open
Pre-requisites

None
Co-requisites

None
School/department Department of Drama: Theatre, Film, Television
Faculty Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit introduces students to a range of creative practices involved in making performance, as well as good, safe production and technical practices. In small groups, students will follow a selected creative process from initial ideas through a design and production experience, culminating in a workshop presentation.

Aims:

1) To develop production skills introduced in Production Skills: Performance through a practical performance project;

2) To introduce students to creative processes and practices involved in making live theatre in the Wickham Theatre, including the staging of text and devising processes, enabling them to use these in the creation of live theatre;

3) To develop a critical engagement with basic structures and dynamics of representation through reflections on practice;

4) To prepare students to benefit fully from practice-based theatre units in their second and final years.

Intended Learning Outcomes

1) Students will be able to work collectively and individually to create a piece of live theatre in the Wickham Theatre, using skills acquired in Production Skills: Performance;

2) Students will bring that piece of live theatre to performance before an audience, using a range of methods from devising to staging text;

3) Students will be able to demonstrate a critical engagement with basic structures and dynamics of representation through reflections on practice;

4) By the end of the unit, students will be able to demonstrate that skills acquired are transferable to the second year and to projects undertaken as part of Studiospace, the student-run production company.

Teaching Information

Workshops & screenings

Assessment Information

Profile submission: Process, Presentation and Critical Analysis (2,500 words) [see appended Guidelines for Assessment of practice-based work]

Reading and References

  • Auslander, Philip (1997) From Acting to Performance: essays in modernism and postmodernism, London: Routledge.
  • Brook, P (2008) The Empty Space, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
  • Barker, H (1997) Arguments for a Theatre, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  • Graham S and Hoggett S (2009) The Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre, London: Routledge.
  • Heddon, D and Milling, J (2006) Devising Performance: A Critical History, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • McCullough, Christopher (ed.) (1998) Theatre Praxis, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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