Acting and Performance BA(Hons)

You’ll have the opportunity to explore the ways in which a play script can form the basis for a live theatre production through working together as a company to stage a short text. Training in acting, voice, and the physical can be explored through the challenge of staging the work.

You will undertake a foundational training in approaches to making live performance. You will explore workshop practice, including aspects of performance training, as well as a range of techniques and starting points for creating work. The nature of group and individual creativity will be addressed, and you will engage in at least one major collaborative public performance project. You will keep logbooks and undertake contextual research and analysis.

A series of lectures will introduce you to a range of historical performance practices from the late-Victorian period to the present. Seminars will follow up the lectures in order to probe the issues raised with reference to texts taken from a range of cultures and periods.

You will draw on examples of contemporary practice in responding to theoretical approaches and debates. You will encounter a range of contemporary examples of performance practice across media through a series of lectures which will be supported, where possible, by theatre visits, video materials, and other media resources. The workshops will introduce you to the critical and aesthetic contexts in which such work exists, and assessment will focus on your ability to locate and devise specific examples of practice within the relevant critical frameworks.

You’ll have the opportunity to undertake a training project in one of a range of theatre skill areas, such as directing, performing, physical theatre, technical theatre, or workshop facilitation. A programme of training will help to prepare you to undertake an independent project which demonstrates your skills and understandings.

In this module you will examine contemporary cinema as a global media industry, with a particular emphasis on the processes of globalisation and circulation that allow film texts to become meaningful far outside the contexts in which they were made. While the global dominance of Hollywood is central to this, cultural influences, values and meanings flow in multiple directions. You will develop knowledge of key theories in film and global media studies, including theories of globalisation, cultural hybridity and exchange, national identities, and imagined communities. By focusing not only on the films themselves, but on their production, distribution, promotion and reception, the module provides you with a detailed understanding of how and why cinema spreads around the globe, and the tensions this cultural flow creates at a political, social, economic and cultural level.

This module provides a practical orientation in some of the main genres of film and television, and a training in how to write for them. You will analyse and discuss the narrative structures, character types, and other conventions of a range of genres, and try your hand at writing them yourself. These genres could range from documentary to sitcom, from horror to romantic comedy, or from action movie to period costume drama. Finally, you will become proficient at writing in a particular genre, which you will select from those you have studied. You will produce a script according to a genre-specific brief, and then reflect on the process of writing to the constraints of the familiar generic conventions of the film/television industry.

You will contribute your artistic skills to the preparation of a staff-led performance , developing and extending your own skills and knowledge. You will document the process and share the results of your analysis through reflective reports. The project will be rooted in an area of staff research and teaching expertise, and its initial focus will be staff initiated. Typical examples might include: contemporary or classical texts; musical theatre; a filmed performance; a piece of devised work. Although the performance may be staff directed, you will be expected to take clear responsibility and initiative for co-ordinating different aspects of the process and/or for running sessions.

This module takes the form of a Working Party research process in which the group collectively researches, designs and delivers a Panel Session within a ‘Conference’ on a set topic chosen from a range of options. At that Session, each of you will present a provocation or make an alternative research presentation. Initially, the group works with the tutor on gaining a broad understanding of the field in question and designs a Call for Papers which summarises the field and identifies the main questions and debates. Each of you then respond to their Call for Papers by designing a detailed proposal for a research process which will culminate in a contribution to the Panel Session. There is scope for creativity in the design of individual presentations and in the curatorship of the event.

The Research Dissertation module facilitates your journey to acquiring expertise and specialism in a project allowing you to showcase summative learning across your course. You will be supported in undertaking guided independent research aimed at the generation of original knowledge in the study of media content, industries, practitioners, technologies or users and/or their cultural, social, political and economic premises and consequences. You will synthesise primary and secondary data and sources in your systematic, methodological analysis of a chosen topic in a field reflecting your course such as communication, journalism, film, digital media, entertainment, acting and performance, cultural production, sports media, music or promotional culture. This involves reviewing appropriate literature, identifying and executing a suitable methodology and research design and carrying out appropriate forms of analysis.