Core modules
Producing 1
This module builds understanding of the role of the producer and the practical skills needed to fulfil that role. It covers such areas as setting up a creative arts company, strategic planning and development, financial planning, project management, while also focusing on key case studies from the Irish arts sector. Students will enhance their understanding of the field by attending events in the Arts in Action programme on campus and other arts and speaker events followed by a talk with the relevant producer or performer.
DT6131: Curation 1
This module involves a practical interaction with the university’s collection of archives and art collection and a weekly examination of key case studies from around the world. There will be regular visits to key cultural venues within Galway and (from time to time) elsewhere in Ireland; it will include international engagement with arts practitioners from around the world through the use of digital resources.
Advanced Producing and Curation
In this module students will explore further evolving definitions and policies of multifaceted curatorial and producing activity across arts forms. Students will develop a practice based curatorial inquiry and alternative ways of thinking, developing, and implementing artistic activities.
Career Development and Fieldwork
This module has three elements. In the first, students explore key elements of professionalization (building a CV, forming a network, self-producing). In the second, which will usually happen during the period April–June, they will carry out an internship with a key arts organisation where they will gain hands-on experience in an area of interest. In July, students complete the third part of the module, when they spend two weeks participating in the Galway International Arts Festival SELECTED programme, which requires them to attend key events in the Festival and to go backstage and enjoy talks with key practitioners.
Production and Curation Ideas Lab
In this module, students work through phases of developing a project that will aim to find innovative solutions to key problems in the creative arts. Established methodologies for working through a project from an idea to its realization are explored through weekly seminars and practical sessions. While the module involves the development of key skills (structuring workshops, pitching for a project) and critical thinking it will also place strong emphasis on learning through doing. There will be a presentation of the project at the end of the semester. The project developed may form the basis for the larger project explored in the practice-based dissertation.
Practice-Based Dissertation
The dissertation project has three elements :
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Proposal and pitch—in the middle of semester two, students must complete a pitch proposal for their practice-based project.
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Practice-based project
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Reflective element—students complete a 9,000 word reflective dissertation that places their practice-based project and its outcomes in appropriate contexts (e.g. historical, theoretical, cultural).
Optional modules
You will choose between:
Writing for Theatre and Performance
This module involves a weekly writing workshop that builds skills in writing across the creative arts. Students will create a portfolio of writings that include formulating an artistic statement, applying for funding, building a social media persona, creative arts reviewing, blogging, monitoring and evaluation, and communications.
Critical Methods in Drama, Theatre and Performance
This module aims to develop students’ critical approaches to writing about theatre and performance. Different modes of ‘seeing,’ analyzing, writing about performance from semiotics to reception theory will be introduced and examined. Students will confront in class discussion and in essays issues related to writing on theatre such as the role of the critic, gender, globalisation, and technology as well as the theoretical perspectives of postmodernism, psychoanalysis and theatre historiography.
Curriculum Information
Year 1 (90 Credits)
- Required DT6100: Dissertation
- Required DT6131: Curation 1
- Required DT6127: Producing 1
- Required DT6129: Producing and Curation Ideas Lab
- Required DT6128: Producing and Curation Career Development
- Required DT6132: Advanced Producing and Curation
- Optional DT6112: Advanced Theatre Production Practicum
- Optional DM6100: Moving Image Techniques
- Optional DT6102: Irish Drama and Theatre from Wilde to O'Casey
- Optional DT6123: Playwright's Workshop I
- Optional EN6118: Digital Literature, Arts, and Creative Practice
- Optional DT6108: Exploring Michael Chekhov Technique
- Optional DT6120: Ensemble Acting and Devising
- Optional EN6136: Thinking about Books/Thinking about Theatre
- Optional FM6102: Digital Play & Practice
- Optional EN6119: Culture Society Technology
- Optional EN6132: Digital Archives, Exhibits, and Curation
