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
- Critical Dialogues A
- Critical Dialogues B
- Introduction to Dramaturgy
- Scenography
- Theatre Making 1
- Processes of Performance: Encounters with Space
- Processes of Performance: The Ensemble
Year 2
In the second year you take two compulsory modules:
Module title
- Theatre Making 2
- Modernisms and Postmodernity A
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
- MOPO B: Postcolonial Theatre
- Theatre and the Artistic Avant-Garde
- Women, Feminism & Playwrighting
- Samuel Beckett: Performance, Writing and Philosophy
- Bertolt Brecht and Political Theatre
- Modernisms and Postmodernity B: Activism and the Theatrical Avant Garde
- Postmodern Gender, Identity, and Queer Theory
- 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
- Elements of Theatre History: American Theatre in the Mid-20th Century
- Elements of Theatre History: Shakespeare & Renaissance Theatre
- Elements of Theatre History: Classical Greek Theatre
- Elements of Theatre History: Theatre of Revival and Revolt: 20th Century Ireland
- Elements of Theatre History: Russian Theatre
- Elements of Theatre History: Spanish & Catalan Theatre
- Elements of Theatre History: African Theatre
- Elements of Theatre History: British Alternative Theatre History
- Elements of Theatre History: Polish Theatre
- Elements of Theatre History: Francophone Theatres from Africa, the Caribbean and Canada
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
- QoP: Character I
- QoP: Self
- QoP: Gendered Performance
- QoP: Emotion
- QoP: Voice/ Text
- QoP: Questions of Community
- QoP: Time
Year 3
You study two compulsory modules:
Module title
- Culture and Performance: Critical Cultural Theory
- BA (Hons) Drama & Theatre Arts Dissertation
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
- Culture and Performance B: Art and Japan
- Culture and Performance B: Theatre as a Learning Medium
- Culture and Performance B: Modern Black, British and American Drama
- Performing War: Representations of Conflict on the Modern Stage
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
- TM3: Devised Community Performance
- TM3: Devised Performance
- TM3: Live Art/ Performance Art
- TM3: Text and Performance
