Year 1
Unit 1 - Introduction to Acting and Performance
This unit is an introduction to your course, the college and the university.
Unit 2 - Acting lab
You will investigate and critique key acting practices and methodologies. It will provide you with a firm grounding in some of the most significant approaches to acting as an artistic practice. It will give you an opportunity to assess their relevance in the contemporary context.
- It will introduce you to some key theories and practical approaches to contemporary acting and place them in the historical, cultural and artistic context of their development
- Introduce you to acting as an exploratory process involving working on the self, embodying emotions, interpreting texts, creating images and representing figures
- Develop your practical experience and critical awareness of acting as a process
- Enable you to advance and extend your physical, vocal and intellectual skills and creative capacities to encourage
Unit 3 - Theatre in context
The unit will introduce you to some of the key conceptual and practical approaches to studying theatre as a social and aesthetic practice within and across cultural contexts. It will introduce you to a range of inter-cultural, world theatre and global performance practices.
- Project briefs to focus on conceptual projects tackling questions and challenges around these topics
- It will introduce you to some of the key critical approaches to understanding theatre and performance as an expanded field of cultural and artistic practice
- Introduce you to studying theatre in a social and cultural context
- Examine the politics of performance-making processes and practices
- Enable you to approach theatre as a socially-engaged practice
- Investigate acting and performance practices from different cultural contexts and traditions
- Interrogate the politics of inter-cultural exchange and cross-cultural practice
- Encourage you to explore and critique inter-cultural approaches to training for performance
Unit 4 - Representing the real
This unit will introduce you to some of the foundational practices and theoretical questions concerning the relationship between reality and representation. It will place them in a historical, cultural and artistic context.
- It will examine a range of theatre forms and acting conventions enabling you to develop your critical awareness and practical experience of different modes of acting and performance
- Situate acting and performance within the context of an event and scenography
- Improve and grow your acting and performance-making skills, creative capacities and theatre knowledge
- Encourage you to develop a personal process of practical investigation and reflective critical enquiry
Year 2
Unit 5 - Performance histories
In this unit you will explore different approaches to acting and performance as cultural narration and storytelling practice.
- Project briefs will enable you to investigate your own stories, histories and cultural identities
- You will explore the creative potential of acting and performance to tell new stories, to give voice to minority and marginalised experiences and to generate alternative perspectives
Unit 6 - Collaborative and collective practices
This unit aims to introduce you to different ways in which collaborative working can focus and enhance your own creative strengths. This unit has 3 core purposes:
- To engage with fellow students with different practices and interests in a collaborative project
- To engage with external audiences, participants or institutions to consider new contexts for your work
- To develop your creative attributes to enable you to take on future challenges in a variety of contexts
Unit 7 - Digital performance lab
This unit investigates the diverse and rapidly developing field of digital performance and its transformative impact on contemporary theatre forms.
- It will provide you with the opportunity to explore performance making for digital environments and platforms, including acting for screen and interactive media
- Experiment with new technologies such as virtual and augmented reality
Unit 8 - Contemporary acting
This unit looks at a range of contemporary acting practices, directors, theorists and practitioners.
- Project briefs will enable you to focus on a specific mode or practice and area of enquiry
- Investigate and experiment with compositional methods and rehearsal strategies
- You will have the opportunity to work individually, in groups or companies, and to develop new forms and hybrid practices
Year 3
Unit 9 - Performance research
This unit will provide you with a firm grounding in performance research.
- You will learn how to frame research questions, conduct a critical literature and practice review, identify appropriate research methods and form a sustained critical and theoretical argument, whether in performance practice or through writing
- Produce a substantial piece of individual practice-based and/or scholarly enquiry
- Be able to choose the form your research takes
- Think about the social, economic and political impacts of your research
Unit 10 - Multi-modal production
This unit will provide you with a firm grounding in the practical production of contemporary performance.
- You will perform in a professional-standard public production, using the contemporary acting techniques and digital performance processes you have explored on the course
- Work with directors, designers, technicians and other performers
Optional Diploma between year 2 and 3
Between year 2 and 3 you can opt to undertake the Diploma in Professional Studies or the UAL Diploma in Creative Computing. Whilst these Diplomas are an optional aspect of the course, they are designed as an integrated and assessed part of your journey through the course.
