Year 1
Unit 1 - Introduction to Contemporary Theatre and Performance
This unit is an introduction to your course, the college and the university.
Unit 2 - Contemporary performance lab
This unit will investigate a range of contemporary theatre and performance making practices and compositional methods. It will provide you with a firm grounding in key approaches to dramaturgy and performance composition.
- You will develop practical skills and knowledge required for your initial development as a theatre-maker
- Grow your creative and intellectual skills in performance composition and theatre-making
- Develop your critical awareness and practical experience of performance-making as a compositional process
Unit 3 - Theatre in context
This unit will investigate theatre as an expanded field of cultural practice and artistic endeavour. It will look at performance as a critical and conceptual framework.
- It will present the study of acting, theatre and performance as a set of inter-related practices by drawing on a range of theories and approaches
- Place acting, theatre and performance practices in their social, cultural and historical contexts, enabling you to examine, question and challenge their politics and ethics
- Explore what acting might be and performance might mean in different parts of the world by looking at cultural traditions, historical meanings and societal impacts of theatre locally and globally
- Investigate the possibilities and limitations of cross-cultural performance practices and inter-cultural collaboration
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 an historical, cultural and artistic context.
- You will be able to choose from a range of projects
- Create and make a performance
- Examine a range of theatre forms and acting conventions
- 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
- Develop a personal process of practical investigation and reflective critical enquiry
Year 2
Unit 5 - Performance histories
You will look at different approaches to acting and performance as cultural narration and storytelling practice.
- 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
- Investigate the relationship between performance and history, interrogating how dramatic, theatrical and filmic narrative forms contribute to the perception of the past and its shaping of the contemporary
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.
- You will learn practical skills and approaches to digital performance making
- 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 theatre-making
This unit looks at a range of contemporary theatre-making practices developed by contemporary performance companies, directors and performer-practitioners.
- You will extend your knowledge of current theoretical and practical approaches to making contemporary theatre
- Further develop your critical awareness and practical experience of performance making as an investigative and experimental process
- Investigate and explore contemporary approaches to making socially and politically engaged theatre and performance
- Improve your compositional skills and creative capacities as a contemporary theatre-maker and ensemble practitioner
- It will encourage you to sustain a personal creative process of practical investigation and reflective critical enquiry
Year 3
Unit 9 - Performance research
This unit will provide you with a firm grounding in performance research. It will enable you to conduct supervised independent research practice in any area of acting, theatre and performance.
- 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 performance research practice
- Think about the social, economic and political impacts of your research
- Be able to choose the form your research takes
Unit 10 - Ensemble performance
This unit will provide you with a firm grounding in the practical process of creating and performing an ensemble production.
- You will make a professional-standard public production, using the contemporary theatre and performance-making strategies and ensemble performance processes you have explored on the course
- Work with designers, technicians and other theatre and performance-makers
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.
