Theatre and Performance BA (Hons)

What was or is tragedy? When and why did tragic drama begin to be written and performed? How have later writers of tragedy built on or surpassed early forms of tragedy? What did or does tragedy tell us about the world we live in? This module addresses these questions, with a survey of tragic drama from the classical past, through the early modern period, to the twentieth century. You will learn to contextualise each tragedy in relation to the conflicts and strains of the period in which it was made and consumed, while also thinking about the relations between writing, gender, religion, and politics, issues of literary influence, and the function of art in times of crisis, past and present.

Building on your work correlating Shakespearean tragedy and modern drama at Level 4 (Titus Andronicus and Blasted), and prefiguring your extended writing work for the dissertation and on drama-based modules such as Marlowe in Context at Level 6, this module will develop your understanding of the dramatic genre of tragedy. This will involve looking at tragedy’s earliest forms, the early modern revival and revision of such forms, and modern reworkings of the genre and its concerns.

This module explores adaptations of literary texts in modern culture. It focuses on the ways in which classic texts are retold and appropriated in a variety of popular genres, media, and formats. The module thus builds on the knowledge and skills developed at Level 4, particularly those concerning the notion of canonicity and the relations between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture.

The module introduces you to the current theories of adaptation and teaches you the knowledge and skills necessary for critical analysis of adaptations. It also provides you with the terminology and skills needed for the study of film and other media, as well as non-canonical (popular) literary genres.

This module will encourage students to explore key aesthetic, economic, ideological and historical issues in relation to Hollywood cinema. These include analysing the formation of the studio system in the late teens and how this led to Hollywood becoming a global, dominant force; how Hollywood representations can be linked to broader ideologies; how aesthetics and representations are influenced by censorship; and how Hollywood has changed historically in relation to social factors. The latter will lead to an understanding of periodisation (such as classical and post-classical Hollywood); of technical innovations and their impacts (such as the introduction of sound and colour); the changing nature of stardom; the increasing acceptance of Hollywood as an art form; and how Hollywood has absorbed international trends and personnel. An indicative syllabus is as follows:

1. Authorship and Hollywood
2. The Studio System
3. Sound and Music
4. Censorship
5. The B Movie
6. Genreand Hollywood
7. Stardom
8. Indiewood
9. Gender and Hollywood
10. Technology and Hollywood
11. Global Hollywood

This explores the major trajectories of communication technology, cultural readings of communication technologies and their impact in terms of human communication, technological progression, economics, business, popular culture, and cultural human space. This module will take a case study approach to media cultures which will resonate explicitly with examples which are central to the daily lives of young people as a way to explore both these and wider issues of media and cultural engagement. Such examples include the online world of social media, the 21st century music industry and global consumer culture and can be applied to more unfamiliar media cultures. The second part of the module takes a historical turn. Moving from the contemporary to the historical gives the opportunity to reflect on the current historical moment and how this is linked to longer trajectories in the development of media cultures

The module will focus on the televisual representation and articulation of cultural identities in Britain and the US. We will look at how gender, ethnicity, national and regional identities are constructed through an examination of different genres and areas of screen media, such as drama, comedy and current affairs. We will explore issues such as class, gender and racial stereotypes, visibility of minority groups and integration. Throughout the course we will also consider the function of television, considering what its role might be in the construction of cultural identities.

This theory led module is focused on the social, critical, and ethical ‘challenges’ that theatre and performance makers face in the 21st century. Through a series of lectures and seminars, you will be provided with examples of critical arguments that allow you to consider theatre and performance from plural and sometimes competing perspectives. The overall aim is to give you a grounding in developing your own independent arguments on difficult, challenging, or ethically complex subjects such as city resilience, population growth, the fourth industrial revolution, class and equality, and climate justice through the frameworks such as cultural materialism, doughnut economics, Global North philosophies (universalism, liberalism, poststructuralism), Global South philosophies (pluriversal thinking, co-presence, rasa theory), and queer radicalism.

This practically led module will explore the processes and practices of contemporary theatre making from a number of different perspectives, drawing on a range of international practitioners. The module will help you to locate your work in relation to the history of key theatre practitioners from the late-20th and early-21st centuries. You will engage with practices such as verbatim theatre, immersive or physical performance, along with the work of (e.g.) Forced Entertainment, Augusto Boal, or Jatinder Verma. In doing so, the module asks you to think about what ‘theatre’ is (form and context) in practice. That is, through practical exploration (in studios, in urban contexts, in homes or in online environments) the module explores how we create theatre and the importance of understanding theatre-making as an active practice and ongoing cultural, political and critical process in the world.

This module explores some of the most critical questions of our time, asking why particular theatre productions, plays, and performance traditions are important now and how they might be engaged in understanding, critiquing and remaking the world around us. Building on the foundational work completed in year one, this research driven module will help you to develop and hone your performance analysis and research skills. Through tutor facilitated discussions, debates and in-class research activities, you will draw on research materials from key academic and political debates; this may include critical race theory, post-colonial studies, queer theory, disability studies, performance theory, feminism and gender studies, etc. By studying a wide range of theatrical texts and performances, you will have the opportunity to understand the interrelations between innovations in theatre and performance practices and the wider social and political contexts from which they emerge. That is, this module asks you: why should we make theatre and performance now?

As a staff research led module, you will work in close collaboration with a client organisation to explore the role of the applied theatre practitioner. Concentrating on the needs of the chosen organisation and the aligned expertise of staff, you will learn skills and understandings appropriate to their audience and/or participant group. You will further develop your ability to plan, research, make and evaluate your performance work. This will involve interrogating a variety of performance styles and devising methodologies. This practice will be undertaken in dialogue with your tutors and with representatives of the client organisation, who will help you explore your relationship with the audience and the art form. You will be encouraged to investigate the relationship between the performer and the participant, the staged and the non-staged, and how theatre making functions in spaces other than conventional theatres. The module will familiarise you with the work of some key practitioners and movements within the applied field, enabling you to appreciate how your individual experience relates to the wider cultural arena.

Building on Arguments for Theatre and Performance, in this module you will develop skills in research methods that will be vital for your independent research in the final year. While still focused on the ‘grand challenges’ of the 21st century, you will be introduced to research methodologies and methods which might include areas such as practice research, documentary theatre, archival research, dialogical performance, performance analysis, interviews, ethnographic approaches, and walking performance. This module is designed as Dissertation preparation and, in that regard, it addresses issues relating to diverse approaches to the production of knowledge, but also provides students with practical and critical skills associated with particular methods of doing performance research.

This practically led module grounds your performance making within the creative, political, and cultural challenges of ‘the city’. Based on a tutor designed brief, you will be encouraged to test and challenge the limits of theatre and performance by investigating the role performances play in representing, reflecting upon and interrogating city cultures. The brief may include site-specific work in the NewcastleGateshead area, working with a play that explores city life, a box of objects that relate to urban contexts, or another creative stimulus for approaching a devising process. This creative process will be complemented with staff-led workshops on practices such as contemporary dance, directing challenging topics, creating scenographic atmospheres, site-responsive performance, performer-audience relations, or psychophysical acting. Building on your experiences at first year and in TP5002 Contemporary Theatre Making, you will continue to develop your practical devising skills as part of small group performances. You will have the opportunity to be creative, to experiment, and to put theory into practice to make performances located in venues such as theatre studios, museums, art galleries or with found places.

In this module you will learn how digital cultures are investigated through theatre and performance practices. The notion of ‘digital culture’ is explored in an expansive way to consider how ‘digital perspectives’ are represented in live performance works, along with providing tools for representation (projection, networks, etc.). This is inclusive of approaches to mixed reality, gaming theatre, and online performances along with plays that take ‘the internet’ as their subject (such as Tim Price’s Teh Internet is Serious Business and Jennifer Haley’s The Nether). As a research informed module, the interests and specialisms of the staff will guide the workshops included each year. The overall aim is to prepare you to identify, critique, and stage timely performances that investigate the social, aesthetic and political impacts of digital cultures (whether local or global) beyond a focus on the technology alone.

In this module you will be introduced to how select practitioners have approached the training of actors and performers. Informed by staff research interests, this module will develop your practical and theoretical understanding of how contemporary performers prepare for performance. This is inclusive of the techniques associated with (for example) Sandford Meisner, Jerzy Grotowski, Yoshi Oida, Freddie Hendricks, and Patsy Rodenburg. These techniques will be studied in workshop sessions and applied to scripted scenes. The module acts as an introduction to these performer training perspectives and offers the opportunity to expand your performance skillset, while also exploring your personal creative interests and identity. You will learn how to apply these techniques autonomously, making informed and interest driven choices on the types of material you will perform and which techniques you will use in your creative process.