TP6003 - Performer Training: Future Practices

Framed by seminar discussions where appropriate, sessions will follow a workshop model with performance exercises and sharing of work in progress as an integral part. Each week you will be offered tuition on specific methods and techniques for rehearsing and presenting bodies on stage with your fellow actors and with an audience. You will engage in show-back sessions where you will give and receive constructive formative feedback in participation with tutors.

As well as specific show back feedback, due to the experiential and discursive nature of the learning in this module there will be lots of opportunity to get tutor feedback on your work and the progress you are making throughout the module.

Information and resources will be available to you on Blackboard and the 'Reading List' contains links to websites and online video material which can help you develop appropriate knowledge and understanding.

Written assessment feedback will be provided within 20 working days of summative assignment submission. Access to library facilities is available 24-7 all year round.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk
(Reading List service online guide for academic staff this containing contact details for the Reading List team – http://library.northumbria.ac.uk/readinglists)

Knowledge & Understanding:
• Articulate a persuasive critical understanding of how performer training techniques emerge from, or in response to, broader cultural, political, or ethical contexts

Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:
• Evidence an ability to interrogate complex ideas through a selected practice

Personal Values Attributes (Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):
• Consider the roles of global, national or local politics in the presentation of bodies on stage

Formative
Students will share their argument in response to the set provocation as an oral presentation. Staff and peers will offer feedback in class.

Summative
Practice Research project (100%) comprising:
• A demonstration of practice (c. 5 – 10 minutes, as appropriate to form of practice and in discussion with tutor);
• A 1000-words (or equivalent) statement contextualising the practice research demonstration.

In response to a staff provocation or live brief, you will work in small groups to develop, rehearse and realise a practical response (such as performance, workshop, installation or another agreed other format) that investigates the intersection of practice and theory.

The format of the practical demonstration will be agreed in discussion with the module convenor. The 1000 word (or equivalent) research statement will outline the critical and creative references that have informed the project, and how they have done so

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The challenge set by this module is to ask if performer training is still fit for purpose and, if not, what will replace it? Building on the foundations set by practitioners from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, you will investigate new modes of performer training and think through the ways that training will need innovating for the contemporary world. Working with staff on their specialist areas of research and practice, the precise focus and thematic direction of this exploration will be devised collaboratively with your tutor(s). Situating tutors own practical methods of preparing for performance in the context of the 21st century, you will move on to begin developing your own performer training ‘vocabularies’. The overall aim of this module is to challenge you to consider alternative methods of performer training. It prepares you for developing and honing performance techniques that reflect the ethics of contemporary cultures.