Performing Arts BA (Hons)

• Dramatic Performance Project
• Post-Dramatic Performance Project
• Contemporary Music Theatre Project
• Physical Theatre Project

• Performing Mixed Reality
• Site Project
• Score Making Project
• Deconstructing Performance
• Perspectives on Performance and Digital Arts
• Applied Performance
• Dance Techniques 2
• Teaching and Leading Dance 1
• Devised Theatre and Performance
• Technical Stage Production
• Performance Writing
• Understanding the Theatre and Performance Industry
• Promoting Dance

Students choose from a range of modules offered from the list below. This enables students, in their final year, to specialise. Modules offered may include:

• Performance Company
• International Performance Project
• Performance Research Project 1
• Performance Research Project 2
• Education and the Performing Arts
• Teaching and Leading Dance 2
• Live Art and Experimental Performance
• Music, Media and Community Arts
• Music Industry Management
• Creative Media and Performance 1
• Creative Media and Performance 2
• Placement 1
• Contemporary Screen Dance: Concept to Production

The degree has a strong core of modules that develop your skills in performance-making for stage and screen-based media, alongside contextual knowledge of contemporary performing arts through the 20th and 21st centuries. Around the core, you have the freedom to construct your own specialist programme within three broad themes:

Contemporary Performance

This theme includes a range of innovative contemporary practices across live and digital media. You will develop your understanding and skills in the creation and performance of all manner of contemporary performance, including immersive theatre, site specific, music theatre and Live Art. You can do this through a range of optional modules including Devising in the second year, as well as International Performance Project, Performance Company and/or Live Art in the final year. Recent graduates who focused on this theme have gone on to the Performance Practices MA or pursued a career in performance making in the UK and overseas, including Frankie who made and toured solo work in Berlin.

Digital Performance

This theme explores the extraordinary use of digital technology in the context of live theatre, dance, interactive installation, music, gaming and internet performance and software development. Develop the skills to make work for screen, or digital soundscapes, or even performance in the virtual world. You can explore this theme in a range of option choices including Performance, Interaction and Digital Technologies in the third year. Recent graduates who focused on this theme include Amy and Ruth who set up a professional company delivering mixed reality workshops to schools, James who has created sound designs for several professional theatre companies, and Laura and Andrew who set up a successful theatre and media production company in the East Midlands.

Applied Arts and Education

This theme develops your understanding and skills in how arts inform and enrich our lives in community, healthcare and educational settings. Module option choices with this focus include the second-year module Applied Performance which leads on to Education and the Performing Arts in the final year. These can be combined with other specialist applied arts modules and/or a wide range of practice-based modules such as Devising or Performance Company. This prepares you for further training in teaching or applied arts careers such as leading community workshops. Recent graduates pursue careers in a broad spectrum of applied arts including Alex who works with adults with special needs in Staffordshire and Sarah who teaches performing arts at a school in Shropshire.

Contact hours

You will be taught through a combination of lectures, tutorials, seminars, group work and self-directed study. Assessment is through coursework (presentations, essays and reports) Your precise timetable will depend on the optional modules you choose to take, however, in your first year you will normally attend around 13 hours of timetabled taught sessions (lectures and tutorials) each week, and we expect you to undertake at least 25 further hours of independent study to complete project work and research.