BA (Hons) Drama: Comedy and Satire

What you'll study Year 1 (credit level 4) In your first year, you will study the following modules: Year 1 modules Module title Credits. Processes of Performance: The Ensemble Processes of Performance: The Ensemble 15 credits This module addresses various approaches to the imaginative, physical, and vocal training of the actor drawing from a wide range of Twentieth Century key practitioners. You will be introduced to a selection of approaches to ensemble training that will include the core skills and principles needed for this practice. In tandem will explore key research strategies, and you will carry out your own experimentation and critical questioning. Practical exploration of the ensemble is complimented by seminar discussions and film screenings that assist you in making links between historical and contemporary precedents and what you are discovering in your own training and experiments. You will focus on how meaning is generated in performance, and begin to ask basic questions about Theatre Making, to explore further in your own work and your analysis of material created by other artists. One departmental visit will take place in the autumn term to a London venue to see the work of a company working integrally with the idea of the ensemble, or for whom ensemble training is a core process. Students will be asked to write an essay analysing the show and drawing on the language of Performance Analysis and Ensemble Practice, which are introduced and explained in the seminar discussions. This component enables you to begin to acquire a critical vocabulary with which to ‘read’ the entirety of a performance, and to articulate your responses accordingly. In the final post-show evaluation seminar, you will be guided to understand how to apply such a methodology to the development of your own company’s practical performance, and the critique of others’ work. 15 credits. Introduction to Dramaturgy Introduction to Dramaturgy 15 credits 15 credits. Scenography Scenography 15 credits 15 credits. Theatre Making 1 Theatre Making 1 30 credits Theatre Making 1 is the culmination of the first year’s work for B.A. Drama and Theatre Arts and draws on the experiences in the other first year units. It is an opportunity to explore theatre making in a creative and inventive way, applying analytic and research skills to the practical realisation of performance pieces. Students build on their knowledge of different performance styles, approaches and traditions gained in the year: a presentation of exciting and innovative work, consolidating and building on the learning outcomes the first year of study. In this respect it provides not only a culmination of the first year but a springboard for your next two years’ work. Students gain practical experience of the relationship between the different roles that make up theatre-making teams, with an opportunity to undertake 2 distinct roles. Team-working is at the heart of this project, exploring the dynamics of leadership, decision-making and the relationship between operational/organisational concerns and the realisation of an artistic vision. 30 credits. Radical Performance Vocabularies Radical Performance Vocabularies 15 credits This module introduces key issues in community, applied, and political drama and performance through a focus on critical analysis of case studies. Weekly topics will address a wide range of forms and genres. The plays, companies, and performances discussed will be evaluated through the application of relevant theoretical frameworks, with an emphasis on influential philosophical and ideological trends of the 20th and 21st century. Students will consider a thematic topic each week through the study of a related performance and will analyse the work with reference to assigned critical readings. Topics will include, for example, theatre for development, postcolonial theatres, youth theatre, feminist and queer performance, and others, and these will be contextualised within an exploration of post-structuralism, globalisation, neoliberalism, post-Cold War international relations, and other global political issues. This module will provide broad subject knowledge alongside fundamental skills in research and critical reflection and will prepare students for further and more detailed study in subsequent years. 15 credits. Analytic Vocabularies A Analytic Vocabularies A 15 credits This module introduces a range of key theoretical perspectives that can be used to analyse a range of playtexts. The module also examines some of the major interventions in theatre over the centuries in order to assess the creative developments and outcomes in the light of key playwrights and theorists. You will be asked to engage in textual analysis of individual plays, considering the contextual influences of history and culture as well as genre and form. A variety of approaches are covered, which can be used either individually or in conjunction, with the intention of providing the student with the tools necessary for rigorous critical and conceptual interpretation. This module will provide the conceptual basis for further and more detailed study in Levels Five and Six of the degree programme. 15 credits. Comedy 1: Improvisation Comedy 1: Improvisation 15 credits This module introduces students to Comedy in practice via the techniques of improvisation both verbal and physical, by scene study from a range of dramatic literatures. Reflexes, acceptance, action and the free-flow of imagination will be developed to build confidence and aptitude for this key comic skill. Students will work in studio to learn the basics of physical and verbal improvisation skills and techniques. They will also study both digital and live comedy across a range of styles of delivery and writing. Scenes may be chosen from classical Greek and Roman comedy, to Restoration to 19th Century farce to 20th and 21st Century texts. 15 credits. Year 2 (credit level 5) In your second year, you will study the following modules: Year 2 modules Module title Credits. Elements of Theatre History Elements of Theatre History 30 credits The aim here is to develop an understanding of the relationship between a work and its historical – social, cultural, intellectual – context. Students choose two options (each of 10 weeks) from a wide range of modules. Options are likely to change from year to year, depending on staff availability and research interests, but see below for some examples of modules recently offered. 30 credits. Questions of Performance Questions of Performance 15 credits This modules delivers training my introducing students to practitioners' theories practically and critically, through options of learning and teaching clustered around questions, methodological enquiries and issues that quide contemporary practice. Module choices may change year to year based on staff availability and areas of research, however, see below for a recent selection of options. 15 credits. Modernisms and Postmodernity B: Options Modernisms and Postmodernity B: Options 15 credits Students choose from a range of options available within the Department. The modules on offer may differ from year to year as they reflect staff research interests, but some examples of modules recently on offer include: 15 credits. Comedy 2: Improvisation Comedy 2: Improvisation 15 credits This module develops students’ Comedy in praxis towards the creation of a short programme of comic work, drawn from extant comic writing that might include play texts as well as sketches from the popular repertoire of TV, film and radio comedy. It may also include the students’ own writing and devising of stand up material. Following introductory sessions led by the tutor to develop and enhance their craft on comic text, students will continue to practice improvisation in class as well as develop a repertoire of material negotiated with the tutor for eventual performance. Their chosen material will play to their strengths as well as be designed to encourage their risk-taking and to stretch their ability. Team work will be emphasised throughout. Supported by the tutor and technical team, they will programme a short performance of their material for assessment either in college or in a local pub venue to test their skill with a live audience. 15 credits. Stand-Up Stand-Up 15 credits A lecture/seminar/studio praxis based module to explore the rise of stand up in the UK within a historical, political and cultural context. This module introduces students to a basic understanding of economic systems, arts and social policy as affecting the creation and production of stand up comedy live, on-screen and radio. It looks at festival and open mic circuits, and considers also the role of social media in disseminating the comic and subversive voice. Thatcherism and the New Comedy circuit will be the focus for study, but also the role of Popular Entertainment in TV and Radio, Arts Council funding, and key Awards and Prizes such as the Perrier at the Edinburgh Festival. The role of social media and the meme and the cartoon will be studied. Following this theoretical overview, students will research a group seminar on a topic selected by/negotiated with the Tutor and a very brief practical exercise in stand up as a chance to test their own approach to this specific genre. The latter will be delivered in class for formative assessment feedback by tutor and peers. The emphasis of this module is to both historicise and politicise stand up as a form and understand it as a subversive as well as potentially high profile and lucrative business. 15 credits. Comedy Writing Comedy Writing 15 credits This module is designed to provide students with the opportunity to write their own material creatively from further study of extant texts. Students will be offered a range of texts to choose to work from including recorded live performance. They will then write a critical analysis of this text both from its structure and content and as a vehicle for playing (drawing on Introduction to Dramaturgy in the first year). They will then use this text as a springboard for their own creative writing. This could be a pastiche, an adaptation, an application of form, or indeed any aspect of the original text from which their own creative writing will spring. The material they produce must be performative ie designed to be performed. This creative writing will take place outside of class times in the Learning Hours attached to this module. 15 credits. Year 3 (credit level 6) In your third year, you will study the following modules: Year 3 modules Module title Credits. Culture and Performance: Critical Cultural Theory Culture and Performance: Critical Cultural Theory 15 Credits In the Culture and Performance modules, you will investigate contemporary notions of identity and culture in the UK and around the world in relation to an increasingly globalised world. Contemporary Britain is perceived as progressively more multicultural; at the same time, there is an evolving awareness of the impact of global trends in society and culture. These and other factors are challenging our extant notions of individual and collective identity and culture, as well as community. Culture and Performance begins with a single module taken by all students in the Autumn term – 'Culture and Performance: Critical Cultural Theory'. This 10-week module introduces students to key theoretical perspectives on the function of performance for the negotiation and perpetuation of cultures and societies. Students will become familiar with current debates on interculturalism, multiculturalism, nationalism, and the globalisation of cultures, through a diverse range of historical and contemporary case studies. In weekly seminars students will be encouraged to interrogate and debate their own creative and political relationships to performance cultures of various kinds. This module will equip students with the necessary theoretical tools to effectively position themselves as artists within global, postcolonial, multicultural, and/or intercultural communities. 15 Credits. Culture and Performance B: Performances of Protest, Resistance and Revolution Culture and Performance B: Performances of Protest, Resistance and Revolution 15 credits In the 21st century, political movements are becoming increasingly performative. This module brings together emerging strands of theory from Theatre & Performance and International Relations to explore the cultural performances at the root of global political movements. Many of these movements arise from marginalised or obscured cultures, and so the enactment of political campaigns frequently rests on theatricalised bids for cultural visibility. From protest movements to revolutionary uprisings to anti-austerity campaigns, groups often seek to perform their identities in ways that evoke recognition and empathy from public audiences. These performative negotiations of identity and culture are foundational to the subsequent stagings of protest, resistance, and revolution. This module will consider a range of recent events including the Global War on Terror, Anti-War protests, the 2011 London Riots, the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring, the Saffron Revolution and more. Drawing on a variety of materials including video documentary, first-person testimonies and critical theoretical analyses, students will consider the kinds of theatricality that prove efficacious in particular political circumstances. 15 credits. You will also complete a dissertation (45 credits) and develop a final show (45 credits). Teaching style This programme is taught through scheduled learning - a mixture of lectures, seminars and workshops. You’ll be expected to undertake a significant amount of independent study. This includes carrying out required and additional reading, preparing topics for discussion, and producing essays or project work. The following information gives an indication of the typical proportions of learning and teaching for each year of this programme*: Year 1 - 24% scheduled learning, 76% independent learning. Year 2 - 28% scheduled learning, 72% independent learning. Year 3 - 11% scheduled learning, 89% independent learning. How you’ll be assessed You’ll be assessed through a variety of performances, production processes, essays, group projects, dissertation and timed examinations. The following information gives an indication of how you can typically expect to be assessed on each year of this programme*: Year 1 - 44% coursework, 56% practical. Year 2 - 52% coursework, 13% written exam, 35% practical. Year 3 - 76% coursework, 24% practical. *Please note that these are averages are based on enrolments for 2016/17. Each student’s time in teaching, learning and assessment activities will differ based on individual module choices. Credits and levels of learning An undergraduate honours degree is made up of 360 credits – 120 at Level 4, 120 at Level 5 and 120 at Level 6. If you are a full-time student, you will usually take Level 4 modules in the first year, Level 5 in the second, and Level 6 modules in your final year. A standard module is worth 30 credits. Some programmes also contain 15-credit half modules or can be made up of higher-value parts, such as a dissertation or a Major Project. Download the programme specification , for the 2018-19 intake. If you would like an earlier version of the programme specification, please contact the Quality Office. Please note that due to staff research commitments not all of these modules may be available every year.