BA (Hons) Drama & Theatre Arts

Our distinctive emphasis on performance and production work alongside and informed by theoretical and critical study (and vice versa), the stimulating atmosphere created by staff with diverse research expertise, and our location in the heart of London's performance culture, mean that we offer a unique approach to drama and theatre arts.

The degree programme leads you through a range of study including:

• theatre making
• production processes and performance
• close analysis of performances and written texts
• the history of theatres across a range of cultures
• critical vocabularies for reading, writing and analysing texts as well as performances
• physical investigation of - and reflection on - modes of performance
• the acquisition of technical skills
• understanding how performance affects audiences
• theatre, studio and site-specific practice
• understanding of theatre in terms of its social engagement
• an ability to define and critique what falls under the broad term ‘performance’

Throughout your learning you benefit from the Library, department theatre and studio spaces, open access to the department's digital (media and sound) and scenographic workshops, supported by the department's team of professional technicians.

The department is also part of the Erasmus Scheme and has a wide international professional network, including a new Association with LIFT.

The department's Special Project Fund supports students' own productions and workshop projects.

The degree is based on a balanced combination of modules in the theory, practice and history of drama, theatre, performance and related media. You take four modules of study a year, but any one module may include within it two or more options.

Year 1 (credit level 4)

In the first year you study the following core modules:

Year 1 core modules Module title 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. Analytic Vocabularies B Analytic Vocabularies B 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. Students 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. 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. Processes of Performance: Encounters with Space Processes of Performance: Encounters with Space 15 credits

This module will focus on how performers and spectators socially and culturally encounter space. This includes exploration of space as a tangible entity, space as an internalised experience, and space as resonant with readings from different cultural, historical, political, psychological perspectives.

This module explores the process of creating site-specific ensemble performance in response to a chosen space and spectators. Your company is able to choose from a range of interesting spaces in which you can locate your performance and learn how to work creatively within, and in response to, your chosen environment and site. Space generates its own narratives and meanings, and in both theory and practice, you explore different approaches to working with non-traditional theatre spaces or alternative spaces.

You will consider how space impacts upon reception, our relationships to the audience, and on how it is integral to the making and meaning of a work. Such work can be called environmental, site-specific or site-sensitive, but integral is an emphasis on the site as a prime location of material, process and engagement.

15 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. Year 2 (credit level 5)

In the second year you take two core modules:

Year 2 core modules Module title Credits. Theatre Making 2 Theatre Making 2 30 credits

Theatre Making 2 sets students the task to put the skills and ideas introduced in Questions of s Performance into independent creative practice. Students develop practical and conceptual abilities and specialist skills in a chosen area of theatre making and work within companies to create and develop collaborative, research-led, full-fledged and fully-technical responses to set source material and given set restrictions.

30 credits. Modernisms and Postmodernity A Modernisms and Postmodernity A 15 credits

This lecture/ seminar series introduces you to key aspects of modern and postmodern thought, culture and theatre. It aims a) to examine historical and cultural contexts, and b) to explore and analyse the theoretical and culture concerns and practices which have been understood as modernist and postmodern. It is interdisciplinary, considering not only practices in theatre but in other areas of cultural production.

15 credits.

You also choose modules from the following options:

Modernisms and Postmodernity B

You choose one option module from a range available within the Department. The modules on offer may differ from year to year as they reflect staff interests, but modules recently offered include:

Module title Credits. Postcolonial Theatre Postcolonial Theatre 15 credits

This module introduces students to the debates and issues about the scope and frame of the postcolonial field and its critical theory. It will specifically look at the relationship between postcolonialism and postmodernism; the shifts and tensions in the centre-periphery relations, issues of cultural imperialism and oppression and strategies surrounding the politics of culture, identity and representation.

15 credits. Theatre and the Artistic Avant-Garde Theatre and the Artistic Avant-Garde 15 credits

This module explores the relationship between visual art and theatre in both the pre-war, historical avant-gardes- such as Futurism, Dada and Surrealism- and some of the post-war, neo avant-gardes. Apart from obvious points of contact such as stage design, we will try to understand the relation between theatrical writing and performance, through art and visual imagery.

15 credits. Women, Feminism & Playwrighting Women, Feminism & Playwrighting 15 credits

This module investigates the relationship between modern women playwrights (writing in English) and the ways in which their work intersects with the tenets of feminist thought. Each week two polemical pieces: one on social history or feminist theory, the other on drama or theatre will be analysed in tandem with the play under discussion.

15 credits. Samuel Beckett: Performance, Writing and Philosophy Samuel Beckett: Performance, Writing and Philosophy 15 Credits

This option focuses precisely on this dual nature of Beckett's work and offers students a chance to study and questions modern/ postmodern tensions with Beckett as a continuous and problematic case study. Students engage with the breadth of philosophical argument found in these readings: aesthetics, politics, philosophy of history, existential ontology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language.

15 Credits. Bertolt Brecht and Political Theatre Bertolt Brecht and Political Theatre 15 credits

This module offers students the chance to go beyond 'soundbite' Brecht and study this key dramatist in more detail. This module will study the career of Brecht, including the political world his drama and drama theory evolved through. Placing his work in a philosophical, historical and artistic context, this module will look at Brecht's importance for his period, his influence in post-war theatre and relevance in contemporary practice.

15 credits. Modernisms and Postmodernity B: Activism and the Theatrical Avant Garde Modernisms and Postmodernity B: Activism and the Theatrical Avant Garde 15 credits

This module addresses historical and contemporary links between avant garde theatre practices and political activism. It expands and deepens the study of artistic practices begun in Modernisms and Postmodernity A, with a focus on the activist elements of theatrical movements and parallel political organisations.

Through the critical analysis of 20th-century case studies, you will develop an understanding of the adoption of avant garde techniques from Dada to Live Art to 'In Yer Face' realism.

You will consider particular theatrical protest performances drawn from organisations including Bread and Puppet Theatre, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, El Teatro Campesino, Solidarity, Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, ACT-UP and more.

Through targeted critical readings, you will situate their analyses of these performances within recent scholarship on the efficacy of political performance in a globalised, postmodern world.

15 credits. Postmodern Gender, Identity, and Queer Theory Postmodern Gender, Identity, and Queer Theory 15 credits

How do social identity categories function politically in contemporary society? What role does gender play in promoting social and political norms? Can the performance of transgressive genders and sexualities create challenges to these norms, or do we inevitably reproduce dominant frames of power and belonging? This module responds to these questions with an introduction to third wave feminism and queer theory.

The module's broad emphasis on the trangressive performance of identities will enable you to gain a comprehensive understanding of key debates in postmodern gender theory and practices.

Through an examination of plays, theatre companies, activist groups, and social performance, you will learn to apply critical concepts to the form and content of relevant performances.

Key theoretical scholarship will be considered each week alongside related play texts, videos or documentary sources. Weekly lectures will provide detailed context and provocations for further discussion/debate. Topics addressed will include late 20th and 21st century gay and lesbian theatre, postmodern feminist performance art, and queer identities broadly defined.

15 credits. Elements of Theatre History

The aim here is to develop an understanding of the relationship between a work and its historical - social, cultural, intellectual - context. You choose two option modules from a wide range within the department. Options are likely to change from year to year depending on staff interests, but modules offered recently include:

Module title Credits. Elements of Theatre History: American Theatre in the Mid-20th Century Elements of Theatre History: American Theatre in the Mid-20th Century 15 credits

This module is designed to give students a detailed overview of American Theatre in the 20th Century- its texts and contexts. By looking in depth at nine plays alongside a number of key groups and movements such as the Provincetown Players, the Black Arts Movement and the American Avant Garde, and through student led presentations, we will gain a sense of the diversity and development of American Theatre throughout the century.

15 credits. Shakespeare & Renaissance Theatre Shakespeare & Renaissance Theatre 15 credits

This option provides a detailed examination of a range of the dramatic works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the English Renaissance to develop a broad understanding of themes, forms and issues (political, historical, theoretical and religious) characteristic of English culture during the reign of Elizabeth I and James I.

15 credits. Elements of Theatre History: Classical Greek Theatre Elements of Theatre History: Classical Greek Theatre 15 credits

This module explores Greek plays in their original performance context and in the context of the modern theatre. Political and social ideas and issues are explored in order to comprehend the role of theatre in Ancient Athenian society. Students will lead seminar discussion on selected topics and, where possible, plays will be viewed on stage or on video.

15 credits. ETH: Theatre of Revival and Revolt: 20th Century Ireland ETH: Theatre of Revival and Revolt: 20th Century Ireland 15 credits

This is a modul that looks back on Irish theatre tradition that is closely related to political conflict, beginning with the theatre of the Irish Revival in the early decades. After looking closely at the conservative mid-century Ireland and the work of Samuel beckett and Brendan Behan, the module returns again to theatre produced in times of conflict, particularly focussing on the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland (from 1968), before concluding with the politics of contemporary Irish drama.

15 credits. Elements of Theatre History: Russian Theatre Elements of Theatre History: Russian Theatre 15 Credits

Three seminal figures in the Russian theatre of the first half of the 20th Century have had an extraordinary impact on the development of world theatre to this day: Konstantin Stanislavsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Avgeny Vakhtangov. This module focuses on their different views of the theatre, their directorial principles and their collaboration with actors, playwrights and designers in the context of unprecedented political and social upheaval.