Performance Design and Practice

Content

The course is undertaken in studio/performance practice and in lectures, seminars and assignments, in a sequence of distinct Units.

The programme of study enables you to identify with a broad pathway focussed on performance design, or performance practice, as described below, presenting your work accordingly. You are not required to opt for a pathway at entry: the options are presented within the Units of Stages 1 & 2 of the course, enabling you to develop your direction by the outset of Stage 3.

Both pathways are interlinked and involve collaborative and individual practical work, critical and theoretical studies, and personal and professional development. Skills developed include creative, critical and reflective processes, research and analysis, budgeting and marketing.

Performance Design
This pathway focuses on activities associated with the production and realisation of the visual components of a performance - forms include theatre, live art, video, community events etc. This pathway develops skills in design including drawing, drafting, scale model making and presentation.

Performance Practice
This pathway focuses on a number of overlapping activities that support development towards roles such as director, performer, devisor, choreographer, writer, dramaturge. Skills developed include writing for performance, movement, performance modes, as well as skills such as pitching ideas and recording work.

Structure

The course runs for 90 weeks full time over three years, and is divided into three Levels, (or Stages) each lasting 30 weeks.

Stage 1

The emphasis in this Stage is on introducing perspectives on the creation of performance, investigating the breadth of inter-related concerns involved through explorations of source material, space, time, and the audience/ performer relationship. You are introduced to practical and collaborative skills in order to begin to develop an informed personal approach to creating performance.

Stage 2

This is a year of transition: your progression towards developing an individual creative identity and methodology, and to identifying areas of specific interest which will inform your choices in Stage 3. The practical and personal skills required to communicate your ideas effectively (introduced in Stage 1) are refined, particularly regarding the adoption of a 'role' within a collaboration. It also gives you opportunity to gain practical experience of creating performance within a collaboration, either involving external practitioners or taking the form of a peer group collaboration within a real or replicated professional working context.

Stage 3

This is the most integrated of all three Stages, reflecting as far as possible challenges you are likely to encounter in professional practice outside college or in further study at Masters level. Units in Stage 3 are designed to help you apply, expand and deepen the skills and understanding developed over the previous two Stages. Project work focuses on your development through a creative perspective, such as design or directing, performing etc, and enables you to move between activities and contexts, or to pursue a specialist research or practical direction. All Units offer flexibility, both to facilitate your personal perspective and enable you to select the best way of demonstrating your abilities.

The Research Project (dissertation) undertaken in Stage 3, focuses on an individually chosen topic within a field of research that relates to your practice and locates it within a theoretical framework: it involves the development of a piece of research work that is documented.