Modules

With consistent and in-depth professional skills training, you’ll learn to create and respond to performances. You’ll explore techniques and methods in different environments; from solo performances to full public productions, from work for traditional spaces to site-specific, immersive and unusual contexts.

Year one:
You’ll develop essential foundational skills and approaches for voice, body, movement and imaginative practices. You will also develop your knowledge and skills in relation to digital and immersive technologies and explore their potential in making live performances more engaging for modern audiences.

Modules
Performance Skills
Culture & Contexts: Stage and Screen
Play Texts
Making Skills 1
Stagecraft: Physical and Digital Scenography
Ensemble Performance

Year two:
In your second year you’ll take on advanced body-based training and learn about technical theatre, directing, writing and creating drama on stage. You will also develop scenography skills and engage with design thinking, adapting the stage to the story. Alongside this, you’ll create and present a solo performance of your own making, influenced by a range of styles like scripted monologue and stand-up comedy.   Working as part of a theatre company, you’ll create and put on a public production focusing on the relationship between a show and its audience.

Modules
Extended Making Skills: Physical, Vocal, Digital
Immersive and Participatory Theatre
Theatre Futures
Page to Stage: Writing, Directing and Dramaturgy
Show in a Bag
Modes of Making: Socially Engaged Practice

Year three:
You’ll be responsible for finding your own placement, with support from the Employability team.

How you’ll study during your professional placement
You’ll spend time working in a professional context, as part of a business or organisation. This can be in one role, or up to three, and must be for a minimum of 24 weeks. You’ll develop in-demand workplace skills, deepen your insight into industry and grow your network of contacts, all of which could help you get ahead in your career after graduation.

Throughout this year, you’ll develop a portfolio of work that includes critical self-reflection on what has been learned from the experience. You’ll be required to evidence your experiences, the skills you’ve learned and your professional growth.

Year four:
In your final year, you will extend and deepen your techniques and making skills, as well as your personal, social and philosophical approach to theatre. You will work towards becoming a proactive, independent and entrepreneurial practitioner, who is resilient, able to transfer your skills to other disciplines and able to manage a sustainable career.

Using your critical and reflective skills, you’ll research and write a paper on an area of theatre making that inspires and interests you. You’ll also develop performance materials individually and in companies, honing creative process skills through delivering scratch work (‘test’ performances) in several different contexts.

You will finish the year developing and performing your own professional work for public production to industry specialists and audiences. You’ll also take on a professional development project, where you’ll prepare for the industry by learning about how its infrastructure functions, and how to develop a career as a performer, theatre maker or company.

Modules
Creating Companies
Professional Development
The Thinking Practitioner: Student-led Research
Master Classes: Physical, Vocal & Digital
Professional Production

As part of our process of continuous improvement, we routinely review course content to ensure that all our students benefit from a high-quality and rewarding academic experience. As such, there may be some changes made to your course which are not immediately reflected in the content displayed on our website. Any students affected will be informed of any changes made directly.

Assessment methods

The Theatre & Performance course assessment approach reflects and enables an incremental, developmental learning experience.

The assessment for the Award consists of 100% coursework, including:

Practical Assessment (group, individual) – which includes in-class presentations, discussions, demonstrations/process showings, studio-based practice, productions, and final year performances.
Written and reflective assessment – including essays, research writings, digital/physical portfolios, critical reviews and live discussions.
Regular giving and receiving of feedback during practical work enables effective individual and group critique and reflection. 

A range of disciplined practical activities (workshops, demonstrations, seminars, lectures, tutorial supervision) are used to develop skills and abilities and demonstrate outcomes including workshops and lectures with professional performers, companies and directors.

These opportunities will help develop independently minded practitioners and are designed to help you prepare for the range of activities you will engage in as graduates: to be able to demonstrate expertise in negotiation and pursuing shared goals; handling creative, personal and interpersonal issues; and communicating through a variety of media and platforms.