Theatre and Performance Practice

Examines key texts and critical approaches central to live performance and media disciplines from the perspective of particular analytical approaches, e.g. semiotics, ideological approaches and structuralism. The theories of key practitioners who influenced the development of particular disciplines will be examined in detail. Small group seminars appropriate to your pathway will support these lectures.

Provides the framework to examine the historical, social and production contexts of key 20th century theatre forms. You’ll explore Brechtian, Absurdist and more contemporary theatre texts and the associated ideas and production innovations that accompanied these influential theatre forms.  Small group, interactive seminars will enable you to view and read about productions, take part in discussions and debates, and introduce you to some basic creative approaches that you can develop further in your practical work.

Combines an exploration of key performance approaches to develop your voice and movement work, with week-by-week acquisition of warm up methods and voice and movement techniques. These key performance skills give you a tool bag for later learning, where you’ll draw on the techniques learned in voice and movement to strengthen your performance delivery.

This module is designed to further develop and extend your performance skills. You will apply these skills to the devising and rehearsal of a group performance piece performed in our main theatre space or studio. We’ll work from a text as a starting point, and devise around themes within the text. You’ll work as an ensemble to create strong visual performance.

This is a primarily practical module which focuses on creative approaches central to characterisation within naturalistic drama. You will apply Stanislavski-based approaches to performing published texts. This module will introduce textual analysis, which will develop your ability to understand and interpret theatre texts and to think critically about your own theatre practice.

This module will extend your learning of acting and characterisation into non-naturalistic forms. You will learn to appropriately apply expressive and presentation techniques to a range of theatre texts, beginning with the work of Artaud and Brecht and then exploring contemporary playwrights who bear their influence.

In lectures, screenings and seminars the approaches to textual critical analysis introduced in the first year are further developed, as are your academic writing skills.

As a 2nd year student, you will take part in ‘TaPP Fest’. This is a core module that gives students the opportunity and experience of responding to a director or guest artists brief and participating in a theatre festival. Each group will work under the direction of a professional director/theatre maker to produce a piece of performance for a public audience. While all performances will be delivered in one of our performance spaces, under the festival heading ‘TaPP Fest’, each discreet project will have its own identity, for example, one group might respond to a published play text, another group might make a theatre piece for children, or you might devise a new piece of theatre.

The module provides you with a practical knowledge and theoretical understanding of Applied Theatre and its uses and applications as a tool for social engagement outside of conventional theatre environments.

The module does this through a work based learning project with The Lowry Learning and Engagement team. During the module, you will shadow an applied theatre practitioner and co-facilitate workshops with community participants at The Lowry.

The Lowry, based at Salford Quays, is a venue, arts organisations, and registered charity committed to using visual and performing arts to enrich people’s lives. It presents audiences with a diverse programme of theatre, opera, musicals, dance, music, comedy and visual art as well as events and activities to expand the horizons of audiences and artists alike.

This exciting opportunity is supported with bespoke training in facilitation in taught sessions on campus and at The Lowry.

You will explore performing pieces to camera, engaging with the audience, interview technique, the importance of asking pertinent questions, listening and putting an interviewee at ease, working with green screen, autocue and using studio talkback, the importance of performing with energy, clarity and correct intonation. You will produce a showreel containing an intro, a walk and talk piece to camera, practical exercise or short demonstration, autocue read and a vlog, targeted at a specific audience and presented in an appropriate style.

This module enables you to work on a range of exercises designed to develop your characterisation, vocal expression and tonal variety in performing audio drama. You are introduced to studio equipment for recording and editing and contribute to studio management for the assignment. You are assessed on the performance and production of a recorded radio drama script.

The module explores the writing and devising of comedy. You will watch, listen to and discuss examples of a range of online, radio and TV comedy before working in small groups to create an original comedy sketch idea and to develop your own script and characters within it. You will be encouraged to develop range and flexibility in your vocal, facial and physical skills in order to produce a range of comic personas. The module also examines aspects of storytelling – theme, narrative structure, character development, comic types, the relationship of character to plot, use of subplots - in relation to the writing of comedy drama and situation comedy. In the second half of the module, you will create your solo performance: a piece of Stand Up or comic monologue.

The aims of the module are to develop practical skills with a range of technical exercises such as hitting marks, cheating eye-lines and body angles; regulating movement in relation to the camera; avoiding dialogue overlaps., and to further awareness and interpretative skills in translating textual and sub-textual elements into effective performance to camera.

Through exercises and analysis you will develop safe vocal and physical technique related to the free, relaxed, aligned body and learn to apply interpretative skills to the speaking of verse, dramatic text and heightened prose.  Workshops will also explore the free and flexible use of your home accent as well as the foundations and principles of adopting other accents, including Neutral Standard English. 

In this module you will develop your own original idea for a screenplay across the semester, writing it up from a one-line pitch, onto a treatment and scene-by-scene breakdown and ultimately to a script. The script can be for any platform or audience, with no limitations to cast size or location. The module examines the fundamental aspects of storytelling for screen: character, story, structure and dialogue. You will learn how to format your documents to a professional standard.

The module focuses on theatre texts from 20th and 21st Century that cover both dramatic and ‘postdramatic’ approaches. You will further develop your skills in textual analysis in seminars and will explore acting, directing and dramaturgical approaches in practical workshops. You have the opportunity to be assessed either as a performer or director for the practical assessment.

In this module students develop their knowledge of the work of a range of contemporary theatre making practitioners. These are drawn from practices in post-modern devising and postdramatic theatre. You will develop practical techniques and composition skills in the making of original theatre work, drawing from sources such as text, autobiography, performance scores, space and site, body, tasks and rules.

This module examines developments in the staging of Shakespeare from Elizabethan times to the 21st century. 20th/21st century developments in approaches to and presentation of Shakespeare texts will encompass both live and recorded performance. As the module progresses you will be encouraged to address particular approaches to the presentation of Shakespeare presentation (e.g. political, feminist, intercultural) by exploring the work of for example; RSC, Peter Brook, Robert Lepage and Kenneth Branagh). A range of plays are studied, with one or two plays as ‘core’ texts – one of these will usually be a text with local stage performance.

During this module you are introduced to the theories and practices of western physical theatre. Practitioners and styles covered may include Vsevolod Meyerhold; Jacques Lecoq; Jaques Copeau; Odin Teatret; Rudolf Laban; Steven Berkoff; Pina Bausch; Lloyd Newson; and a range of contemporary physical theatre companies.

Playwriting offers you the chance to experiment with a variety of theatre writing styles and forms. We will cover the craft of playwriting, studying character, dialogue, narrative, form, and stagecraft. We will also look at the business of playwriting, exploring the many professional opportunities and routes open to playwrights.

This project is designed to enable you to work collaboratively in a small group to generate, organise and manage your own performance work. The nature of the performance will be dependent on the individual skills and interests of the project group and the culminating production will be publicly performed over two nights. You will undertake research appropriate to your project and keep a Personal Learning Journal in order to facilitate reflection and submit a portfolio which reflects upon the rehearsal and production process.  Your production will be performed as part of our annual student festival: Debut.

You will engage with a range of industry-led masterclasses and workshops, which will equip you with the knowledge of industry practices and career destinations that will benefit your employment endeavours. The sessions will also guide you in the production of specific materials, submitted for assessment in the form of a portfolio, some of which may be used directly in pursuing employment opportunities.

In this module you will undertake an individually tailored project building out from all you have learned on your degree programme with supervision from staff.  You will research relevant materials and current industry trends around your project area. This will lead into the delivery of the project itself, which will follow one of three pathways:

Practical Project: this can be a live performance or a recorded performance (screen or audio) or a script (screen, stage or audio).

Dissertation: this will be a written submission taking the form of a long essay.

Industry Project: this can be a work placement, an organisation study or planning and running a workshop. 

Through a professionally geared script development programme, you will create a premise, a treatment, a step outline, and a first draft of a complete screenplay of at least fifty minutes. In seminars, you will discuss ideas for story, character, and theme within the group. Treatments, step outlines, and the first draft are developed in one-to-one tutorials.

The module examines the importance of gender and sexuality in the development of contemporary drama and performance in the UK and USA from the turn of the twentieth century to the global streaming platforms of today. 

Gender and sexuality are examined through a series of play texts and screenplays and contextualised in the dominant discourses about both in each period. Seminar sessions will function as forums for debate about evolving and competing theories, whilst practice workshops will explore the texts through readings, improvisations, and appropriations. 

This module is designed to develop acting skills for radio drama to a professional standard. Principally working from professional scripts, you will work on vocal control, microphone technique, spatial awareness and ‘lifting the text off the page’. You will have the opportunity to direct each other and feed back to each other, as well as listening to and critiquing some notable radio drama already broadcast with a view to appreciating the breadth of style and content available in the medium. As part of this, you will be encouraged to keep a ‘listening journal’, in which you can critique both broadcast audio dramas and your own vocal performances in class.

This module aims to acquaint you with the range and scope of audio drama, including related audio performance opportunities such as voiceovers, voicing animations and accents, as well as developing the basic skills of fundamental procedures of studio operation. 

This module is designed to develop acting skills for Renaissance theatre. Working principally with the plays of Shakespeare, you will work on vocal control and performance skills intended to embody the text in a manner that is psychologically believable within the conventions of dramatic verse and heightened prose. You will be encouraged to thoroughly research the context informing your chosen pieces and to apply analytical skill in decoding the complexities of Renaissance English, of metaphor and of poetic techniques of rhythm, alliteration and rhyme.

You will analyse, research, rehearse and perform a number of television drama scripts – and work in depth on a specific character from one of them.  Rehearsals of the extracts are recorded and critically reviewed in seminar sessions. Particular attention is paid to the layering of subtext, psychological detail and technical skills.

On this module you will develop one of both areas of knowledge - comedy writing and comedy performance. You will also learn about sitcom making for broadcast. 

A series of workshop/seminar classes will initially explore the role of the director, employing a range of contemporary and historical scripts. Thereafter, the students will, under close tutor guidance, consider and apply appropriate theatrical vocabularies in order to develop their own directorial approaches. All students will be given the opportunity to lead small group work in terms of exploring and experimenting with a range of directorial approaches to both script and to performers.

This module will explore the importance of the emerging performance and technologies associated with social media content creation. This is an area that uses a lot of similar skills and theories that students may already have learned in level’s 4 and 5 in modules such as: Acting for Camera, Presenting, Comedy Improvisation, Multimedia Performance, Integrated Production Skills, Programme Production.

The outline for the module will be divided into three sections: content and persona creation, marketing and promotion, and production techniques. These sections will culminate in the students creating their own ‘channel’ in their chosen social media platform.

Making Contemporary Performance introduces contemporary approaches to making theatre and performance that challenge the traditions of dramatic plot and character. It may include, interactive, digital, autobiographical, nonfictional, one to one, interdisciplinary and intermedial performance. You will have the chance to make a short performance or performance text in a form introduced during the module.

In this module you will learn how to apply your acting and performance skills within a Motion and Performance Capture environment. You will explore a variety of specific acting techniques and develop knowledge of the technical performance requirements of 'the volume'. You will work in a fully equipped Motion Capture studio to create a variety of characters, motion sequences and cinematic scenes suitable for animation, virtual production and computer gaming.