Performing Arts BA (Hons)

Are you driven by a passion to create innovative theatre? Are you a performer who wishes to challenge expectations? Are you a team player capable of producing innovative, dynamic and engaging work? Can you rise to the challenge of being the future of British theatre?

Performing Arts (Theatre Performance) is an established course, designed for students who see their own processes of creating original theatre as a dynamic and empowering starting point for a career as a theatre maker. , Performing Arts offers an additional self-contained route, Theatre Performance and Dance, which adopts the core of the Theatre Performance route, but for students with a specialist interest in contemporary dance.

The introduction of these routes is designed to strengthen our already established commitment to theatre as a cross-disciplinary process and to empower dancers, actors and theatre makers, who have a particular interest in composition, to come together in the spirit of exploration. Of primary importance, for all students taking Performing Arts, is the notion of artist as an engaged communicator, prepared to take responsibility for the creative process and the implications of performance. The focus, therefore, is on new work, with a curriculum emphasising group and teamwork, within a vocational context that prepares students for careers as creative artists. With this in mind, students have the opportunity to explore performance in a variety of contexts and settings, using a wide range of theatrical and non-theatrical environments.

Indicative Course Content

All Routes:

There are four groups of modules contributing to a focused and holistic training in theatre making. Dance and Music students will be encouraged to use their particular specialism alongside - and as an integral part of - generic theatre work:

• Critical and Contextual Studies: giving academic foundation to the processes of making theatre
• Skills Development: training and awareness of skills for making and performing theatre
• Production and Specialist Studies: performance projects that can inspire and challenge students towards making innovative theatre
• Professional Development: providing insight into theatre making in an applied and vocational context.

Theatre Performance Route

Students on the Theatre Performance route will have further classes in acting and devising, as well as writing for performance. A central focus of the route is two major productions at level two that gear students towards major performance work in their final year.

Theatre Performance & Dance Route

Theatre and Dance students have further classes in performance technique, improvisation and choreography; one of the level two productions will be supplanted with a Dance Theatre production.

Why this Course?

• Create new theatre in a dynamic 'theatre city'
• Work in state-of-the-art theatre and studios, equipped with the latest technology
• Work with highly motivated, dedicated professional staff
• Challenge the cultural and social understanding of the world we live in through performance practice
• Elect modules that drive towards clear vocational outcomes as practising theatre makers
• Develop skills in music or dance alongside theatre performance

Careers

• Performance practitioners (actors, dancers, directors, writers, designers, members of theatre collectives)
• Theatre workers
• Community arts workers
• Education
• Postgraduate study

Entry Requirements

UCAS Code W405 - BA (Hons) Performing Arts (Theatre Performance). Indicative Modules