The Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences

Department of Drama and

Theatre COURSE OPTIONS FOR VISITING STUDENTS

ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT The Department of Drama & Theatre is a recognised national leader in its field and is the only department within the United Kingdom to have received top scores for research in the four most recent national government audits. We are one of the largest university theatre departments in the UK, so we can offer an unusually wide range of subject areas, all taught by specialists. No other department offers courses covering a comparable range of historical and cultural areas. The ethos of the Department is that practical engagement with dramatic texts is a vital tool for imaginative and analytical development. All courses contain a mixture of practical and conceptual work so that theory and practice are completely integrated. Although the department offers numerous opportunities to practise theatrical skills, it does not provide vocational training in Dramatic Art.

Although the Department offers numerous opportunities to practice theatrical skills, it does not provide vocational training in Dramatic Art

The information contained in the course outlines on the following pages is correct at the time of publication but may be subject to change as part of our policy of continuous improvement and development.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS Study Abroad and International Exchange Students: The courses listed below are open to all Study Abroad and International Exchange students. Students must have a cumulative GPA of at least 3.3 out of 4.0. Erasmus Students: The Department only accepts applications from Erasmus students from Trinity College, Dublin. Owing to space limitations, Erasmus students from other institutions are not permitted to apply for Drama and Theatre courses. Previous academic study of Drama, Theatre or a related subject and/or practical theatre experience is essential for entry onto all courses. In addition: • Second and third year Drama courses are suitable for students with a strong interest and academic background in the subject. • Most often, visiting students are placed in second or third year Drama courses but in some circumstances, a student with little academic experience of the study of Drama may be offered a first year course. • Practical experience in theatre or a related discipline will be taken into account when assessing an applicant’s suitability for courses. The Drama Department reserves the right to review each application individually to assess the suitability of the applicant and his/her chosen course(s). We regret that we cannot allocate visiting students to courses that become full.

Please note: The Drama Department reserves the right to review each application individually to assess the suitability of the applicant and his/her chosen course(s). We regret that we cannot allocate visiting students to courses that become full. The information contained in the course outlines on the following pages is correct at the time of publication but may be subject to change as part of our policy of continuous improvement and development.

Level One:

We do not usually offer Level One courses to Visiting Students. In exceptional circumstances and at the discretion of the department, we occasionally place a student with little previous Drama experience in a first year course.

Level Two:

DT2100 Theatre & Performance-Making 2 1 unit/ ½ unit*

Full Year/ Term 1*

This course is available to all ERASMUS, INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE and STUDY ABROAD students

This course runs for the full year but may be taken in Term 1 only for half the credit.*

In Theatre & Performance-Making 2, students examine specific traditions and disciplines of theatre and performance. At the beginning of the course, students collectively consider the history and diversity of a range of theatre practices, noting the complex and sometimes combative relations between them, their historical development, and diverse forms. After that, you divide into separate groups to explore one specific area of contemporary theatre practice (see below for options). This exploration will involve both critical exploration and creative practice. The course is taught through lectures and workshops.

Summative assessment

Critical Assessment: 1500 word critical response (25%); 2000 word essay (25%)

Creative Assessment: Group performance (50%)

There are FIVE options available under the DT2100 strand. You may choose ONE of the options listed below

Options

1. Puppetry and Object Theatre

Matthew Cohen

Puppetry – the practice of bringing life to and creating drama with inanimate objects – is an age-old, worldwide art that offers exciting new possibilities for contemporary theatre. This course introduces principles of puppet design, manipulation, voice, focus, mise-en-scène and puppet-performer relations. Students will study core puppet forms – hand, rod, string, shadow and tabletop/bunraku – along with object theatre, a late twentieth century form animating found

objects, before turning attention to Lorca, Edward Gordon Craig or Thornton Wilder. There will be opportunities to build puppets and develop improvisational and collaborative theatre-making skills.

Sample bibliography

Blumenthal, Eileen. Puppetry and Puppets: An Illustrated World Survey. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005.

Francis, Penny. Puppetry: A Reader in Theatre Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Gross, Kenneth. Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

2. Devising

Emma Brodzinski

This course aims to explore the ideological and artistic challenges of collaborative performance work. By the end of this unit students should be familiar with a range of devised theatre practice and its socio-political context and implications. Practical application will develop in parallel to the critical study and students will draw on their theoretical and practical research work to develop their own original performance pieces.

Sample bibliography

Govan, Emma, Helen Nicholson & Katie Normington. Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices. London: Routledge, 2007.

Heddon, Deirdre & Jane Milling. Devising Performance: A Critical History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Radosavljevic, Duska, ed. The Contemporary Ensemble: Interviews with Theatre-Makers. London: Routledge, 2013.

3. Physical Theatre

Dick McCaw

This course gives students an opportunity to explore a range of post-war physical theatre techniques, focusing on the work of Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba, but touching also the approaches of Keith Johnstone and Clive Barker, and the cross-cultural explorations of Philip Zarilli. Students will study the ideas of these pioneering theatremakers and test out a series of physical techniques for generating theatrical performances, eventually getting an opportunity to bring together ideas and approaches from disparate traditions to create their own physical performance work.

Sample bibliography:

Barba, Eugenio, and Nicola Savarese. A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer. 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006.

Barker, Clive. Theatre Games: A New Approach to Drama Training. London: Methuen, 1977.

McCaw, Dick, ed. The Laban Sourcebook. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011.

4. Site-Based Performance

Libby Worth/David Williams

With particular reference to theatre and dance, the course will explore site-based performance practices from the 1960s to the present, focusing on recent models in contemporary Britain, and core theorists and writers in relation to place, space, context, site-specificity and performance.

We will develop a “tool-kit” of approaches to sites, using a variety of strategies for working with a site as an active “material” in devising processes. A number of different sites on campus and elsewhere will be investigated. In the Spring Term, students will work towards devised group projects in sites of their choosing in proximity to the department.

Sample bibliography:

Kaye, Nick. Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation. London: Routledge, 2000.

Kwon, Miwon. One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. London and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.

Pearson, Mike. Site-Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

5. Dance Theatre

Course Tutor TBC

In this option students will explore a range of theatre forms that integrate dance and drama. Seminars will address the variety of ways that practitioners have chosen to bring text and movement into creative dialogue, using scores, play texts, choreography and movement processes. They will examine the values and principles that drive such experimentation and reflect on the historical, political and cultural contexts within which these practitioners worked. Each session will include both discussion and workshop activities associated with one or two practitioners, with the final weeks devoted to developing small group performance devised in response to selected texts and styles of movement/dance.

NOTE: No dance training or experience will be required or expected, to take this course!

Sample bibliography:

Aston, Elaine & Elin Diamond. The Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Climenhaga, Royd. Pina Bausch. Routledge Performance Practitioners. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009.

Keefe, John & Simon Murray. Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2007.

DT2300 Theatre & Culture 2 1 unit Term 2

This course is available to all ERASMUS, INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE and STUDY ABROAD students

This course starts in January.

Theatre & Culture 2 uses creative and critical modes of investigation to consider ways in which theatre and culture reflect and resist each other. In this course, students will begin by considering a range of ethical, practical and aesthetic/formal implications of the ways theatre and culture engage with each other, and the ranges of definitions of “theatre” and “culture” that have been developed. They will then choose one option (see below for options) and have an opportunity to compare different approaches to the question of how theatre and culture might affect each other. Each option will explore a specific area in which theatre and culture are in dialogue. Students will

have an opportunity to interrogate this area critically, through debate, discussion, presentation and analytical writing, and creatively, through artistic/practical exploration of these ideas and practices.

Summative Assessment

Critical Assessment (50%): 4,000 word essay

Creative Assessment (50%): Group Performance (20-30 mins)

There are SIX options available under the DT2300 strand. You may choose ONE.

Options

1. Black Theatre, History and Cultural Memory

Lynette Goddard

The relationship between theatre and black history is pertinent to thinking about the role that plays have in documenting the experiences of black people in the UK and internationally. This course will examine some of the various ways in which black historical figures and stories of black experience have been represented on the contemporary stage in the UK, USA and France. We will focus on the style and impact of portrayals in a range of plays and performance pieces across different genres, including (auto)biographical performance, social realism, verbatim theatre, theatre for young audiences, musicals, and women's theatre. Plays will be examined alongside other documentation such as biographies, films, and newspaper material, which will be used to compare how plays and biographies work as ways of fostering cultural memories in the public imagination. Black historical figures whose lives might be explored on the course include Muhammad Ali, Saartjie Baartman (The Hottentot Venus), Ellen Craft, Patrice Lumumba, Mary Seacole, Claudia Jones, Sojourner Truth, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and Josephine Baker.

Sample bibliography

Canton, Ursula. Biographical Theatre: Re-Presenting Real People? Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011.

Fabre, Genievieve, E. and Robert O. Meally, eds. History and Memory in African American Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Martin, Carol. Theatres of the Real. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012.

2. Theatre for Young Audiences

Helen Nicholson

This course will investigate the cultural significance of plays for young audiences. Lyn Gardner, the Guardian theatre critic, regularly argues that the innovative performance styles of work push the boundaries of contemporary theatre-making. The Unicorn Theatre is flourishing in London, and leading playwrights such as Philip Ridley and David Greig regularly write plays for young people. Theatre companies such as Fevered Sleep, Oily Cart and Theatre Rites, and artists such as Mark Storor bring a blend of visual art, puppetry and live art to participatory performances for children. This course will involve both analysing and making theatre for young audiences.

Sample bibliography

McGuire, Tom, ed. Theatre for Young Audiences: A Critical Handbook. Stoke on Trent: Trenham Books, 2013.

Nicholson, Helen. Theatre, Education and Performance: the Map and the Story. Basingstoke:

Palgrave, 2011.

Van de Water, Manon. Theatre, Youth and Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012.

3. The Body in Performance

Melissa Blanco Borelli

In this course we will examine the body as a site of meaning making. By looking at how the body operates discursively students will gain an understanding of the representational force a body sitting, standing, dancing or lying still has. A vast assortment of theory based in cultural studies will underpin our discussions. We will look at examples ranging from dance, physical theatre, protest movements, performance art, fashion photography, Olympic ceremonies, and religious rituals.

Sample bibliography

Foster, Susan Leigh. ‘Dancing Bodies’ in Meaning in Motion, Ed. Jane Desmond. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish, New York: Vintage Books, 1977.

Mauss, Marcel. ‘Techniques of the Body’. Zone 6: Incorporations. Ed. Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter. New York: Urzone, Inc./The MIT Press, 1992, 455-77.

4. Collecting Theatre and Performance

Georgina Guy

This course explores the possibility of collecting performance - a form most often defined as ‘disappearing’ – and debates of the definition of theatre as ‘uncollectable’. In seminars, we will respond to the contemporary cultural drive to document live events and confront the practical and conceptual challenges of archiving that we face as theatre makers, theorists, and curators. We will assess the performative nature of theatrical documentation and test the feasibility of encountering productions after the event in order to evaluate why we document acts of performance and what it is about the theatre we want to save.

Sample bibliography

Barba, Eugenio. ‘Eftermaele: “that which will be said afterwards”. TDR: The Drama Review 36.2 (1992): 77-80.

Fowler, James. ‘Collecting Live Performance.’ Museums and the Future of Collecting. Ed. Simon. J. Knell. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. 242-249.

Reason, Matthew. “Archive or Memory?: The Detritus of Live Performance.’ New Theatre Quarterly 19.1 (2003): 82-89.

5. Cultures of Memory

Bryce Lease

This course puts diverse art forms that investigate memory in dynamic conversation in order to ask urgent questions about the nature of art, history, and humanity. Starting with the disruption to the purpose, value, and nature of art in the aftermath of the cataclysmic events of the Holocaust, we will move through the twentieth century to consider different cultures of memory, memorialisation, trauma, and witnessing. We will cover a wide range of cultural textual and performative genres including first-hand testimony, plays, films, graphic novels, and public monuments. Questioning the politics and ethics of representation, memory, and memorial, we will also interrogate the limits of trauma as an interpretative lens.

Sample bibliography

Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Gluhovic, Milija. Performing European Memories: Trauma, Ethics, Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014.

Young, James. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

6. Adapting Tragedy

David Bullen

Since the late 1960s, Greek tragedy has exploded in popularity across the world. Cultures from all over the globe have found that they have been able to articulate crucial ideas specific to their contemporary condition by bringing tragedy back to the stage. This course will explore some of those rich encounters between modern cultures and ancient plays. We will ask how ancient ideas about such concepts as gender, nationality, and community have been received, tracing how they have influenced modern ideologies. To do so, we will explore theories of adaptation and performance reception, as well as looking at the specific creative challenges of bringing these difficult but devastating plays to the stage today.

Sample bibliography

Dillon, John, and S.E. Wilmer, eds. Rebel Women: Staging Ancient Greek Drama Today. London: Methuen, 2005.

Fischer-Lichte, Erika. Dionysus Resurrected: Performances of Euripides' The Bacchae in a Globalized World. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004.

Hall, Edith, Fiona Macintosh, and Amanda Wrigley, eds. Dionysus Since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third Millennium. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

DT2400 Theatre & Ideas 2 1/2 unit

Term 1

This course is available to all ERASMUS, INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE and STUDY ABROAD students

This course runs in Term 1 only. It cannot be started in January.

Theatre & Ideas develops dialogues between theatre and other disciplines. The course draws on the development of performance studies and other cross-disciplinary initiatives to explore the multiple interdisciplinary connections that have revitalised and transformed the discipline of theatre studies, but has also had significant impact on areas such as gender studies, sociology, anthropology, management studies, politics, philosophy, and history. Students will specialise in a particular interdisciplinary connection that involves drama, theatre and/or performance, considering the two-way influences and impact of the dual intellectual traditions (see below for options). Students will be required to explore that interface both critically, in debate, discussion and critical writing, and practically, considering how engagement with a neighbouring discipline might inspire new kinds of creative theatre work.

Summative Assessment Creative Assessment (50%): Performance essay or installation, max. 20 minutes per group Critical Assessment (50%): 3000-3500 words essay There are SIX options available under the DT2400 strand in the autumn term. You may choose ONE.

Options 1.The Idea of Money Emma Cox Money lies at the heart of the world’s exchange system and yet its value depends wholly on our acceptance of its symbolic meaning. How do we explain the power of money to exert social and psychological influence on interpersonal and international relationships? How have playwrights, filmmakers, artists and activists engaged with the idea of money in their work? This course will investigate these questions by introducing students to a range of plays, such as Ben Jonson’s ’ The Alchemist (1610) Eugene O’Neill ’s The Hairy Ape (1922) Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money (1987), and Dennis Kelly’s The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas (2013), as well as cultural interventionist projects such as the Occupy Movement and The Yes Men. We will study creative works with reference to critical perspectives on value, capitalism and labour by writers including Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Bernard Lietaer and Rebecca Schneider. Sample bibliography Lietaer, Bernard. The Future of Money. London: Random House, 2001. Schneider, Rebecca. ‘It Seems As If…..I Am Dead: Zombie Capitalism and Theatrical Labor’. The Drama Review 56.4 (2012): 150-62. Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. Book 1, chapters 1-4. London, 1776. 2. The Idea of Shakespeare Elaine McGirr This course will explore the making of ‘Shakespeare’ and the creation of a cultural industry both dependent on and at odds with the theatre. We will look at three Shakespearean plays – Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, and The Winter’s Tale – and a selection of productions and adaptations from the eighteenth century to the present day. Topics for discussion may include: the ‘invention’ of Shakespeare in the eighteenth century; Shakespearean adaptations; Shakespeare and celebrity; Shakespeare and education; Shakespeare and film; Shakespeare and history; and Shakespeare and national identity. Sample bibliography Dobson, Michael. The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660-1769. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. 2001, rpt. Kidnie, Margaret. Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation. London: Routledge, 2009.

Marsden, Jean. The Re-Imagined Text: Shakespeare, Adaptation, & Eighteenth-Century Literary Theory. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1995. 3. The Idea of Acting Sophie Nield What does it mean to 'act'? What is the relationship of the actor and the character? Can a character be present when the actor is not? What is the 'live'? What is 'bad' acting? Can a child, or a machine, or an animal 'act'? Why (and when) has acting been attacked as a dangerous, and even a seditious practice? When is acting used as a metaphor for social life, and to what end? This option will explore the idea of acting in various historical contexts and moments. We will examine debates about good (and bad) acting; authenticity and fakery; the development of formal actor training. We will review historical and critical arguments about the practice of acting from, for example, Plato, Aristotle, Diderot, Rousseau, Archer, Stanislavski, Brecht and others. Objects of study may include: Stage presence and charisma; 'bad' acting; children and animals on stage; new technology and automata; objects in performance; actors accounts of their process; representations of acting in film and other media; actors in 'rehearsal'; what it means to cry 'real' tears. Sample bibliography Mitter, Shomit. Systems of Rehearsal: Stanislavski, Brecht, Grotowski and Brook London: Routledge, 1992. Roach, Joseph. The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting. University of Michigan, 1993. Sher, Antony. Playing the King. 2nd ed. London: Nick Hern, 2004. 4. The Idea of Casting Ashley Thorpe Why do we cast one actor in a role and not for another? What value judgements do we make about actors in the process of casting a play? Are certain roles open to particular actors? Or can anyone play any kind of role? These questions, often overlooked in the analysis of theatre, are of crucial concern to directors, producers, as well as actors themselves. Analysing who gets to play what role is not only an investigation into relationships of power, but into the economic viability of being an actor. To explore these issues, the course focuses on the significance of multiculturalism and interculturalism to theatre. It engages with the notion of ethnicity, and its theatrical representation through casting, as an area of fierce debate. In fact, performances that investigate ethnicity frequently find themselves at the centre of controversial debates, even street protests. Drawing upon literature from the social sciences, post-colonialism and gender studies, this course will explore the power relationships that shape the production and reception of ethnicities through casting, and examine a selection of case studies where issues around representation in casting have exploded into the news. Sample bibliography Knowles, Ric. Theatre & Interculturalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010.

Thorpe, Ashley. ‘Casting matters: Colour Trouble in the RSC’s The Orphan of Zhao’. Contemporary Theatre Review. 24.4 (2014): 436-451. Young, Harvey. Theatre & Race. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013. 5. The Idea of Geography Lizzie Bennett This course aims to equip students with an understanding of the expanding profile of geographical theories within contemporary performance practice and discourse. Alongside the development of performance studies as a discipline, as scholars and practitioners have endeavoured to analyse and debate what we mean by performance, there has been an increased interest in where performance is situated. During this term we will be exploring and discussing what is meant by terms such as place, space, site, and landscape in relation to performance, using contemporary geographical thought as our guide. Students will also have the opportunity to research and engage with current site-specific theatre in relation to the key themes within the course. Sample bibliography Birch, Anna and Joanne Tompkins, eds. Performing Site-Specific Theatre: Politics, Place, Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Pearson, Mike. In Comes I: Performance, Memory and Landscape Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2006. Shaugnessy, Nicola. Applying Performance: Live Art, Socially Engaged Theatre, and Affective Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 6. The Idea of Ecology Nik Wakefield The idea of ecology will focus on the relationship between theatre and climate change. Each week we will look at a work of art and a theoretical text which you will respond to with both a performance and a short piece of critical writing. These will form the basis of discussions around the topic. The course will examine the ways artists respond to pressing issues, explore how you might as students create a regular studio and writing practice, and achieve a deeper understanding of ecological issues. Sample bibliography Guattari, Felix. Trans. Pindar, Ian and Sutton, Paul. The Three Ecologies. London: Continuum, 2008. Larkin, Amy. Environmental Debt: the Hidden Costs of a Changing Global Economy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Zylinska, Joanna. Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press, 2014.

Level Three:

DT3400 Culture and Creativity 1 unit Full Year

This course is available to all ERASMUS, INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE and STUDY ABROAD students

This course runs for the full year and you must be enrolled for the full academic year to take it.

This course offers students a further level of engagement with theatre and arts practice, in a way that is designed to help students focus on life beyond the degree. In the first term, students will choose from a range of options looking at the state of play in a range of contemporary performance forms. You will study a range of different practitioners and styles within that area and then work towards a short creative presentation of your own.

In the second term, we will focus on contemporary British cultural production. Students will choose between a focus on “theatre industry”, in which you will explore a range of debates and practices in current theatre and performance – which might include freedom of speech, subsidy, copyright, social media and PR – and ”theatre criticism”, in which you will engage as theatre critics with a range of theatre and performance events, considering the state of criticism, the opportunities available to online critics through blogging, social media and more.

Teaching

In the first term, you will learn in workshops; in the second term, your classes will largely be seminar-based.

Assessment

Assessment 1: Creative presentation (40%)

Assessment 2: 4500-5000 word Portfolio comprised of critical responses (750-1000 words each) (60%)

There are FOUR options available for DT3400 in the autumn term. You may choose ONE.

Options 1. Contemporary Puppetry

Matthew Cohen The last two decades have seen a renaissance of puppetry in the UK and internationally, with important festivals, networks, collaborations, training programmes, exhibitions, films and television programmes. This course examines the conditions behind this resurgence. What sort of work is being created today? How does this work relate – if at all – to residual traditions and past practices? How are new audiences being developed? How is puppetry represented in the media? How is puppetry making inroads into other fields of practice—street arts, opera, spectacle, stand-up comedy, musical theatre, panto? What are the central problems for the field?

Sample bibliography Buchan, Suzanne. The Quay Brothers: Into a Metaphysical Playroom. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minneapolis Press, 2011. Millar, Mervyn. The Horse's Mouth: How Handspring and the National Theatre Made War Horse. London: Oberon, 2011. Posner, Dassia N. Orenstein, Claudia and John Bell, eds. The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014. 2. Contemporary Dance Course Tutor TBC In this class students will have an opportunity to experience, practice and research current trends in UK and continental European contemporary dance. Activities may include choreographic and improvisational workshops, dance writing, and attendance at dance festivals in London such as: Dance Umbrella, Spring Forward at the Place, Sadler’s Wells Wild Card programming, and the International Mime Festival. What sort of work is being created today? How does the current marketplace for dance affect programming, funding and dance-making? How does the integration of theatre and dance shift the boundaries of contemporary choreographic practice? Sample bibliography Bremser, Martha. 50 Contemporary Choreographers. New York and London: Routledge, 2011. Burrows, Jonathan. A Choreographer’s Handbook. New York and London: Routledge, 2010. Harvie, Jen. Fair Play: Art, Performance and Neoliberalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan, 2013. 3. Contemporary Adaptation Nina-Marie Gardner In this option students will be introduced to adaptation in theory and practice and given the opportunity to explore its application in terms of dramaturgy and contemporary theatre practice. Students will be encouraged to shape their own critical analyses, drawing upon a wide variety of performances and considering them within a theoretical, historical and cultural context. Questions the course asks students to interrogate include: How important is the issue of fidelity in re-telling a story? What constitutes an original text? Are all plays really a form of adaptation? Or are all adaptations original in the way they choose to re-tell a story? Sample bibliography Carlson, Marvin. The Haunted Stage: Theatre as a Memory Machine. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. London: New York: Routledge, 2006. Laera, Margherita. Theatre and Adaptation: Return, Rewrite, Repeat. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 4. Contemporary Site-Specific Performance Rebecca McCutcheon This option will focus on exploring contemporary trends in British and international site-specific performance practices. Students will build upon their understanding of site-specific performance through examination and discussion of the recent work of key contemporary practitioners, and through practical work exploring emerging approaches and concerns. Themes for exploration will include examining the shift of focus from physical sites to processes of mapping and mobilities; interrogating the techniques of the invitation to the audience; engagement with technologies of presence, and considering the role of site in processes of localising internationally commissioned works. Companies discussed may include dreamthinkspeak; Grid Iron; Gob Squad; Rimini Protokol. Sample bibliography Pearson, Mike. ‘Context:; Conditions’ in Site-Specific Performance New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 192-139. Tompkins, Joanne. ‘”The Place” and Practice of Site-Specific Theatre and Performance’. Performing Site-Specific Theatre: Politics, Place, Practice Ed. Joanne Tompkins and Anna Birch. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 1-17.

Friedman, Bertie. ‘A New Journey Through Other Spaces,’ Theater 43.2 (2013): 5-25.

There are TWO options available for DT3400 in the spring term. You may choose ONE.

Options 1.Theatre Industry Matthew Cohen

This course aims to acquaint students with some of the key questions and debates that contemporary theatre and performance-makers are having to face. You will consider questions around censorship, freedom of speech, and cultural sensitivity, festival cultures and international theatre work, subsidy and private sponsorship, the changing culture of criticism, copyright, publishing, marketing and PR. You will think practically about the complexities of running theatre and performance events, thinking as producers and project managers. The course will give you valuable insights into the practicalities and debates in contemporary performance. Sample bibliography O’Reilly, Daragh, Ruth Rentschler and Theresa A. Kirchner, eds. The Routledge Companion to Arts Marketing. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.

Seabright, James. So You Want to Be a Theatre Producer? London: Nick Hern, 2013. Shepherd, Simon. Direction. Readings in Theatre Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 2. Theatre Criticism Catherine Love & Nik Wakefield What is the role of the critic in contemporary theatre? Some major newspapers have sacked their theatre critics, while others continue to reduce the space available to them. Meanwhile, online writing about theatre goes from strength to strength, finding new forms and styles to engage with theatre. The ethics of criticism is vigorously debated: how appropriate is it to give plays ‘stars’? Should critics be the representatives of the audience or advocates for the theatre makers? Is the critic supposed to be personally neutral or strongly opinionated? Is it ever appropriate to make personal comments about an actor’s physical appearance? These questions and more will be the subject of the course and students will build up a portfolio of critical writing that will sharpen and enrich your appreciation and understanding of theatre. Sample bibliography Elsom, John. Post-War British Theatre Criticism. London: Routledge, 1981. Fisher, Mark. How To Write About Theatre. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015.

Wardle, Irving. Theatre Criticism. Theatre Concepts. London: Routledge, 1992.