Stage Acting provides an experiential foundation in practical voice, speech and body skills primarily targeted at the actor and the application of these to the interpretation of a range of written texts. Students will be introduced to acting skills that will enable them to perform play texts from the 16th-21st centuries. The method of training will focus on a range of techniques developed by performance practitioners relating to Shakespeare, naturalism, absurdism and in-yer-face theatre practices. This unit aims to offer the opportunity for developing critical and professional awareness of issues and practices in the field of theatre and performance. Students will learn a full vocal and physical warm-up that can be adapted to a variety of different professional performance needs and contexts. They will work with Kristin Linklater and Patsy Rodenburg’s methodologies to prepare Shakespeare scenes, and collaborate with MA Theatre Directing students to learn Katie Mitchell’s approach to staging and embodying naturalism. By the end of the course, students will be offered the opportunity to further hone their skills by devising their own workshops for acting approaches to twentieth-century playwrights such as Samuel Beckett and Sarah Kane.
I'm delighted to be teaching DT2201 Staging the Real this year and look forward to working with you. As you know, this course focuses on documentary and verbatim theatre and raises questions about the histories, ethics, pleasures, possibilities, and limitations of 'staging the real'. We'll be reading plays, watching performances, discussing our responses, scrutinising scholarly writings, and making theatre pieces. As an academic, I have published on this topic and you may find it helpful to have a look at the book I co-edited with Alison Forysth - 'Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present' (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), listed in the course bibliography - which is the first book to critically analyse the global resurgence of documentary theatre in the twenty-first century. I hope, like me, you will become fascinated by this topic!
In the first half of the course, we will explore a range of contemporary approaches to the staging of documentary theatre material around the world; we will also develop an appreciation of the theoretical implications and historical traditions of ‘staging the real’. In the second half of term, the focus will be on preparing the assessed group performances, and discussions on the essays. Throughout the term, we will explore verbatim theatre both critically (through discussion, presentations, and essay writing), and creatively (though practical work and performance).
Please keep in touch and let me know if have any thoughts, ideas, or questions - I'd love to hear them! And I hope you enjoy the course!
Chris Megson
I'm very happy to be teaching you all on Decoding debbie tucker green this year. You will remember encountering her in your first year Theatre and Text 1 course and this course builds on the work that we did there.
debbie tucker green is one of the most exciting Black British playwrights to emerge in the early 2000s and she has built a body of work and criticism so quickly that an entire course dedicated to her work becomes possible. Quite a substantial part of my research on Black British playwriting over the past ten years or so has been writing about debbie tucker green and you will encounter some of my articles on her work during the course. We'll be looking at her work as a Black woman playwright and a political playwright and making connections to the wider field of Black and feminist playwriting.
Please buy the debbie tucker green book of plays - Plays One. It's a nice edition to have and will make the practical work easier in the class than working from screen copies. In the meantime the plays are all available on Drama Online to start reading while you're waiting for your copy of the book to arrive.
Lynette
Welcome to
DT2215 Theatre and the Environment!
I'm very happy to be teaching this course this year and I look forward to
working with you. As you know, this course focuses on very topical, indeed challengingly
current, issues and raises questions about the environment, politics, ethics,
and theatre’s contributions to current debates, behaviours and practices. Together
we will be reading plays, watching performances, workshopping plays, discussing
our responses, scrutinising scholarly writings, and making performances.
A lot has been published in recent years on the topic of Theatre and the Environment and/ or Ecology and you will find it helpful to have a look at Vicky Angelaki’s Theatre & Environment, Basingstoke: Macmillan, Red Globe Press, 2019, listed in the course bibliography, which offers an introductory discussion to the challenges and debates we will be examining. I hope, like me, you will become galvanised by the subject of Theatre and the Environment but within the class we may well have a wide range of attitudes and approaches to navigate and explore!
In the first half of the course, we will examine a range of approaches to theatre, performance and film in relation to environmental debates. We will also develop an appreciation of the theoretical implications and historical traditions of environmental debates in relation to performance, film and literature. In the second half of term, the focus will be on preparing the assessed group performances, and discussions in preparation for the essays you will be writing during the Christmas vacation. Throughout the term, we will explore theatre and the environment both critically (through discussion, presentations, and essay writing), and creatively.
Please keep in touch and let me know if you have any thoughts, ideas, or questions. I'd particularly love to hear suggestions about texts to add to reading lists and performances that would be worth us all looking at! I hope you enjoy the course and find it useful it terms of theatre practice, theory and activism today!
Liz Schafer
Heritage involves the recognition of value in survivals from the past in the present moment, and making use of practices, artefacts and milieus inherited from prior generations for present-day purposes. As defined by international agencies, prominently UNESCO, heritage can take on both tangible and intangible forms; it can be both things to be archived or sold, and/or skills to be maintained, developed or neglected. The course considers the relation between heritage and identity. Students will debate the commercialisation of heritage and its marketing and consumption. The course reflects on issues of authenticity, codification and preservation, and studies how heritage is performed and enacted in various contexts. The course investigates questions of ownership and look closely at contested heritage items claimed by different actors and states. Students will examine how artists are subverting normative expectations of heritage, discuss the popularity of television shows such related to heritage and contemplate heritage’s future.
Conflict and care inform everyday life, from family relationships to war veterans’ rehabilitation. In this module you will develop an understanding of the relationship between applied theatre and conflict transformation. We will engage with a variety of creative approaches exploring war and conflict-ridden events and experiences on a global scale in order to examine the interplay between conflict, care and applied theatre practice. By discussing how practitioners respond and adapt their practices to various global contexts you will develop nuanced considerations of social justice, accountably and the ethics of care, and gain skills to examine the cultural, political and social dimensions of socially engaged art and applied theatre practice.
Telling Tales offers a practical investigation into contemporary storytelling practices, particularly improvised storytelling, spoken word poetry, and gig theatre. These practices are paradigmatic forms of fringe performance but increasingly represented in mainstream theatre, in the UK and elsewhere. Telling Tales approaches these forms via processes of adaptation of myth, legend, folklore, or oral history. Encountering work from diverse cultural and historical contexts, you will be invited to develop a solo performance that allows you to express your own voice, while engaging with a storytelling tradition with which you identify.
There are two thrusts to the course: we'll look at storytelling as a creative practice, exploring practical approaches that will develop your skills as a storyteller, and storytelling as a cultural practice, placing our creative work into the appropriate contexts. The course is taught twice weekly across five weeks. While you will start developing your own work from the very first class, the first four weeks are content-driven - broadly, we look at what stories are, followed by a look at beginnings, middles, and then ends - with your performance assessment taking place in the final week.
As with all Advanced Option Workshops, this course draws closely on the current practice of the tutor, Dr David Bullen, Lecturer in Drama and Theatre in the Department.. David's research and practice specialises in contemporary performance approaches to Greek tragedy, especially feminist and queer approaches. He is currently writing a book for Liverpool University Press called Greek Tragedy and Twenty-First Century British Theatre. David is co-artistic director of a theatre company he established in 2011 with other RHUL Drama, Theatre, and Dance alumni, By Jove.Welcome all
I'm looking forward very much to teaching you all on this new Black Lives Matter course. Debates about race, racism, Black Lives Matter, and the legacies of history are at the forefront of public discourse right now. This course is designed to introduce you to how Black Lives Matter concerns are represented in a range of theatre, film and television programmes. I've focused the course on four themes: the police, immigration and asylum, histories of enslavement and Black queer and trans lives and the idea is that you will get a taster of different themes and genres, which you can develop for your own research projects.
This work reflects my interests in race and the politics of representation and theatre and performance as a tool of social justice and activism. Although my main research focus is on plays and theatre, I watch a lot of films and television for pleasure and am interested in how they are used to explore these important concerns.
Do familiarise yourselves with the information on this Moodle page and start watching some of the required films and doing the required readings.
This course is being taught on Monday morning so will see you on the first Monday of the first teaching week of 2022-23. We are only a small group and I look forward to teaching you all.
Lynette
Dr Prarthana Purkayastha (prarthana.purkayastha@rhul.ac.uk)
Course Tutors:
Dr Aneta Mancewicz
Dr Chris Megson
Dr Prarthana Purkayastha
Production Manager: Sean Brennan
The Group Performance is a core experience for students in their third year. In setting up this course we have responded to the rising standard of student creative work over the last ten years, shown in increasingly rigorous practical work in the department and with a consistent stream of students going on to work in professional theatre contexts. We wanted to embed some of this work more centrally in the curriculum in order to offer a space in which students can explore their own creative ideas, placed within a robust framework of research and contextual understanding.
On this course, you will make your own workin small groups. The result will be a performance of up to 30 minutes; this will be shown in a Finalist Festival season in week 6 of the Summer Term.
The course is taught more like a dissertation in that you take primary responsibility for shaping the development of the project, and your supervisor will offer advice, make recommendations, and comment on the work as it evolves. A core concern of the course is for you to locate your own work within a wider body of theatre practice. At the same time, the project and your process of work should be informed by and build on previous learning in your drama degree.