PA7001 - Theatre & Performance Skills and Applications

This is a practice-based module that engages you in a variety of performer/artist making and thinking processes designed to advance and build on your own processes to create an academic and professional ‘toolkit’ that will sustain you throughout your study and into the scholarly and professional arenas.

The module is taught through weekly skills and methods-based workshops given by your academic tutor/practitioners. Weekly seminar sessions support you to place the work encountered in a wider theoretical context and help you to articulate your own continued journey of professional and academic development.

Work on this module will be further supported by your ongoing attendance at a theatre and performance events at venues across the North East region including: Live Theatre, Northern Stage, ARC Stockton amongst others. Seeing live performance work enhances understandings of context for your own developing practice, and serves to broaden an awareness of the range of approaches that are available to you as a theatre maker and scholar.

Peer support and feedback is also an integral feature of this module. In both the workshops and seminars, you will be invited to offer critical feedback to peers through discussions and sharings of your individual developing practices.

There will be opportunities to discuss and ‘show back’ work in development at various stages in the module. You will be offered formative feedback from your module tutor based on the work you share. Your tutor will also be available for subsequent follow up tutorials to provide you with more detailed feedback and to ensure that you are on track with all aspects of your work in the lead up towards your assessed performance.

Small group seminars will support you through the various stages of research and planning required for creating your solo performance work and writing your contextualizing “program notes”. Your tutor will also be available for additional tutorials to discuss all aspects of your project.

In addition to the academic support you will receive from tutors, you will also be supported technically to realise your performance through drop in sessions, meetings and scheduled workshops with staff technicians designated to support the module.

Relevant course materials will also be made available to you via the ELP.

All work carried out on this module is subject to Ethical Approval. With the support of your tutor, you will contribute to the Module Ethics Approval Form that the Module Tutor will submit for scrutiny by the Faculty Ethics Committee prior to you starting research on your project. You must gain ethical approval before you can begin working on your project.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk
(Reading List service online guide for academic staff this containing contact details for the Reading List team – http://library.northumbria.ac.uk/readinglists)

Knowledge & Understanding:

1. Demonstrate the ability to create, rigorously prepare, and perform a substantial, professional solo performance work

2. Demonstrate a range of sophisticated performance skills that are appropriate to form and context

Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:
3. Demonstrate the ability to reflect critically on training and making processes in a broader socio-cultural and professional context.

4. Demonstrate the ability to contextualise the developing solo practice in an academic framework


Personal Values Attributes (Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):
5. Demonstrate an awareness and commitment to scholarly and professional development

Summative Assessment %100:
Solo Performance work (duration c.15min) and a 1000 word contextualizing document:
Performance Practice: You will be individually assessed on the creation and performance of a 15-minute solo performance work. You will be expected to draw on the various strategies introduced on the module to support you in generating material for performance, triangulating these with your previous and developing artistic interests and your growing understanding of the larger historical, current and scholarly contexts of theatre and performance practices.
To accompany this you will submit a 1000 word “program note” document that answers three questions previously supplied by your lecturers. Indicative questions may be: 1. How has your performance practice developed over the course of the term and in making this work. 2. how does your work sit in the scholarly/professional field and 3. What do you intend the audience to take away from and/or experience through the presented practice.

Feedback for the summative assessments will be written on standard feedback sheets and will be made available within 20 working days of the final submission deadline.


Formative Assessment:

The emphasis in this module is on moving between practical ‘work-shopping’ and reflective dialogues about diverse techniques. Formative feedback is offered continually in the workshops and seminars: and you are encouraged to link practical explorations to the theoretical debates about theatre and performance evidenced in assigned readings.
Formative assessment therefore is an integral feature of this module. You will receive verbal formative feedback from your tutor in the form of a dialogue following ‘show-back’ sessions. Other students will be encouraged to participate and offer peer support feedback, creating a productive and supportive learning environment.
Additional formative feedback will be offered throughout the module through individual tutorials.

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Please find details of this module in the other sections provided.