module specification

Performance Skills is a year-long module which places the performer at the centre of theatre making. It will encourage the student to investigate the role of the performer in theatre practice by introducing them to basic performance skills, techniques and processes. It will reference a variety of practitioners. It will allow students to apply these skills and techniques in practice.  It will engage with workshop explorations and text based scene study. It will begin to introduce notions of audience.

• To introduce some basic performance skills, techniques and processes.
• To introduce text as a basis for performance
• To give students an opportunity to apply these skills in theatre practice in a closed workshop situation.
• To explore presence, structure, pace, use of space, voice and movement in theatre practice.
• To encourage students to undertake practical research.

The module will be taught through practice in a workshop setting.  Students will be taught/revise basic performance skills – for example, presence, focus, immediacy, energy, use of voice, space and movement. They will also be introduced to rehearsal disciplines and processes. They will explore the approaches of specific practitioners such as Stanislavski, Chekov, Meisner, Hagen.  Latterly they will apply these processes, disciplines and techniques to solo and group improvised workshop exercises and to text based explorations.

This module will be taught through practice which will be supported by research and theory.
Learning and Teaching strategies will include:
Practical workshops
Individual and small group practical tasks
Self and peer observation and evaluation
Independent research tasks
Practical assessments with group and individual feedback 
Seminars
Tutorials

• The ability to use body and movement and voice/text in theatrical performance.
• A greater understanding of performance elements in theatre practice.
• A practical understanding of the relationship between identity, culture and theatre practice.
• A practical understanding of the audience/performer relationship.
• The ability to work as a member of a team, an ensemble and as an individual.
• Documenting and research skills.

Assessment for this module will be practical and continuous with supporting written documentation which can be an online submission.  Via a series of smaller assessment points students will be introduced to the expectations and mode of delivering practical assessments. Each assessment will therefore build upon the last. They will include both individual and group practical assessments. 

The written  work will support all the practical work and might include an abstract for the practical work, an annotated script, notation on structure, proxemics and kinesics, evaluation of process and product etc.

Benedetti J              Stanislavski and the Actor – The Final Acting Lessons Methuen 2008
Bryon E                     Integrative Performer                                                       Routledge 2014
Chekov M                To The Actor: On the Techniques of Acting                   Routledge 2002
Hagen U                   Respect for Acting                                                            Jossey Bass 2008
Stanislavski K         An Actor Prepares                                                              Bloomsbury Revelations 2013
Stanislavski K         Creating a Character                                                        Bloomsbury Revelations 2013
Meyer-Dinkgafe D  Approaches to Acting                                                        Continuum 2001
Moseley N               Meisner in Practice                                                            Nick Hern Books 2012
Merlin B                   Acting the Basics                                                                Routledge 2010
Panet B                    Essential Acting                                                                 Routledge 2009
Zarilli P                     Acting Re-considered                                                      Routledge 2002