Culture and Performance

Course Content:

The module introduces students to a range of contemporary cultural and critical
perspectives on drama, and investigates the relationship between culture and
performance. The major emphasis of the module is upon developing a refined
understanding of how drama, theatre and performance operate in different contexts.
The main features of the module are the investigation of ways in which drama expresses
cultural and critical perspectives in practice, and the exploration of theories such as postcolonialism,
feminism, and materialism as creative and analytical tools. The module is
taught through seminar discussions and related practical workshops, supported by extracurricular
events such as theatre visits. The module is assessed formatively through the
presentation of a performance essay and a supporting rationale.

Autumn Semester:
Topics:
? performativity, ethnography, ritual, ontology, method of physical action
? reception, reader-response, immersion, participation, affect, cognition, character
? form and content, function, style, ideology, romanticism, materialism
? reader, text, narrative, intertextuality, dialogism, director, playwright,
postdramatic
? chance, intuition, subconscious, conditioning, mind, industry presence,
mediatisation, digital, medium, television, simulacrum
? signification, language, semiotics, deconstruction, contradiction
? reality, genre, abstraction, perspective, formalism, modernism, post-modernism
? deadly, necessary, tragic, holy, avant-garde, interdisciplinary, marketplace.

Spring Semester:
Students study the ways in which drama expresses cultural and critical perspectives in
practice, and explore of theories such as post-colonialism, feminism, and materialism as
creative and analytical tools. It is taught through seminar discussions and related
practical workshops.
? Origins: Lecoq, Brook and Barba
? Frames (1): Feminism, Gender and Sexuality
? Frames (2): Post-Colonialism and Globalisation
? Frames (3): Ideology, Materialism and Class
? Frames (4): Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity and Identity

Teaching: Seminars and Workshops

Assessment:
STUDY OPTION 1:
? 10 min Performance Essay (Semester 1)
? 15 min Performance Essay (Semester 2)
? 500 word Rationale for the second performance essay
STUDY OPTION 2 OR 3:
10 minute group-based performance essay (this is like a seminar presentation but with
some performance elements)