Description
Content: This module introduces performance in its broadest sense: from live art to ritual, theatre to sport, protest to pageantry. As well as public acts, it explores the domestic and intimate performances through which we express our identities, communities and selfhood. What is performance? How does an act on stage relate to action in public or private life? In what ways do we ‘perform’ when we dress, vote, have a night out, speak? You will learn how to analyse performances, examining their use of bodies, space, place, objects, costume, movement, text and sound. You’ll explore how performance creates narrative, affect, and impact — and reveals and challenges power structures.Ìý
Teaching delivery: This module is taught in 10 weekly lectures and 10 two-hour seminars.Ìý
Indicative topics (based on module content in 2023/24, subject to possible changes):
- An Introduction to Performance Through the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony
- Interculturalism in Theatre and Performance
- Everyday Performance Through Rituals of Cooking, Eating and Fasting; Dramaturgy
- Structuring Time and Space
- Doing Things With Words: Performative Speech Acts
- Protest and Choreography; Migration: Performing BordersÌý
Module aims:
- Identify the variety of contexts in which extra-theatrical performances happenÌý
- Employ a range of tools for analysing, researching and reading performance with rigourÌý
- Employ performance theories in this analysisÌý
- Judge how extra-theatrical performances are shaped by social and cultural factorsÌý
- Appraise contemporary extra-theatrical performances in relation to the expectations of its assumed audiences and the intentions of its makerÌý
- Articulate extra-theatrical performances through the lens of audience theoriesÌý
This module is taught on the Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê East campus in Stratford.
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 19th August 2024.
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