Performing Arts – (M.A.)

On this course you will explore how the boundaries between drama and dance, performance and life, creativity and work are always shifting. These shifting boundaries mean that performing is very much a process of adaptation: from idea to stage, from voice to body, from research to practice.

You will study innovative, interpretive research methodologies such as video-based examinations and reminiscence workshops, and traditional qualitative methods such as one-to-one interviews and hermeneutics, in order to capture, record and transform narratives, adapt concepts, translate ideas into performance, and performance into ideas.

You will explore a range of performance styles, from documentary and verbatim theatre to forum theatre and devised / physical theatre and dance.

In projects led by experienced practitioners, you will use your acting, dance and devising skills to look into creative processes beyond the performing arts.

In particular, the course provides a unique opportunity to explore creatively how the performing arts can be developed as a discipline and applied to the world at large, as a way of thinking and conceptualising business, as an educational tool, as pure artistic endeavour.

Beginning with lecturer input and increasingly moving to independent study, the course encourages you to think of the Performing Arts as both an autonomous art form and as something that can have a range of applications in the world. The course will conclude with a project led by you, in which you develop either an artistic concept or use ideas explored during the course in a wider social context.

You will engage in critical discourse with performance and methodological theory by writing a journal article based on your project and by contributing to a conference paper delivered at the end of your course at a symposium on creativity, performance and dance to be held at Buckinghamshire New University.

Modules will explore the Performing Arts in their many aspects (including specific and transferable skills) and their industry, social and economic contexts and impact.

The expert teaching team includes Brazilian award-winning playwright and actor Pedro de Senna, whose international experience ranges from Street-theatre tours of Europe to presenting educational videos for the BBC; Nic Fryer, Artistic Director of Small Change Theatre, who has worked for the National Student Drama Festival and is an Artistic Associate of the Royal and Derngate Northampton, and who specialises in performance theory, education and creativity theory, devising experimental theatre, and in directing; Lynn Bouchier, former world number 1 Latin American Dancer, and British, European and International Champion who lectures nationally and internationally; arts marketer and drama reviewer Dr Jonathan Lewis, who has served as a trustee of Red Shift Theatre Company, and the Newbury Spring Festival, provides training for the Oxfordshire Youth Arts Partnership, and has acted as a consultant for theatre companies such as Plested and Brown, Pursued By A Bear and The Rose Theatre Company. In addition, the MA Performing Arts will have input from partners such as SignDance Theatre International and The Voice School, as well as masterclasses from industry professionals.

Please note that this course is subject to validation and course content may be subject to change.