This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
The aims of this module are to allow students the opportunity to extend their knowledge of theatre by encounters with contemporary performance as a live, time-based experience rather than as the experience of reading/text, and to enable them to develop the skills of analysis and journalistic writing about live performance. The module introduces students to contextual knowledge on contemporary theatre and performance journalism in the UK, including aspects of editing and copyediting. It develops analytical and writing skills while considering the role of the critic, the demands of theatre reviewing as a craft and the basics of journalism in general. Where possible, sessions will be conducted by professional theatre critics. The module trains students on how to make formal presentations, write reviews and features, copyedit/subedit their own or other people’s work, pitch to an editor, and tailor one’s writing style according to different readerships and publications. Each seminar group will work towards the publication of a blog, in which coursework will be published.
The central part of the module is focused around 5 or 6 visits to live performances. At least two of these will be visits to theatres in London, and the visits will cover a range of different types of international as well as national contemporary performance. Students must expect to pay up to £60 for the cost of theatre tickets, plus around £15 for each return journey to London. In total, including tickets and transport, this module will cost students around £90. Before or after each visit students will undertake relevant research, and write a review of the performance. This process of research and writing will focus the thoughts for the group discussion of the performance in the seminars. Students will then develop a feature idea and pursue it through research and several writing drafts.
There will be a strong emphasis in this module on developing writing and verbal skills in order to articulate the experience of live performance through effective theatre criticism. In particular it is aimed to develop students’ skills in public speaking about performance [in seminar debates and in the professional-standard presentation students will give in class], and their ability to write lucidly and stylishly about performance in theatre reviews and in an independently research article suitable for publication in a good quality broadsheet or theatre journal.
3 Hours Per Week (1 Hour Lecture / 2 Hour Seminar) + 6 or 7 Scheduled Theatre Performance Trips, and additional independent study hours.
Students must expect to pay up to £60 for the cost of theatre tickets, plus around £15 for each return journey to London. In total, including tickets and transport, this module will cost students around £90
100% Coursework: Feature Article Portfolio (40%); Theatre Reviews Portfolio (40%); Contribution to the Seminar and Presentation (20%)
Pavis, Patrice, Analysing Performance, University of Michigan Press 2003
Counsell, Colin & Laurie Wolf, eds, Performance Analysis, Routledge 2001
Campbell, Patrick, ed., Analysing Performance, Manchester University Press, 1996
Delgado, Maria, and Caridad Svich, eds, Theatre in Crisis? Performance Manifestos for a New Century, Manchester University Press 2002
Billington, Michael, One Night Stands: A Critic’s View of British Theatre 1971-1991, Nick Hern Books 1993
Wardle, Irving, Theatre Criticism, Routledge1992
Stefanova, Kalina, ed., Who Keeps the Score on London Stages?, Routledge 2000
Butt, Gavin, After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance, Blackwell 2005
Freshwater, Helen, Theatre & Audience, Palgrave 2009
Kelleher, Joe, Theatre & Politics, Palgrave 2010
Hurley, Erin, Theatre & Feeling, Palgrave 2010
(This module is based on visits to live performances and independent research, not on set reading)
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to:
- Discuss current ideas on theatre and the role of theatre criticism;
- Evaluate and contextualise the work of key practitioners, forms and genres of contemporary theatre and performance and their cultural, social and political implications;
- Critique performance events through theatre reviews and research features written to professional journalistic standards;
- Demonstrate advanced skills in written communication;
- Reflect on your writing practice and compare it with that of professional writers as published in newspapers, magazines, blogs and websites.
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