You will gain some generic skills, such as:

        * exercise initiative, take personal responsibility, and display self-management capabilities, discipline, and personal organisation,

        * manage autonomous planning and decision-making processes in complex professional situations,

        * work within team structures and contribute to common targets in a professional context, and

        * learn independently as required for their continuing professional development.

 

 

Assessment & Deadlines

This module is assessed 100% on continuous assessment by coursework:

        20 % Planning, Management and Implementation of your research project on professional practice as evidenced by your constructive engagement in tutorial supervision.

         30 % Reflective Dramaturgy Essay of 2,500 words on a current dramaturgical topic. Deadline: Thursday, Week 24 (08/04/10).

         50 % Dramaturgical Practice Study - a study and analysis of professional dramaturgical practice, informed by a placement, shadowing, observing or researching first-hand a specific venue or company (this should include 3,500 words of evaluative writing, plus any documentary appendices), testing summartively the learning outcomes as stated above. Deadline: Monday Week 25 (10/05/10).

 

 

Reflective Dramaturgy Essay

Write a reflective essay of 2,500 words choosing one of the following topics:

 1.    'A theatre that has, in the words of Szondi, 'absolutely' withdrawn behind the fourth wall and which lets smoothly functioning dialogical communication take place there, could be said to prevent the communication in the theatre.' (Lehmann 2006: 128, my emphasis)- Discuss this argument from Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatic Theatre in a wider context, informed by further material from the course reading as well as additional research, and relate it to contemporary dramaturgical approaches.

2.    Drawing on Jan Kott's Shakespeare Our Contemporary (Norton 1965), Peter Brook's Empty Space, and other relevant research discuss dramaturgical approaches to staging classical texts for a contemporary audience: Why and how should we approach classics?

3.    In the Messingkauf Dialogues, Brecht's Philosopher says to the Actor: 'Probably you'll have repeatedly to get inside the person you are representing, his situation, his physical characteristics, his modes of thought. It's one of the operations involved in building the character up. It's entirely consistent with our purposes, so long as you know how to get out of him again. There's a vast difference between somebody's having a picture of something, which demands imagination, and an illusion, which demands gullibility.' (Brecht 2002: 48, my emphasis) - Drawing on further material from the course reading as well as further research, explore this difference between imagination and illusion. How does contemporary dramaturgical practice place itself here?

Do bring productions into your argument as examples and reference points, but focus on a thorough, conceptual dramaturgical argument. Your essay should thus become a short, yet substantive, original contribution to the understanding of dramaturgical practice as appropriate for Masters-Level students, and as such aspire to be publishable in a relevant journal, such as Contemporary Theatre Review. Refer to the Assessment Criteria for Written Work at Masters-Level in your Student Handbook (2008/9 edition), p. 52 ff.

 

Dramaturgical Practice Study

This extensive and thorough study and analysis of professional dramaturgical practice may be informed by your placement, shadowing, observing or researching first-hand a specific venue or company. This will include 3,500 words of critical analysis and an appendix of material as appropriate.

The main section (the 3,500 words analysis) should focus on one aspect of Theatre Dramaturgy, such as Production Dramaturgy, Publicity, Audience Development and Access Work, Programming, Literary Management, New Play/Work Development, Dramaturgy in devised performance, Dramaturging Classics, and so on, which you investigated in detail based on the one specific, current, actual example of your placement or research.

Especially where your study will be based on and informed by your own first-hand experience, it is important to bear in mind that this submission is not a placement report or diary! It is a reflected, analytical discussion of an aspect of dramaturgical practice; your research method will be (partly) practice-based, but the role of your placement is similar to research in the library. Thus beware of the danger of this study becoming a personal, opinionated, and underdeveloped argument.

You may want to include relevant original material (such as programme brochures) published by the venue/company or even produced by yourself as part of the placement, or encountered by you during the placement, in the Appendix. This is also the place to include any other relevant work you have produced during the year (for the Autumn Term Showcases, for examples), if this is relevant to the dramaturgical area you discuss in this study.

You only need to submit one copy of the Appendix (but two of the main essay), which, however, will not be returned but go to the Second Markers and External Examiners, and will eventually be archived with your other coursework submissions and exams in your Student Records. You may therefore prefer to submit photocopies, rather than any original documents.