This module provides the opportunity to investigate intersections in arts practice between theoretical and practical research.  Ideas that emerge from a range of theoretical writings and performance analysis that the student encounters in MA Theatre Research Methodologies are examined through studio practices and new understandings that arise from these embodied excursions are applied to theoretical material in a circular exchange.  This module embeds some key methods and strategies in order to build an advanced understanding and academic rigour in practice as research as a tool for producing written and performance outcomes.

 

·        To engage with debates around relationships between performing and writing, as identified in current scholarship and professional practice.

·        To develop an advanced understanding of distinct strategies for research and theorizing through performance practices.

·        To develop an advanced critical faculty concerning cultural, political and ethical implications of performing and writing.

·        To foster the creation of performance that articulates understandings of the relationship between practical and conceptual knowledge and understanding

Knowledge and Understanding:

·        An enhanced critical awareness of a range of practice/theory relationships in current scholarship and professional practice.

·        An in-depth exploration of performative practices in writing and performance.

Cognitive/Intellectual Skills:

·        Ability to engage critically with and synthesise complex theories, methodologies and independent research and articulate findings orally and in performed and written outcomes.

·        Ability to appraise and debate projects that engage in creative and intellectual interchange between theory and practice.

Practical/Key Skills:

·        Ability to interrogate ideas and concepts through practical projects, interpret them through theoretical constructs and debate the implications for practice.

·        Ability to critique own and others’ work in a constructive and incisive way.

·        Ability to engage in inventive practice-as research projects.

·        The ability to create writing or performance that investigates advanced concepts and practice and is evidence of intellectual rigour.

The module engages critically with interchanges between practice and theory deployed by practitioners and scholars.  It interrogates notions of self, other, place and space and explores positions and functions of authorial voices, texts and readers as employed in writing and performance.  The module investigates concepts such as translation, re-construction and re-invention in the creation of writing and performance.  The module will not privilege any particular movement or written form and aims to enable the student to reflect on and develop her/his expertise.

The first assignment requires that the student identifies a matrix of particular ideas, concepts, theories or practices for investigation as a practice as research project.  

In the second assignment the student applies the  theoretical frameworks proposed to produce a danced or written outcome which demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of the practice as research issues explored in the module.

Bachelard, Gaston (1994) The Dialectics of Outside and Inside in The Poetics of

Space. Boston : Beacon Press,  pp 211-231

Barthes, R (1977).  The Death of the Author and Lesson in Writing.  Image, Music, Text.  NewYork:  Hill and Wang,

Broadhurst, Susan.  (1999 )Liminal Acts: A Critical Overview of

Contemporary Performance and Theory. London and New York : Cassell.

Claid, Emilyn (2006).  Yes? No! Maybe…: Seductive Ambiguity in Dance.  London : Routledge

Foucault, M (1977)  What is an author? In Bouchard, Donald F. (ed) Language, Counter – Memory, Practice.  Ithaca,New York:  Cornell University Press, pp 124 – 127.

Haseman, B. (2007) Rupture and Recognition: Identifying the Performative research Paradigm in Barrett, E. and Bolt, B. (eds) Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry London : I. B. Tauris.

Jackson, J  (2005) My dance and my ideal body. Research in Dance

Education, 6, (1.2) 25-40.

Schatzki, T. Knorr-Cetina, K and von Savigny, E (eds) (2001).  The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. London and New York : Routledge.

 Smith, S. and Watson, J. (eds) (2002).  Interfaces: Women/Autobiography/Image/Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan . 

Thomson, Peter (compiler)  (2003)  Practice as research.  Studies in Theatre and

             Performance 22, 3, pp 159–180.

Zarrilli, P (2007) Senses and Silence in actor training and performance in

Banes, S. and Lepeck,i A. (eds) The Senses in Performance, New York and London :

            Routledge