Drama BA (Hons)

Here is a guide to the subjects studied on this course.

Courses are continually reviewed to take advantage of new teaching approaches and developments in research, industry and the professions. Please be aware that modules may change for your year of entry. The exact modules available and their order may vary depending on course updates, staff availability, timetabling and student demand. Please contact the course team for the most up to date module list.
Year one
Dramatic Structures on Stage and Screen
Year: 1

This module serves as an introduction to the fundamental structures of dramatic performance. Weekly lectures will introduce a range of core concepts. Students then take a weekly seminar through which they will develop the knowledge and frameworks provided to analyse the creation and reception of dramatic performances. The module will refer in detail to a range of set plays, studied from both the script and in live performance.

Acting 2: Studio Practice
Year: 1

This module seeks to enable students to generate improvised performances as part of an acting ensemble and to provide an opportunity to explore the performative potential of a given dramatic role through the application of specific improvisational practices. It also seeks to provide a critical language to both describe and reflect on these practices. Assessment: 100% Coursework.

Performance Technologies
Year: 1

This is a practically-focused module which enables students to develop the skills to run a performance event, using theatrical lighting and sound equipment and media for digital presentation. Students learn the processes of stage management and how to implement these in supporting practical projects across the semester.

Space and Performance
Year: 1

Issues in Performance 2: The Theatrical Space introduces students to core concepts relating to space, a defining feature of performance. It encompasses historical and contemporary performance practices to explore the relationships between space, form and function in performance. This compulsory drama module continues to develop good study skills and to extend critical vocabularies established in DRA101. It is team-taught, by a lecture and small-group seminar each week. Assessment 100% coursework

Acting 1: Text and Performance
Year: 1

This module will introduce students to the working methods of two major twentieth century acting theorists. It will offer students the opportunity to explore these methods in a practical setting and encourage them to reflect critically on the contrasting and comparable elements of each approach. Assessment: 100% Coursework.

Critical Practice
Year: 1

This seminar based module seeks to introduce key aesthetic movements such as naturalism, realism, and Brechtian epic theatre through the study of play texts and live performances. The module encourages the student to apply critical readings and concepts to the analysis of primary texts, and to reflect on their practical work and experiences as spectators at selected performances during the semester.

Assessment: 100% coursework.

Year two
Arts Administration
Year: 2

This module is provides students with a suitable grounding in the practices and responsibilities associated with contemporary arts administration; and the foundation for competence in relevant entry level areas of employment.

The Form and Function of Performance
Year: 2

This module interrogates the relationship between social and political identities and contemporary performance practices. It explores the form and function of performance works and through these analyses the potential efficacy of performance. This module is taught by seminars and is assessed by 100% coursework.

Political Theatre from Expressionism to Brecht
Year: 2

This seminar based module seeks to introduce students to key aesthetic movements, through the study of play texts and performances. The module encourages the student to apply critical readings and concepts to the analysis of primary texts, to engage analytically with performance conventions typical of different artistic movements, and to reflect on their practical work and experiences as spectators.

Introduction to Directing
Year: 2

This module is optional

Introduction to Directing encourages students to start to assemble a personal working method in preparing to analyse and direct scenes using peer actors. This module seeks to introduce methods of analysis and rehearsal practices. Teaching methods include a combination of analytical exercises and workshops. Assessment: 100% Coursework

Production Process
Year: 2

This module is optional

Students will work collaboratively to stage a full public performance under staff supervision. In so doing they will have the opportunity to learn to exploit the dynamics of a complex process and the particular demands of undertaking any given role in that process. They will hone practical skills of collaboration and project management while developing as reflective practitioners by taking on a specific role, either as a performer or backstage. This provides an essential basis for advanced practical and critical engagements with theatre-making.

Acting 4: Acting and Screen
Year: 2

This module is optional

This module develops acting techniques studied at Level 4 and adapts them to screen. Students become familiar with working procedures involving acting to camera and are encouraged to reflect on the place of the actor historically and in relation to creative applications in performance.

Theatre and Community
Year: 2

This module is optional

This module develops students' ability to engage with forms of participatory theatrical practices which can be applied in processes of community formation and development. The primary focus is on practical experience within a process of reflective learning in which theoretical perspectives are applied and tested.

Educational Arts
Year: 2

This module is optional

This module develops the ability of students to plan and deliver creative arts workshops for education and development. Students will engage with a range of theories about learning, undertake practical workshops as a member of a group, and facilitate workshop activities.

Writing for Stage and Screen
Year: 2

This module is optional

This module offers the student the opportunity to explore the processes of creative writing for a range of media, including live and filmed performance. The student will read from a range of materials and encounter a range of working methods, before opting for one medium and developing a piece of writing for performance in that medium.

Acting 3: Commedia dell'Arte
Year: 2

This module is optional

This module provides students with a suitable grounding in the history, theories and practices associated with Commedia dell'Arte and work with masks in theatre and performance; and the foundations for competence in setting up independent individual/collective actor/voice training and productions in institutional and non-institutional venues and open spaces.

Placement
Year: 2

This module is optional

This module allows students to spend a period of time working outside the university in a suitable theatre or arts organisation. Students develop their vocational skills through work-based learning and developing their capacity for reflexive practice.

ASSESSMENT: 100% Coursework

Year three
Independent Project
Year: 3

This module allows students to negotiate their own programme of study in pursuing a specific research question. Students may present their work as a dissertation, a practical performance or workshop, or undertake a work-based learning project. Assessment: 100% coursework.

Liveness and Documentation in Performance
Year: 3

This module interrogates the relationship between performance, liveness and documentation through the development of appropriate critical concepts and vocabulary. It is taught by lecture and seminar and requires students to learn by reading and undertaking practice, reflecting and discussing.
Assessment: 100% coursework.

Arts Entrepreneurship
Year: 3

This module develops students' creative engagement with the industry through an exploration of the marketplace, and of the processes involved in setting up and running a new business in the creative and cultural industries. The module has been developed in consultation with Theatre NI and aims to develop students' understanding of entrepreneurial practice and thinking in the creative and cultural industries.

Creative Business
Year: 3

This module is optional

This module assists students in the developing specific skills and awareness to maximise their ability to conceptualise, manage and market new, society centred, ideas.

Advanced Playwriting
Year: 3

This module is optional

This module offers the student the opportunity to explore the processes of creative writing for the stage in a diverse range of styles and genres. The student will read from a range of materials and encounter a range of working methods which they will engage with in short written responses, and before developing a full-length piece of writing for performance.

Representing Violence
Year: 3

This module is optional

This research-lead module seeks to extend the range of theoretical and critical perspectives with which students engage and to focus on the specific contexts of contemporary performance practices. It offers students an opportunity to explore the representation of violence as an enduring matter of philosophical debate and theatrical innovation, that covers such issues as staging strategies, performative strategies, ethical and theoretical questions, and audience reception.

Performance and Disability
Year: 3

This module is optional

This module seeks to give students opportunities to engage with different ways of creating theatre through the lens of disability and performance. Students will explore concepts of disability within society in the context of theatre, drama and performance. They will study dramatic representations of disability and how these provide insight into issues relating to the construction of disability within society. Concepts such as difference, equality, social, medical and relational models of disability and co-creation will be considered. Students will learn to reflect critically on and to engage practically with aspects of access and/or aesthetics in relation to disability and performance.

Advanced Directing
Year: 3

This module is optional

Advanced Directing facilitates mostly independent applications of analysis and practice introduced in Introduction to Directing. Learning contexts include written preparation and independent rehearsal processes as advanced directors experiment with dramatic action, given circumstances and coaching techniques in order to deliver a one act play at a pre-professional level of performance with peer actors. Teaching methods include analytical 'laboratory' sessions and seminars which will explore and test methods of coaching and evaluation.

Assessment: 100% Coursework

Storytelling and Performance
Year: 3

This module is optional

This module provides students with the opportunity to explore storytelling as a performance form within a range of theatrical and performance settings. Practical exploration allows students to engage with the form from within, while independent research and in-class discussion provides the opportunity to contextualise and analyse practices encountered.

Assessment: 100% Coursework.

Acting 5: Advanced Acting
Year: 3

This module is optional

This module is focused on the preparation, rehearsal and performance of a dramatic role within an independent student-directed project. It engages students in practical exploration and critical study of the work of the actor through weekly workshops and seminars. The assessment is 100% coursework.

Performing Ireland on Stage and Screen
Year: 3

This module is optional

This module looks in detail at contemporary Irish theatre practice and in doing so enables students to focus their understanding of contemporary Irish theatre by placing it in a range of relevant discursive and theoretical contexts. Students will read a range of contemporary playtexts and see a range of performances.

Performing Community
Year: 3

This module is optional

This module equips students to use their skills, knowledge and experience in creating performance within a community setting. Taught through lectures, seminars and workshops, the module focuses on engaging with actual communities and the development of independent performance projects. Assessment is 100% coursework.

Performance and Conflict Transformation
Year: 3

This module is optional

This module equips students to use their skills, knowledge and experience in analysing and creating performance within the context of conflict or post-conflict society. Taught through lectures, seminars and workshops, the module focuses on engaging with local and international post-conflict issues and the development of independent projects.

Assessment: 100% coursework

Performance and Health
Year: 3

This module is optional

This module provides students with the opportunity to explore performance as a means of enhancing well being, challenging stigmatisation and promoting awareness of health issues. Practical exploration allows students to engage with the issues and formal techniques from within, while independent research and in-class discussion provides the opportunity to contextualise and analyse practices encountered.

Theatre and Ritual
Year: 3

This module is optional

This option investigates radical performance practices of the ritualised forms of theatre from modernism to postmodernism and beyond. Students will explore, interrogate and evaluate the theoretical underpinnings, practical methodologies, and performance outcomes of selected bodies of practice and create new work by applying the ideas they have encountered to performance practice in a studio environment. It will be of particular interest to students wishing to pursue innovative contemporary practice or undertake practice-based research after graduation.

Assessment: 100% coursework

Theatre for Young Audiences
Year: 3

This module is optional

This module provides students with the opportunity to explore the values, ethics and practices of Theatre for Young Audiences. Practical exploration allows students to engage with the form from within, while independent research and in-class discussion provides the opportunity to contextualise and analyse practices encountered.

Assessment: 100% Coursework.