Units

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Sample subject outline - Semester 2 2013

Note: Subject outlines often change before the semester begins. Below is a sample outline.

Rationale

Practical skills and theoretical knowledge developed during the first year of Performance Studies need to be integrated, tested and applied within a fully realised performance-making event. Since an essential component of any performance maker's range of skills is a clearly defined production, rehearsal and performance ethos, attention is paid to the appropriate development of workplace values such as work ethic, individual responsibility, and sensitivity to group processes.

Aims

The aim of this unit is to give you the opportunity to integrate, test and apply practical performance skills and theoretical knowledge within a fully realised small scale performance project.

Objectives

On completion of this unit, you should be able to:
1. Critically Reflect upon and discuss the links you have made between theoretical and practical understandings in the development and application of performance-making processes.
2. Apply creative and analytical ways of thinking (in creative teams) to solve practical and theoretical problems in theatre production
3. Recognise and/or fulfill various performance and production roles and responsibilities.
4. Adopt a disciplined, professional model for making performance consistent with industry codes of practice.

Content

This unit addresses content such as: practical experience of many of the processes involved in acting (or producing) in a production of a scripted play, under the direction of a teaching director. This includes being cast in a role (acting or managing), attending meetings, workshops, classes and rehearsals, personal research and reflection, group discussion, role preparation, and live performances in a public season.

Approaches to Teaching and Learning

Students will participate as performance-makers in the plays, and will take on front-of-house responsibilities during the season. You will work in medium to small groups, each under an assigned director. You will engage in both directed and autonomous workshops and rehearsals or other preparatory activity on a daily basis, taking a performance script from page to stage, and culminating in a short combined season of performance projects. These performances will give you the opportunity to test and develop your work against immediate audience responses. There will be opportunities for close contact with, and feedback from, the teacher / director. In addition to the teaching responsibilities of the teacher / director, there is an emphasis in this unit on your individual learning responsibilities, both to yourself and to the group. Attention and commitment is expected to the whole process of mounting a production, and the actual on-stage acting outcome is considered as only a part of what 'performance-making' implies.

Please Note: While there are a number of pre-production tutorials through the semester, the rehearsal and performance period is only offered in 'intensive mode' in the final weeks of the semester finishing on, and requiring attendance to mid to late November.

Assessment

LATE ASSIGNMENTS
An assignment submitted after the due date without an approved extension will not be marked. If you are unable to complete your assignment on time, you should submit on time whatever work you have done.

Faculty Assessment Information
To access the Creative Industries Faculty Assessment Information see the Blackboard site for this unit.FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
Description: Throughout the process of performances and rehearsals, tutors will provide feedback to students which will inform all assessments items. Weight 0%

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT
PLEASE NOTE: Performance making requires group collaboration - therefore full attendance at all rehearsals and performances for which you are called, is a requirement of this unit, and absence is strongly penalised. If you are required to attend lectures or tutorials for other units you are enrolled in, you will be given permission to negotiate absence from rehearsals in order to attend those sessions where they clash with rehearsal times. No other permission to be absent from rehearsals will be given, and none should be sought except on strong medical or compassionate grounds. If you are absent from rehearsals, regardless of the reason, you may be recast if such absence is deemed to impede the work of other students. The unit coordinator reserves the right to withdraw all roles from you if you absent yourself from rehearsals or performances, and you will be deemed to have failed the unit.

Assessment name: Literature Review
Description: You will complete an analytical review of the required readings for this unit, and create a plan showing how you will apply their theoretical content to your practical work in this unit.
Relates to objectives: 1, 2
Weight: 20%
Internal or external: Internal
Group or individual: Individual
Due date: Early Semester

Assessment name: Performance
Description: In small groups, you will rehearse, perform or produce a short play, or a play extract, or an adaptation of a play or some other work, applying the theoretical content from your readings, under the leadership of a teacher/director/manager.
Relates to objectives: 2, 4
Weight: 30%
Internal or external: Internal
Group or individual: Individual
Due date: Late Semester

Assessment name: Report
Description: You will compile a learning report, which will include a rehearsal and performance reflective journal, research, exercises, glossary, analyses and personal reflection on the links you have made between theory and practice.
Relates to objectives: 1, 3
Weight: 50%
Internal or external: Internal
Group or individual: Individual
Due date: End of Semester

Academic Honesty

QUT is committed to maintaining high academic standards to protect the value of its qualifications. To assist you in assuring the academic integrity of your assessment you are encouraged to make use of the support materials and services available to help you consider and check your assessment items. Important information about the university's approach to academic integrity of assessment is on your unit Blackboard site.

A breach of academic integrity is regarded as Student Misconduct and can lead to the imposition of penalties.

Resource materials

Required Texts
The relevant playtext, plus other readings (such as background to each play) as deemed appropriate by the teacher/director.

Risk assessment statement

As all performance-makers understand, creating a performance potentially carries with it certain physical and/or emotional risks, both in the rehearsal room and in the theatre. Indeed taking risks is an integral component of the art form?s processes. Some rehearsal warm ups and exercises, and some performance events may include physically or emotionally strenuous activities. Managing this risk to ensure working conditions are safe, is always a high priority in the production process. It is therefore extremely important that if you are aware of personal physical or emotional vulnerabilities that make you feel unsafe or at risk in any way, you should immediately inform your tutor or director or stage manager, so that your situation can be evaluated and appropriate rectifying action can be taken. Theatres and other performance spaces are also potentially dangerous places, particularly backstage during performances when lowlight conditions prevail. You will be warned by the stage manager, the production manager or the director of any specific risks that you will need to be aware of, when your project team first moves in to the theatre. Whenever moving into a new performance space, you should always conduct your own risk assessment, and notify your team or director of any hazards you have personally identified. Every effort is made by Performance Studies staff at QUT to ensure that you work in a safe environment. Conversely you are absolutely expected to follow all safety rules, procedures and directions, and to ensure that you do not put at risk the safety of others, or yourself, or of the highest artistic fulfilment of the project in any way.

Disclaimer - Offer of some units is subject to viability, and information in these Unit Outlines is subject to change prior to commencement of semester.

Last modified: 26-Mar-2013