USC

Theatre 302 - Shakespeare in His World Course Purpose: The Renaissance nurtured the genius of Shakespeare, who is today the most produced playwright in the world. This course focuses on Shakespearean theatre and the theatrical traditions from which it emerged. We will examine medieval drama and what Shakespeare learned about playwriting from it. We will then analyze a selection of Shakespeare's major plays for their dramatic structures and the ways in which they capture human experience through performance. Finally, we will delve into the playwriting trends which surrounded and challenged Shakespeare. This course is primarily for theatre majors, but anyone with a passion for theatre, literature, the arts, and knowledge is welcome.

Queen Mary, University of London

1. Shakespeare: Credits: 15.0 Contact: Dr Warrren Boutcher Overlap: None Prerequisite: None Assessment: 100.0% Coursework Level: 4 Associates: Yes Semester 2 Course Purpose: This introductory module offers students the opportunity to study up to five of Shakespeare's plays in their original theatrical and historical contexts. Plays currently on the syllabus include Hamlet, As You Like It, Henry V, Othello and The Tempest (though this is subject to change year-on-year). The teaching is delivered as large one-hour lectures, followed by one hour small-group seminars. The lectures are prepared and delivered in the lecture hall by two lecturers who interact with one another and the audience. They combine close reading of the texts with use of video clips from productions put on at Shakespeare's Globe (on Bankside in London) and other filmed productions in order to encourage students to read them not just as words on the page but as live events in the theatre. The small-group seminars encourage preparation and discussion online during the week and concentrate on close reading the plays. There will be two coursework

assessments, one to be submitted in the first half of the module, the other by the last week of the module. The first will ask you to paraphrase and contextualise a selected passage from the plays, and the second will ask you to write an essay based on analysis of particular scenes. 2. Shakespeare: Credits: 30.0 Contact: Dr David Colclough Overlap: None Prerequisite: None Assessment: 50.0% Coursework, 50.0% Examination Level: 4 Associates: Yes Semester: Full year Course Purpose: This introductary module offers students the opportunity to study up to nine of Shakespeare's plays in their original theatrical and historical contexts. Plays currently on the syllabus include Richard III, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, As You Like It, Henry V, Othello, The Tempest (although this is subject to change year on year). You will be given a standing ticket for at least one production of one of the set plays at Shakespeare's Globe on Bankside, London in the first few weeks of the module, at no extra cost. The teaching is delivered as large one-hour lectures, followed by one hour small-group seminars. The lectures are prepared and delivered in the lecture hall by two lecturers who interact with one another and the audience, They combine close reading of the texts with use of video clips from productions put on at Shakespeare's Globe and other filmed productions in order to encourage the students to read them not just as words on the page but as live events in the theatre. The small-group seminars encourage preparation and discussion online during the week and concentrate on close reading the plays. There will be three coursework assessments followed by an end of year examination. The assessments will ask you to paraphrase and contextualise selected passages from the plays and to write essays based on analysis of particular scenes. 3. Shakespeare: The Play, the word and the book: Credits: 30.0 Contact Prof Jerry Brotton

 Overlap: None Prerequisite: None Assessment: 100.0% Coursework Level: 6 Associates: Yes Semester: Full Year Course Purpose: This module examines Shakespeare's development as a dramatic artist and as a writer and will cover a range of his plays in detail. It enables you to move beyond reading the plays and situates his work within the specific historical contexts of stage history and print culture, it also examines the latest developments in Shakespeare criticism. We will consider the ways in which Shakespeare re-worked his source material, examine the dramatic and artistic contexts of the period, and look at the variety of ways in which his texts appeared in both performance and in print. During the second semester we will examine some of the problems involved in the transmission and editing of Shakespeare's texts, and the resulting implications for criticism and performance.

USC
Theatre 125 - Text Studies for Production Course Purpose: At the turn of the nineteenth century, the poet Charles Lamb claimed that it was more satisfying to read Hamlet than to see it performed: while Shakespeares language was glorious, natural, and passionate on the page, it was gross, artificial, and ridiculous on the stage. Lambs argument proved immensely popular, inspiring generations to revere Shakespeares writings as exquisite poems that should be kept far from the sullying influences of the theatre. Indeed, the reputation of the stage was so threatened that its defenders felt themselves obliged to rebuff Lamb by undermining the authority of Shakespeares scripts. The Bard did not, they pointed out, produce a single, unified text known as Hamlet. Instead, he penned different versions of the play for different occasions, providing space for actors, directors, and designers to exercise their ingenuity. Over this semester, we will consider these two opposing views of the importance of scripts, attempting to chart our own middle way. We will explore the limitations of dramatic texts, which are often ambiguous, conflicted, and open-ended,

leaving plenty of room for creative interpretation. At the same time, we will discover that a close attention to the specific language of these texts can not only fire the imagination, but help to focus its dancing rays. Against Lamb, we will thus see that a script cannot survive on its own any more than a director can survive without actors. Yet we will also see that scripts are not just the starting-point for performance, but also the glue that makes the whole cohere.

Queen Mary, University of London

1. Shakespeare: The Play, the word and the book Credits: 30.0 Contact Prof Jerry Brotton Overlap: None Prerequisite: None Assessment: 100.0% Coursework Level: 6 Associates: Yes Semester: Full Year Course Purpose: This module examines Shakespeare's development as a dramatic artist and as a writer and will cover a range of his plays in detail. It enables you to move beyond reading the plays and situates his work within the specific historical contexts of stage history and print culture, it also examines the latest developments in Shakespeare criticism. We will consider the ways in which Shakespeare re-worked his source material, examine the dramatic and artistic contexts of the period, and look at the variety of ways in which his texts appeared in both performance and in print. During the second semester we will examine some of the problems involved in the transmission and editing of Shakespeare's texts, and the resulting implications for criticism and performance.

2.

Approaches to Applied Performance Credits: 30.0 Contact: Ms Anne Smith Overlap: None Prerequisite: None Assessment: 100.0% Coursework Level: 5

 Associates: Yes Semester 2 Course Purpose: The module will introduce students to skills and approaches used by theatre artists working in educational, community and socially engaged contexts. Students will gain a unique working knowledge of the project cycle with equal emphasis on theatre practice, project management, documentation and evaluation. 3. Dramaturgy and Translation Credits: 30.0 Contact: Ms Sarah Grochala Overlap: None Prerequisite: None Assessment: 100.0% Coursework Level: 6 Associates: Yes Semester 2 This module aims to investigate key questions around the areas of theatre writing, adaptation and translation through practical application. In the first half of the semester, issues around the cultural and linguistic transfer and relocation of dramatic material will be explored as you work both individually and in groups on dramaturgical projects. The second half of the semester will allow for you to begin work on your own play/translation/adaptation, providing the space for scenes to be revised as they are read and presented within a laboratory environment. You will be encouraged to locate and read a variety of new plays as well as neglected pieces from earlier this century in the hope of sharpening your evaluation and critical skills and of introducing you to as wide a body of international writing as possible. 4. Group Practical Project Credits: 30.0 Contact: Prof Jen Harvie Overlap: None Prerequisite: None Assessment: 100.0% Coursework Level: 5

 Associates: Yes Semester 2 To expose students to key scholarly and practical skills relevant to the study and making of theatre and performance: to enable students to make informed choices about the development of those skills relevant to their individual overall programme of study on this degree; to develop students understanding of themselves as scholar-artists; to offer students an opportunity to undertake and present a substantial practical project in a role of their choosing; to offer students the opportunity to work on a practice-based project within the creative restrictions of a research question devised by Drama staff; to offer students the opportunity to work on a professional-quality performance event festival. 5. Late Victorian Literature Credits: 15.0 Contact: Prof Catherine Maxwell Overlap: None Prerequisite: None Assessment: 100.0% Coursework Level: 6 Associates: Yes Semester 2 This module will introduce students to a wide range of different writings during the later part of the nineteenth-century including drama, poetry, art and literary criticism, the short story and the novel. Students will be encouraged to explore such issues as the construction of the self and personality, representation of the body, gender and sexuality, the figure of the artist, and degeneration as well as making a more general survey of the visual and literary imagination in the writings of the period. The module aims to build up confidence in approaching a wide variety of literary texts (including poetry) and to improve close reading skills. 6. Performance in History Credits: 15.0 Contact: Ms Juliet Rufford Overlap: None Prerequisite: None Assessment: 100.0% Coursework

 Level: 4 Associates: Yes Semester 2 This module focuses on the performance event: ie acting, spectatorship, scenography, places of performance and actor-audience relationships. To overstate the case, the performance history segment of the module examines everything about 'going to the theatre' that isn't the play itself. We'll be stressing the importance of theory as a way of framing your critical and analytical investigations. That is, the physical and material aspects of performances throughout history are themselves powerful signifiers which can be read and interpreted just as much as the words being spoken can be read and interpreted.

7.

Reading Theatre Credits: 15.0 Contact: Dr Fintan Walsh Overlap: None Prerequisite: None Assessment: 100.0% Level: 5 Associates: Yes Semester 2 London is one of Europe's most exciting theatrical cities with a range of productions on offer at any given time. This module will examine a range of live productions to explore strategies for reading live performance that recognize the importance of where performances take place. As a group we will visit the National Theatre, the Barbican, and the Royal Court as well as 'fringe' or alternative venues in examining how we read the performance event. Students will be expected to engage with critical reviews of performances, examine the role of press and marketing and explore the targeting of specific productions to particular audience groups.

8.

Spectatorship and Performance Credits: 15.0 Contact: Mr Michael Stephens Overlap: None

 Prerequisite: None Assessment: 100.0% Level: 5 Associates: Yes Semester 2 This module examines the role of audiences in contemporary theatre. It explores how, historically, artists have sought to liberate audiences through a range of experimental strategies that include reordering the space of the auditorium and stage; engaging the spectator in stage labour that ranges from that of stagehand to co-creator of an art event; and incurring states of heightened perception through cruelty and alienation effects. From our historical overview we will turn to contemporary expressions of spectatorship and focus on how artists within live art and relational aesthetics are using participants to stage temporary communities in public spaces. 9. Text, Art, and Performance Credit: 15.0 Contact: Prof Peggy Reynolds Overlap: None Prerequisite: None Assessment: 100.0% Coursework Level: 5 Associates: Yes Semester 2 This is an event-based module, which examines the role of text in art, performance, installations, and public spaces in the city - specifically London. The primary focus is always the analysis of words and texts, how they are used to revise old stories, to tell new stories, to explain, to celebrate, to underline, to persuade, to enhance the environment. Beyond that the premise of the module will be to open out into questions about the presentation of art objects, the function of the word in the everyday, the exploitation of texts in performance, the relation between words and other art forms of communication. 10. Shakespeare: Credits: 15.0 Contact: Dr Warrren Boutcher

 Overlap: None Prerequisite: None Assessment: 100.0% Coursework Level: 4 Associates: Yes Semester 2 Course Purpose: This introductory module offers students the opportunity to study up to five of Shakespeare's plays in their original theatrical and historical contexts. Plays currently on the syllabus include Hamlet, As You Like It, Henry V, Othello and The Tempest (though this is subject to change year-on-year). The teaching is delivered as large one-hour lectures, followed by one hour small-group seminars. The lectures are prepared and delivered in the lecture hall by two lecturers who interact with one another and the audience. They combine close reading of the texts with use of video clips from productions put on at Shakespeare's Globe (on Bankside in London) and other filmed productions in order to encourage students to read them not just as words on the page but as live events in the theatre. The small-group seminars encourage preparation and discussion online during the week and concentrate on close reading the plays. There will be two coursework assessments, one to be submitted in the first half of the module, the other by the last week of the module. The first will ask you to paraphrase and contextualise a selected passage from the plays, and the second will ask you to write an essay based on analysis of particular scenes. 11. Shakespeare: Credits: 30.0 Contact: Dr David Colclough Overlap: None Prerequisite: None Assessment: 50.0% Coursework, 50.0% Examination Level: 4 Associates: Yes Semester: Full year Course Purpose: This introductary module offers students the opportunity to study up to nine of Shakespeare's plays in their original theatrical and historical contexts. Plays currently on the syllabus include Richard III, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, As You Like It, Henry V, Othello, The Tempest (although

this is subject to change year on year). You will be given a standing ticket for at least one production of one of the set plays at Shakespeare's Globe on Bankside, London in the first few weeks of the module, at no extra cost. The teaching is delivered as large one-hour lectures, followed by one hour small-group seminars. The lectures are prepared and delivered in the lecture hall by two lecturers who interact with one another and the audience, They combine close reading of the texts with use of video clips from productions put on at Shakespeare's Globe and other filmed productions in order to encourage the students to read them not just as words on the page but as live events in the theatre. The small-group seminars encourage preparation and discussion online during the week and concentrate on close reading the plays. There will be three coursework assessments followed by an end of year examination. The assessments will ask you to paraphrase and contextualise selected passages from the plays and to write essays based on analysis of particular scenes.