Theatre and Performance with Foundation Year, BA

Starting a new course at University is an exciting proposition, but potentially also quite daunting and I‘m sure you have many questions.

Your welcome week is designed to give you all of the information you need as you start your new course and will make sure you are fully prepared to begin your studies.

The induction process is also a great time to meet the rest of your cohort group and start to get to know your course tutors.

Your Course

In Semester 1, you will be taking two modules.

The Big Picture module, which is led by Simon Prince, helps you find your place in university and the wider world. Through lectures, seminars, and guided online learning, you’ll see how university differs from school and workplace training, and how your subject and other ones, too, connect to real issues. The aim is disciplined curiosity and growing confidence across university systems. Lectures are delivered each teaching week to create an event‑style experience for you. Seminars run in subject clusters. The ones after the lectures link the talk to your discipline and move on to your assessment preparation. The one-hour seminar is a chance to reflect and seek support as well as work on the assessment.

​The Creative Arts and Industries module, led by Emma Graves - Sandriman, is your second module. In the first few weeks of this module, you will be introduced to different areas of the creative arts industries and relevant key concepts. Each week, you will take a workshop that focuses on a different area of creative arts, as well as a workshop that is targeted towards your subject area.

​Teaching on this module will consist of a mixture of interactive lectures, practical workshops and group/1-1 tutorials with the tutors. You will start the day off with a lecture amongst students from courses across the creative arts subjects where you will learn about the creative arts industries and key concepts within them, get to know staff in the area and hear guest employability talks.

After the lecture, you will move into smaller groups for workshops exploring theoretical and practical perspectives related to your own discipline as well as wider creative arts areas. Once you have built up your skills, later workshops will involve you working on a collaborative media project with students from different creative arts courses.

Blackboard

​Each module will have its own module blackboard, which is our online learning space. Here you will find information on all your modules including learning resources such as online videos, lectures, reading lists and module handbooks.

​To help you prepare for your studies, once you are fully registered and have access to the module blackboards, it is recommended that you take some time to read through the module handbooks and familiarise yourself with your timetable.

The text recommendations below are an excellent introduction to creating theatre and can be used for both your foundation year and the rest of your BA degree, but please note that there is no requirement to purchase every book you need for your studies as the University library has a very good selection of course books which gets updated every year. And you are certainly not expected to have read them all by the time you arrive!

• ​Fischer-Lichte, E. (2014) The Routledge Introduction to Theatre and Performance Studies. London: Routledge.
• ​Mitchell, K. (2009) The Director’s Craft. London: Routledge.
• ​Thomas, H. and Prickett, S. (eds.) (2019) The Routledge Companion to Dance Studies. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis.
• Pallin, G. (2010) Stage Management: The Essential Handbook (3rd Edition). London: Nick Hern Books.
• McKinney, J. and Palmer, S. (2017) Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design. Bloomsbury