Contemporary Performance and Theology BA

CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE

On this course you will be making work that physically brings the audience into the performance environment. It is about exploring drama and performance through the interactions between bodies and environments and how different technologies can facilitate this. How can light function as an actor? What are the merits and limitations of devising a performance for an audience of one person? What staging possibilities does virtual reality and video gaming provide the performance-maker? Here you will learn about the different approaches to creating your own immersive performance environments as well as gaining an important understanding of the digital creative sector.

Located within the Creative Campus, this community of artists, musicians and performers is a vibrant and exciting environment to create work. Throughout your studies you will be equipped with the relevant technical knowledge and skills to realise and manage your own projects, supported by a team of highly qualified tutors. These will include acquiring skills in digital coding, lighting design, audio and video editing, 360 film and sound recording, motion capture and projection mapping. In addition to making performances, you will present ideas verbally, as well as enhancing your skills in critical and reflective writing.

Your three years begins with an introduction to immersive performance practices before you journey into the exciting challenges of audience participation and interaction. Moving outside of the campus, the city of Liverpool itself will become a site for performance, echoing the work of immersive practitioners such as Punchdrunk, dreamthinkspeak and Shunt. Your final year will involve a push into new and experimental performance technologies, presenting performance projects in virtual worlds. This will culminate in you selecting either to complete a placement within an arts organisation or to take the lead as project manager of a major performance project of your own devising. This final year will also require you to complete an independent research project on a topic of your own choice.

This course is for those interested in making innovative and dynamic worlds for their audiences to interact with and explore. It will appeal to students interested in contemporary performance and its overlaps with creative technologies.

THEOLOGY

Studying our Theology Major provides you with the opportunity to study the core disciplines of the subject in-depth. You will engage with important issues in the contemporary world  and major issues from the past that effect how we think and live today. This includes issues such as suffering and evil, sexuality and gender, justice and liberation. Your study will involve the development of critical reading and writing skills encompassing the areas of biblical studies, church history, and constructive, ethical, mystical, and philosophical theology. You will engage with issues concerning what it means to be human and to be divine, what is meant by spirituality and the mystical, including the ways in which the material realm can convey the spiritual. You can acquire expertise in finding your way through the complex and rich Christian tradition, and how it relates to vital historical and contemporary issues. A focus on global Christianity is one of the defining characteristics of the curriculum. You will have an opportunity to explore Christian theology not only as it pertains to the development of Western Christianity, but to the influences and trajectories in other parts of the world.

The international teaching team represent a broad range of Christian traditions, and all of our lecturers are experts in their field and well-published.

To further support your studies, you will have access to our Library’s Special Collections, which houses texts dating back to the 15th century.