Drama and Contemporary Performance BA

Please note: this course is for 2022/23 entry only

DRAMA

Explore theatre and performance, learn about the origins of current practices, and develop your hands-on skills in making new work.

Liverpool Hope University’s creative community is internationally renowned and world-leading in drama research and practice. You will develop your acting and directing skills, your ability to facilitate drama sessions, your devising skills as well as improving your  critical and reflective writing skills. We make full use of the many theatre venues in Liverpool, from the traditional to the experimental as well as our own Capstone Theatre and several well equipped studio theatre spaces dedicated for student use.

Throughout your time at Liverpool Hope University you will be asked to explore performance in relation to historical and contemporary social and ethical contexts, helping you to understand the critical place of the performing arts in twenty-first century society. Our motto is to ‘educate in the round’, meaning you will develop aesthetic and social skills as a potential future leader in the subject of drama.

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.