Drama and Stage Design & Scenography BA

DRAMA

Explore performance in the heart of the city of Liverpool. Learn about the origins of drama and develop your skills in making new work.

Liverpool Hope’s creative community is internationally renowned and world-leading in drama research and practice. You will develop your acting skills, your ability to facilitate drama sessions, as well as improving your critical writing skills. We make use of the many theatre venues in Liverpool, from the traditional Everyman/Playhouse to the experimental Tate Liverpool as well as our own Capstone Theatre, several well-equipped studio theatre spaces dedicated for student use, and our very own Hope Theatre Company – of which you could play a part.

Throughout your time at Liverpool Hope, you will be asked to explore drama in relation to your own skills and interests, helping you to understand the critical place of drama in the 21^st-century. Our motto is to ‘educate in the round’, meaning you will develop transferrable social skills to take to future employers and make a difference in the workplace.

STAGE DESIGN & SCENOGRAPHY

On this course you will be trained to design and make immersive worlds for different audiences. It’s about exploring drama and performance through the interactions between bodies, environments and creative technologies. How can light function as an actor? How can a set be built by sound alone? How can we subtly direct our audiences without them knowing? What are the ethical challenges of creating a performance solely for one person? As worldbuilders, you will learn about the different approaches to designing and creating your own immersive performance environments, supported by technical training that will prepare you for the creative sector.

Your three years begins with an introduction to immersive performance practices and scenographic design 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 and the development of escape rooms and other ludic practices. 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 who are passionate about theatre and performance but are more interested in working behind the scenes.