Module: ACT5002-20 Performance Skills 3

Level: 5

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor: Pat Welsh

Module Tutor Contact Details: p.welsh@bathspa.ac.uk

1. Brief description and aims of module:

This module advances and integrates the skills established at level 4 and you learn to apply them in a range of acting and making challenges. In addition to skills in movement, singing, voice and comedy improvisation the module introduces the disciplines of acting for camera and stage combat.

The module aims are:

• To expand your performance skills set as pertinent to a professional acting career at an intermediate level.

• To enhance your ability to integrate and apply learned skills in acting and making challenges.

• To evolve your approach to reflective learning and personal skills development as an individual and ensemble member.

2.Outline syllabus

This module provides you with the opportunity to extend your performance skill set. Focused tuition in individual skills areas continues but there is an increased emphasis on integration and synthesis and the development of a holistic view. The module provides you with the opportunity to evaluate your skills in a range of increasingly complex acting and making challenges. You learn how to apply your practical knowledge of vocal and movement self-care, observation, warm-up strategies to different qualitative performance processes at intermediate level.

Movement: These practical training sessions aim to further coordination, flexibility, body awareness, stamina and expressive range as developed in level 4. You work with complex movement processes such as Contact Improvisation or Acrobatics to develop intermediate level of partnering skills. You engage with improvisation and movement devising processes to prepare for the study of movement in the Performance Skills 4 module, level 5.

Comedy: These classes extend your practical understanding of the comedic principles and structures introduced at level 4. Strong, sustained comedic characterisation is a focal point of your learning. You will be introduced to the stock characters of Commedia dell’ Arte and you will learn to devise simple character driven comedic scenarios with an emphasis on playful interaction and achieving complicite between actors and with the audience.

Acting for Camera: These practical sessions build on the work of acting classes to introduce you to the specific skills required to address the technical demands of camera work, including continuity, eye-line, finding your mark and performance size to shot size. You are introduced to the key crew roles as well as on set vocabulary and etiquette. These industry-aware camera skills prepare you for the Production Project – Mediated Performance module at level 6.

Stage Combat is acting in the most extreme physical and emotional situations that any character is likely to experience and requires skill, practice and expert training. This module introduces you to the basics of Unarmed and Armed Combat techniques for stage and screen explores physical story-telling, expressing the character's thoughts and intentions through movement, responding to what is happening in the moment as truthfully as possible, allowing the audience to follow the story and get involved emotionally in the action - all whilst remaining fully committed and safe. Through a range of exercises and drills, you are familiarised with the safety principles, which apply consistently throughout all forms of dramatic combat, whilst also improving your sense of balance, grounding and physical control.

Voice: within these classes you continue to build on the foundation of your vocal technique acquired in Performance Skills 1 and 2. Vocal technique is enhanced with the addition of learning accents and dialects, the introduction of the structure of language within text, as well as supporting the integration of the technique within your acting modules.

3.Teaching and learning activities

This module uses a combination of tutor-led workshops, student-led practice, lectures, and research assignments to underpin contextual inquiry.

Staff assess your movement, voice and comedy skills across a range of short performance exercises and/or your acting performances that give you a clear indication of your skills acquisition. Self-directed study will be expected to help you to prepare for assessments.

It is important to keep a journal or blog recording your development and to use this to evidence any required research along with annotated texts, character profiles, etc. This is not an assessed item, but you are expected to refer to this in class discussion and the PDP assignment.

The Bath Spa VLE, Minerva, provides information to help develop an appreciation of the broader technical and artistic aspects, which underpin this subject area, and develop skills in independent learning.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: Coursework

• Description: Skills Profile (Movement, Voice and Comedy assignments)

• % Weighting: 100%