Module: ACT5004-20 Performance Skills 4

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 refines movement, voice and comedy improvisation as well as your skills in the discipline of stage combat.

The module aims are:

• To secure your performance skills set as pertinent to a professional acting career.

• To assure your ability to integrate and apply learned skills in industry-focused acting projects

• To develop your appreciation of the transferability of acting-related skills to a broad range of different working scenarios and theatrical genres

2.Outline syllabus

This module provides you with the opportunity to cement your performance skill set. Focused tuition in individual skills areas continues, but the emphasis is on securing integration and synthesis and the development of a holistic view. The module provides you with the opportunity to further evaluate your skills in a range of more complex acting and making challenges than previously experienced. You learn how to take responsibility for applying your practical knowledge of vocal and movement self-care, observation, warm-up strategies to the different qualitative performance processes at level 5 in preparation for the demands of level 6.

3.Teaching and learning activities

Movement training aims to further your work with complex movement processes such as Contact Improvisation or Acrobatics to develop intermediate level of partnering skills. These classes extend your capacity for embodied communication through complex movement within stylised theatre approaches such as Commedia dell’ Arte, or Shakespearean Theatre.

Comedy classes enable you to apply your practical understanding of the comedic principles and structures introduced at level 4. Strong, sustained comedic characterisation is a focal point of the learning. Deepening your understanding of the stock characters of Commedia dell’ Arte involves devising simple character driven comedic scenarios with an emphasis on playful interaction and achieving complicite between actors and with the audience. You increasingly draw on and integrate your developing skills in movement to create exciting and dynamic ensemble performances.

Stage Combat builds on the technical skills acquired in Performance Skills 3, to pair-work in order to rehearse and perform choreographed sequences using both classical swordplay and modern unarmed combat within the context of a dramatic scene. This develops your ability to combine technical skills with the level of physical intensity and emotional commitment required to make a choreographed fight convincing. Assessment involves performing a set piece of choreography using both Unarmed Combat and Rapier & Dagger techniques with a partner, within a dramatic context. The final assessment is also externally examined by the British Academy of Stage & Screen Combat and provides the opportunity to gain an industry recognised professional certificate in the performance of stage combat.

Voice work involves preparation for the demands of level 6. Text classes focus further on the application of technique to words. This involves looking at the clues in the text and an exploration of the energy of the thought and how it is articulated. There will be a significant focus on working with Shakespeare and the advanced technical demands of working with language of that style.

Staff assess your movement, voice and comedy skills across a range of short performance exercises that will 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.

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%