Welcome to our online showcase featuring the exceptional work of our Performance degree students throughout the academic year 2023-2024! We are thrilled to present a diverse array of captivating performances that showcase the talent, creativity, and dedication of our students. Step inside and explore spinets from innovative and thought-provoking pieces crafted by our students, who have pushed boundaries and embraced exploration both within and beyond the confines of their curriculum.

Join us on this journey as we celebrate the culmination of four years of hard work, growth, and artistic expression.

Creative Research Project - 4TH YEAR

The final-year module, the Creative Research Project, provides students with an immersive platform to craft a substantial creative research portfolio. With a strong emphasis on industry relevance and academic rigor, this initiative empowers students to generate ground-breaking outputs. Through meticulous planning and execution, participants demonstrate their expertise in their chosen creative realm, alongside a profound comprehension of critical theory.

Within this module, students collaborate with leading professionals in Performance Art, engaging with commission briefs and receiving invaluable feedback. This interaction enables them to delve into the intricacies of production and performance roles, gaining firsthand insights into industry practices.

By the culmination of this module, students adeptly synthesize the skills requisite for orchestrating a performance. They facilitate the creation of performance artifacts and consolidate their understanding of the intricate processes involved in the conception, realization, and management of performances.

Bérénice

By Sam Houston, Manon Miny and Andrew Wilson

In this contemporary reimagining of Jean Racine's 17th-century French classic, Berenice emerges as the focal point of a gripping feminist narrative. Presented through a physical performance lens, the production takes the audience on Berenice's personal odyssey as she confronts and challenges patriarchal limitations, striving to assert her autonomy.

Solo

By Claudia Kelly

This performance art piece invites the audience to reflection on the journey of a young mother as she navigates the complexities of establishing her identity and priorities. Balancing the responsibilities of motherhood with the pursuit of her personal goals, she grapples with the tension between her pre-motherhood life and the realities of her present existence.

Creative Festival - 3rd year

Drawing on their existing skills, knowledge and experience this module enables students to negotiate an independent practical project. Students deliver and perform in a performance, which they artistically lead. With tutor support students self-direct, negotiate and consolidate their own practice to deliver a professional performance outcome as part of a festival of performance for a public audience.

This year's STOP, collaborate and listen took place on the 27th of November at the Ayr Campus of UWS.

The Women we are

By Jennifer Douglass, Sophie Scouller, Vikki Furniss, Joanne Callaghan, Melissa Johnstone

Programme Note

We wish for the audience members to be aware that this is in the form of a Revue. This piece contains a mixture of completely new material written by cast members as well as adaptations of existing text which has been reworked as our cast members saw fit. Although everyone had different roles within the company, this was, overall, a collaborative piece where the cast, while exploring themes and issues that may have been triggering, supported each other in a safe space. The themes include but are not limited to mental health, abuse, infidelity, relationships, and alcohol dependency. Remember kids, just because you’re depressed, doesn’t mean you can’t laugh.

Company Identity

R ‘n’ O Theatre aim to create relevant pieces of performance that portray themes and issues that we believe are experiences collectively by women. We are very female empowerment focused and aim to use styles such as realism, physical theatre, song, spoken word, and dark humour to convey this. We believe these styles not only utilise our performers skillsets but will help us build an empathetic connection with our audiences. Although we wish to appeal to regular theatre goers, we also aim to encourage those to whom the theatre might be new in order to create a fresh, new and innovative experience. We would like this to promote discussion and change.

Our Friend Ben

By Nick Pavlantis, Evie Spears, Reese Hodgson, Aidan Toland, Hayley Padden, Lennon Hegarty

Programme Note

Please join us for a celebration of life. In loving memory of Benjamin Graham. Beloved son, brother, friend September 3rd, 2005 - November 11th, 2023. The honour of your company has been requested at a reception immediately following the funeral service on Monday, 27th November 14:00-16:00.

Company Identity

Between the Lines as a company was created with the intention of creating new writing that draws more attention to actors and their performances than to things such as set design or aesthetics. We work with minimal set and staging to draw the audience's eye to the performers on stage, taking influence from the work of Chekhov in order to create believable characters and in turn, complex performances. We use our work to push the boundaries of our skillsets - with use of dramaturgical elements to build a script shaped largely around our performances, as opposed to the other way around. This is the basis of our mission statement: which is to create work that forces us out of our comfort zones and forces us to develop ourselves as performers. Above all else, we work to showcase the truth: in emotion, performance, and text

Pissed

By Ellie Donaghy, Gemma Templeton, Sophie Henry, Leah O'Neil, Anna Young, Kirsty McAdam,

Programme Note

All of the piss, You and I,

Time trickles, Time Flies,

I will never count, The moments I sat,

Moments I knelt, Moments I shat,

But I relish every second, I was not alone,

A gaggle of queens, Sharing a throne.

Written on an Edinburgh club toilet (2023)

Company Identity

The Dramaturds are an ensemble like no other. A squad of like-minded ladies creating theatre through our collective genuine experiences. We are as authentic as they come. Dramaturds theatre is created through laughter and conversation, allowing improvisation and devising to write the story. We strive to celebrate feminine connection exhibiting the values and necessities through interpretation of emotion. The value of comedy is valued through our work, however, not always seeking laughter. Dramaturds convey free will of theatre style from relatable naturalism to outrageous choreography for balance. Screaming, crying, and throwing up is advised.

devising - 2nd year

In this module students develop the necessary skills to create original theatre, giving them the opportunity to make their own work and explore subjects without the restrictions of a script. Tutors introduce students to the principles and pedagogies of devising. They experience a variety of devising practices ranging from director-led to non-hierarchical collaboration and participatory performance. They critically reflect on the diverse approaches to devising via independent research and their own practice throughout.

During the second semester the Performance students had the opportunity to work on a site specific project and create material inspired by Craigie House, Ayr including, but not limited to poetry reflections.

Late at night, a long dark walk through Ayr,

Every noise makes me flinch like the hit of a snare.

Passing buildings, passing people, peculiar shapes in the dark,

Counting minutes that pass slowly, soon I reach the campus park.

Ten more minutes till safety, the path is lit, there’s cctv,

nothing can happen here, surely not to me.

Passing the Uni, almost home, almost there,

Then round the corner I see the biggest scare.

The dimly lit manor house, Craigie they say,

Surrounded by trees in the wind they sway.

Noises grow louder, creaking of wood,

Is that a light in the window?

I thought it’s locked for good.

As I rush on past I try not to glance,

Try not to fall into the Craigie trance.

My shoulders tighten - that was a scream I swear!

Should I stop and listen? Should I go in? Do I dare?

‘Don’t be stupid’ I mumble, it’s just an abandoned old house,

But what if there’s something in the darkness waiting to pounce.

Nearly past the building, the trees become taller,

The darkness even deeper, my breath even shorter.

I feel eyes on my back, I hear footsteps behind,

I break into a run, or a jog of some kind.

Then from one second to the next my vision is clear,

I see the lights of the residence, home is near.

I chuckle and laugh, such a scaredy-cat.

21 and scared of a building, an empty one at that.

by Kaliope Graciet

I'm walking home, in the dark

It’s cold, and quiet

All of a sudden, it starts raining.

I find shelter in a doorway

I sit for a while, in the doorway

The doorway of a building that was once a home.

A long time ago.

I walk by it every day

It was built for a family to live

It's empty now.

So it's not really a home anymore

It's just a big lump of stone and cement shaped like a home.

Its purpose is lost to time

it's useless, isn't it?

There isn't a need for it anymore

It’s part of 'history' but that doesn't mean much

All I can say is that the rain has stopped.... and I am dry.

by Dylan Murphy

Research projects with student invnolvement

Finding our voice

Finding Our Voice: Using participatory performance to enhance well-being and positive living among people living with dementia

This film was a result of a collaboration between the residents and staff of Torrance Lodge Care Home in Kilmarnock, UWS researchers, At Home at The Theatre, staff, students, and alumni of the Broadcast Production and Performance programmes at UWS, and other industry professionals.

As a starting point, the project posed the question of how participatory performance can be used to support people living with dementia in ‘finding their voice’ and connecting with other people. Central to this project is the agency of the person living with dementia. Over a series of workshops with residents and family members at Torrance Lodge participants co-created performances with professional performers. The positive impact on well-being was clear, something which is documented in the film.

Finding Our Voice was made possible by generous funding from MEB Charitable Trust, W M Mann Foundation, JTH Charitable Trust, Sylvia Aitken Charitable Trust, Kells Trust, and Barrack Charitable Trust.

RAFT and other extracurricular projects

RAFT is our student lead theatre company, who with the support of the University work on multiple productions every year. This year RAFT produced multiple new writing - scratch nights, a production of Antigone and multiple student lead workshops.

An exciting collaboration that took place at our Ayr Campus this year is the one with Shakespeare on Toast where our students worked on Pericles on the Seas.

These performances are the latest event from the De-Centred Shakespeares Network.

This is a group of theatre makers and academics comprising of Creative Producer Ben Crystal, Henry Bell and Stephen Collins at the University of West Scotland (UWS) and theatre companies Cena IV-Shakespeare Company, based in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Salaam Shakespeare Naatak Company, based in Mumbai, India; and Act For Change, based in Jamestown, Ghana.

Each company was invited to film a scene from Shakespeare's Pericles, adapting the text as they saw fit, into their own language(s), and shooting on the streets (or seas) of their community, all in one shot, no editing.

Ben Crystal worked with the students of UWS to create adaptations of the Gower Chorus pieces, to offer links between the three global films. These were both filmed, and live-performed. The filmed versions are the first take, each unscripted, devised, improvised in the moment of filming. In the opening Gower piece, the students played the game, "if you don’t hold a light you hold the storytelling stick."

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