Acting for Activists is designed for students who are interested in combining acting with activism – performance with politics. We will work with theatre that responds to specific political events and crisis through the performance and/or creation of activist texts, exploring works that challenge inequalities of income, race, gender and sexual orientation.
Case Studies: Over the quarter we will read and / or watch and discuss 4 activist theatre case studies: the modern classic naturalistic drama Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry; the verbatim courtroom play The Colour of Justice by Richard Taylor-Norton; the mosaic documentary play The Laramie Project devised from interviews by the actors of the Tectonic Theatre Project and playwright Moisés Kaufman; and SLUT, devised and written by Katie Cappiello in collaboration with young workshop participants.
Scene work: Reading/viewing and seminar discussions of the plays are followed by scene work in class and online. As well as weekly scene work, each student will choose a scene – monologue, dialogue or group scene – from one of these case studies to perform in Week 6.
For their Final Project students will create an original piece of performance, which could be a monologue, a short play, an anthem, or a score for a public action. Group projects (max of 6 students) are encouraged. Solo is possible if you are self isolating or shielding.
Pandemic Delivery Note: At present, this course is designed to be delivered 50% online and 50% in a theatre studio in accordance with the University's aim to provide some face to face teaching while trying to health reduce risks to students and staff by streamlining travel and contact. This plan may need to be adapted in response to government and university guidance.
By the end of the course you will cultivate a critical vocabulary for discussing and critiquing work within acting/activist contexts and develop new strategies for creating theatre in relation to issues you are passionate about. Acting for Activists encourages you to think about what you want to say and helps you craft how you want to say it. (You might even take a project you have started in this class and continue to develop it to full production in PP3.)
Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete this module will be able to recall and discuss detailed examples of theatre generated with activist aims, as well as performing excerpts from these works and developing their acting skills.
Students who successfully complete this module will be able to appraise socially engaged theatre practice in terms of the relationship between aesthetics and efficacy – artistic merit and political impact.
Students who successfully complete this module will be able to design and perform their own short piece, applying both artistic and political standards.
Students who successfully complete this module will be able to formulate strategies for linking their political ideals to their artistic aspirations in their future work beyond the course.
Syllabus
Part One: Engaging with Activist Theatre
weeks 1-6
Weekly seminar discussions on 4 case studies followed by scene work.
If possible, a field trip to see a relevant local performance would be ideal for this course.
Part Two: Making Activist Theatre
from week 7 – end of semester
Students will build up an original piece of activist theatre, going through these steps: writing group or solo performance proposals including rehearsal schedules, performing their final piece, and writing a short reflection paper (2000 words) on how successfully they feel they achieved their artistic and activist goals.
Further reading - please chose from this list in consultation with the instructor to support your final projects and reflections
Boal, A. (1978) Theatre of the Oppressed (London: Pluto Press).
Boal, A. (2006) The Aesthetics of the Oppressed (London: Routledge).
Brecht, B. (1964) Brecht on Theatre: the development of an aesthetic, edited and translated by John Willett. (New York: Hill and Wang).
Cohen-Cruz, J. (2010) Engaging Performance: Theatre as call and response (London: Routledge).
Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (London: Penguin Books).
Goode, C. (2016) The Forest and the Field: Changing theatre in a changing world (London: Oberon Books).
Nicholson, H. (2005) Applied Drama: The Gift of Theatre (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian).
Luckhurst, M. (2015) Theatre and Human Rights after 1945: Things Unspeakable (London: Palgrave Macmillan).
Martin, C. (ed) (2012) Dramaturgy of the Real World on Stage. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Prendergast, M and J. Saxton (2009) Applied Theatre: International Case Studies and Challenges for Practice (Bristol: Intellect).
Prentki, T. and Sheila Preston (2009) The Applied Theatre Reader (London: Routledge).
Shaughnessy, N. (2012) Applying Performance: Live Art, Socially Engaged Theatre and Affective Performance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Thompson, J. (2012) Applied Theatre: Bewilderment and Beyond (London: Peter Lang Publishers).
Thompson, J. (2009) Performance Affects (London: Palgrave Macmillan).
Taylor, P. (2003) Applied Theatre: Creating Transformative Encounters in the Community (London: Heinemann Drama).
White, G. (2015) Applied Theatre: Aesthetics (London: Bloomsbury).
Wolff, J. (2008) The Aesthetics of Uncertainty (New York: Columbia University Press).
Diverse Identities: Performing Gender and Race, from the Civil Rights Movements to Beyonce
Through close study of particular examples of performance practice, this module evaluates the role of performance as a site for the articulation and contestation of gender and racial/ethnic identities. It takes an intersectional approach to gender and race, which means that these are always tied to each other and to class and sexuality. From political protests, to the civil rights and feminist movements, to different forms of theatre and popular culture, the module traces modes of performance that have ignited or inspired social change or have been reincorporated into global capitalism. Examples include: Black masculinities in Hollywood, the performance of whiteness, fugitive feminism, Beyonce and Lady Gaga videos, nineteenth century performance art, anti-slavery/abolitionist plays. The module takes a global approach to issues of race/ethnicity and gender and addresses them in relation to the history of colonialism, slavery and capitalism. The course offers the occasion for development of an independent and individualized critical voice, in ways that can connect with students’ everyday experiences.
This module will:
· discuss the role of performance as a site for the articulation and contestation of racial/ethnic and gendered identities in a global perspective
· examines the cultural and political dynamics relating to gender, race and ethnicity which have been and are at work in various aspects of theatre and performance production and reception, including: casting, marketing, forms of address, forms of representation, audience constituencies
· address relevant examples, from theatre and performance to popular culture, including: performing whiteness, Black masculinities in Hollywood, Beyonce and Lady Gaga music videos, nineteenth century performance art, protests.
How can practices of theatre and performance trigger, nourish and foster political imagination today?
The module will address this question on a theoretical, historical and practical level, exploring approaches and methodologies of artistic research that in different ways have employed performing arts as a technique to conjure political imagination. We shall examine the idea of ‘political imagination’ as something different, albeit not opposite to, common understanding of ‘political theatre’: as a capacity to prefigure another world, from within the complexities of the present.
Students will engage with a core group of ideas and techniques emerging from the work of a number of artists, including contemporary practitioners as well as early Twentieth century theorists and artists.
The module is made up of a series of studio-based practical workshops, through which students explore some of the key elements that make up the languages of theatre and performance, and learn how to use these languages in a series of small theatre-making exercises. In this module the exercises are primarily oriented towards theatre texts (students will engage with devising strategies beyond theatre texts when they move to Theatre Workshop 2 in the spring term). A range of texts will be explored, from three or four different historical moments. Through this process of laboratory exploration, students will engage creatively and critically with the ways in which theatrical meaning may be made and experienced, as well as with how other historical periods may have encoded and interpreted the same. The skills developed on this module underpin the students’ spring-term work on Production Project.
A presence for the technical team where students of the DTP Department can find technical resources to support their productions.