Acting and Screen Performance
The BA Acting & Screen Performance: Combined or Joint Honours
What will Acting & Screen Performance enable me to do?
Students graduating from this programme will be ideally placed to work in areas of role-play such as in leisure and museum work, staff development and in-business training. Acting & Screen Performance can be studied alongside up to three other humanities subjects. Ideal combinations for you might be Acting & Screen Performance with English Literature and Creative Writing; Acting & Screen Performance with History or Acting & Screen Performance with New Media Publishing and Journalism.
Is it right for me?
We are seeking to recruit students who are ambitious, hard-working, outgoing and who thrive on team work. You must be interested in acting, and film performance; if you have an A level in theatre studies, film or drama that would be an advantage but it is not strictly essential.
What will the subject area focus on?
This is a programme with realistic outcomes for those students who are interested in film and acting. The focus of the work will be on applied acting and ways that acting is used in business, education, training and leisure (e.g. museum work). At the end of the programme you will have written and produced a short digital film. You will have an understanding of the practical, theoretical and historical aspects of film-making and cinema and will understand the terminology needed to engage in a scholarly analysis of the film and film acting. The programme will equip you with a wide-ranging critical vocabulary of performative aspects such as gesture, posture and stance. Through the interpretation of key moments and achievements in film acting, you will be able to confidently apply many verbal and physical strategies of successful performance.
The programme will also provide you with the opportunity to work with others in class debates workshops and discussions. You will learn how to create and defend a reasoned critical analysis as well as test the solidity of your own ideas and observations, as you present them to others.
Role play and acting is a significant and unique part of this course. You will have an understanding of the history of acting and its uses beyond the tradition of theatre and film. The practical side of the programme will allow you to build up your confidence by playing characters for practice interviews and mock press conferences, and character presentations, initially with other Acting & Screen Performance students. Eventually you will test your acting skills and role play situations in a variety of other real life situations. Acting & Screen Performance students will for example support journalism staff in role play press conferences and interviews.
You will learn how to present ideas to camera both on location and in studio and you will also have the opportunity to act in short films and in studio exercises. We would encourage you to engage in extracurricular opportunities offered by the Film and Digital Media Exchange, Crush Radio, UH Arts and Theatre Is, all of which are established on the University Campus.
What will I do in my first year?
The first year of the programme will focus on character development in modern drama and film. Exercises and games will encourage you to experiment and gain confidence in creating characters; you will study a variety of theatrical styles from Stanislavski, through to Brecht, and Boal. Alongside this you will be studying film and watching at least one film a week so that you understand ideas such as genre, mise-en-scène, auteur theory and you will begin to develop an understanding of the cultural and historical aspect of film.
In the second half of the first year you will look more closely at the development of text and explore the interrelation of dialogue and acting styles; you will also try your hand at writing short pieces of character-driven dialogue. Your film study work will take on a more theoretical aspect and you will explore the work of a variety of film critics and theorists.