Studying at York
Pre-1900 Production Project - TFT00002H
- Department: Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media
- Credit value: 30 credits
- Credit level: H
- Academic year of delivery: 2022-23
Module summary
This module builds on all the theatre work of the preceding terms and deploys, and develops further, the diverse skills acquired in them. The year-group will be divided into sub-groups, each of which will work, via dramaturgical preparation, close textual work, and workshops/rehearsals, on a major text from before 1900. Students will be responsible for all areas of theatre-making: from acting to design and stage-management to marketing and they will take the production through to full performance in the Scenic Stage Theatre in Week 9 of the term.
The choice of texts will change from year to year, but past examples include Euripides’ Hekabe, Sophocles’ Antigone, Molière’s George Dandin and Tartuffe, Corneille’s The Illusion, Goldoni’s Friends and Lovers, and Marivaux’s The Game of Love and Chance – scripts imposing exacting and exciting demands of varying kinds on their interpreters.
Lectures and seminar-workshops will explore the selected texts in the light of their immediate writing and production circumstances (theatrical, cultural and political) and elucidate some of their specific challenges in performance, as well as their production history. They will also introduce skills required for the production and management aspects of the project. This module sets students the specific challenge of realising in performance today material written a century or more ago, for radically different audiences and theatrical circumstances.
*Students will lose 3 marks per workshop, seminar or practical missed for this module in weeks 2-7.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Autumn Term 2022-23 |
Module aims
to give you experience in combining detailed dramaturgical preparation, textual analysis, and historical exploration with rehearsal experiments and explorations which lead to public performances of a demanding script which you have thus researched and analysed;
to develop the self-analytical capacity to comment coherently and systematically on the relationship between goals and achievement in the completed production project.
Module learning outcomes
to possess the skills needed to realise a successful performance outcome, in front of a public audience, which is informed by the full range of skills and techniques you have acquired during the preceding two years;
to be able to analyse lucidly, and report on, the exact degree of success achieved in the project work you have undertaken;
to be able to negotiate successfully the challenges involved in producing a modern theatre event from a pre-1900 text, while remaining sensitive to the distinctive energies and design of the original.
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 40 |
| Practical | 30 |
| Practical | 30 |
Special assessment rules
None
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 40 |
| Oral presentation/seminar/exam | 30 |
| Oral presentation/seminar/exam | 30 |
Module feedback
Students will receive written feedback on all assessments and reassessments. Written and verbal formative feedback is provided on practical work throughout the term. Summative feedback is given on the week 9 performances and, within 4 working weeks after the deadline, on the written task.
Indicative reading
The bibliography will differ radically year by year, depending on the nature of the plays chosen for the production.