BA Theatre and Performance

Compulsory modules

Analysing Theatre and Performance

Critically interpret theatre texts and performances, enhancing your understanding of the conventions of production, the organisation of meaning in performance, and deviations from mainstream conventions. Engage with performances from the late nineteenth century to the contemporary, focusing on their historical, cultural, stylistic and performative contexts.

Introduction to Scriptwriting 

Develop in-depth knowledge of scriptwriting and analysis of creative works and enhance your own scriptwriting skills with creative and intellectual tools. You’ll explore personal storytelling in cultural and intellectual contexts, as well as following script development – from the final draft through to creative production. 

Devising Performance: Politics and Citizenship 

Understand the practices and processes involved in creating and organising performances that address political and social issues. You’ll apply a wide range of performance forms and histories, conduct individual research, gain the skills to use specialist equipment, and collaboratively explore performance practice.

Radical Forms in Theatre and Performance

Discover the history, traditions, practices, and theoretical and analytical perspectives of radical theatre making and experimental performance practice. You’ll learn to appreciate the cultural, political, and aesthetic significance of radical experimentation in theatre and performances, and express critical understanding of creative practice and risk-taking.

Staging Texts: Production Skills, Design and Performance

Explore how texts are realised in production, and how making meaning influences creative decisions, as you analyse texts through audio and scenographic design projects and learn about the practices and processes of engaged theatre practice. You’ll study the work of leading practitioners and develop key practical skills through a series of workshops.

Optional modules

Approaches to Film

Critically interpret film texts and discover the conventions of fiction and non-fiction cinema. Explore cinema as a diverse, global and transcultural medium, focusing on historical and cultural contexts.

Approaches to Television

Gain a critical understanding of central issues in television texts and fiction and non-fiction programming. You’ll examine television forms and narratives, industrial contexts, digital platforms and new delivery technologies, as well as the role of the audience and public service broadcasting.

Comedy on Stage and Screen

Gain insights into how comedy intersects with film, theatre and television through a series of case studies. You’ll learn how humour highlights critical issues such as identity politics (gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, disability), taboo, embarrassment, cult, cancel or outrage culture, and explore relevant production, industrial and socio-cultural contexts.

These are the modules that we currently offer for 2024/25 entry. They may be subject to change as we regularly review our module offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Please note that the University cannot guarantee that all optional modules will be available to all students who may wish to take them.

You can also register your details with us to receive information about your course of interest and study and life at the University of Reading.

Compulsory modules 

Community and Collaborative Performance Practices

Develop your performance-making competence by collaboratively researching, planning, devising and executing a practical project in a specific community or theatre company. You’ll learn to relate critical and theoretical issues to decision-making, conduct independent research and have supervised studio time, enhancing your analytical and evaluation skills.

Performance, Identity and Culture 

Understand the construction, representation and performance of diverse modes of identity in theatre and in culture. You’ll develop skills of close textual and performance analysis, and learn how local, national and global contexts have influenced playwrights, theatre makers and theatre cultures. 

Optional modules 

Reworking Shakespeare in Performance

Understand Shakespeare as a powerful signifier of culture, explore adaptations of Shakespeare and learn how these relate to broader cultural and political contexts. You’ll learn about the practices and preoccupations that currently affect interpretation of Shakespeare and gain the ability to make connections between social and cultural concerns and their presentation on stage. 

Directing and Dramaturgy

Explore a culturally diverse range of directing and dramaturgical approaches to creating performance. You’ll be equipped with a toolbox of critically informed and aesthetically exciting strategies, an understanding of the significance of research-informed performance practices, and gain confidence in leading theatre-making processes. 

From Acting to Performance

Analyse the role of actors in theatre and performance-making and explore various acting approaches. Engage effectively with dramatic constructs of character using a creative and critical toolbox and develop confidence in solo performance making.

Placement and Employment Skills

This module provides you with an opportunity for reflective learning and intensive research through an industry role of your choice. You’ll reflect critically on your career development and acquire transferable skills for future employment.

These are the modules that we currently offer for 2024/25 entry. They may be subject to change as we regularly review our module offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Please note that the University cannot guarantee that all optional modules will be available to all students who may wish to take them.

You can also register your details with us to receive information about your course of interest and study and life at the University of Reading.

Compulsory modules 

Choose one of the following:

Advanced Theatre-making Project

Apply the knowledge and skills you’ve gained to a practical, research-based project, that you will develop independently under the guidance of a supervisor. 

Creative Research Project

Apply your previously gained knowledge and skills to a significant research-based project that includes a creative element and critical research and reflection. You’ll develop the project independently under supervision.

Dissertation: Film and Theatre

Apply the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired in the previous modules to a major piece of independent work around an area you are interested in. Independently initiate and develop the project under the guidance of a supervisor.

Optional modules 

Musical Theatre

Explore the theories, themes, politics, and practices of contemporary musical theatre. You’ll focus on the research and development (R&D) of musical theatre, its dramaturgy, political context, modes of production, representation, and reception. 

Performance and Design

Critically explore theatre and performance design by engaging with historical and contemporary scenographic practices. You’ll learn about the role of designers in shaping and reimagining theatre and performance. You’ll advance the ways you read, see and encounter the visual, aural, spatial, material and technological elements of design. Get involved in critical reading and discussions on a diverse range of international designers, methods and performance environments. You’ll gain exposure to professional contexts through visits to archives, talks or masterclasses from visiting designers and/or scholars.

Adaptations across Stage and Screen

Develop your knowledge and artistic practice in film, television and theatre through exploration of the processes of adaptation and engagement with critical, cultural and political considerations. You’ll have the opportunity to explore a range of practices, such as page to stage/screen, citation of iconic characters, fanfiction and digital reworkings, docudramas and documentary theatre, intercultural retellings and translations, contemporary retelling of historical narratives, and reworkings of productions in the same media.

Advanced Scriptwriting 

Create original scripts and develop your critical understanding of key storytelling issues such as narrative, character, dialogue, and place. Your scriptwriting practice will include both individual and collaborative forms of writing and rewriting, and you'll engage with discourses around scriptwriting emerging from both theatre pedagogy and screenwriting studies, including projects for decolonising stage and screen writing traditions.   

Screen Bodies 

Discover how diverse bodies move on screen, and how those bodies engage the spectator’s body. You’ll explore how the screen representation of the body is shaped by culturally situated ideas about body and society, and power and desire – including creative traditions, influences, technologies, and innovations. As you examine how the screen body generates meaning, you’ll study access to representation, visibility, marginalisation, and consent.

Film Festivals and Programming

Gain advanced knowledge of modes of programming arthouse, alternative, and experimental venues, as well as organising festivals. Through seminars, workshops and group projects, you’ll explore how festivals (such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin) work as effective filters for wider distribution, and how festivals and programing are key to understanding the kinds of world cinema we watch.

These are the modules that we currently offer for 2024/25 entry. They may be subject to change as we regularly review our module offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Please note that the University cannot guarantee that all optional modules will be available to all students who may wish to take them.

You can also register your details with us to receive information about your course of interest and study and life at the University of Reading.