Theatre & Performance

Create innovative, brave and enthralling work for theatre and live performance.

Help to shape the future of performance as a powerful contemporary artform on this multidisciplinary Theatre & Performance degree. Created to develop passionate hands-on practitioners who want to bring powerful theatre and storytelling to life, you will be supported to become a culturally aware and adaptable live performance artist.

With audiences hungry for innovative and engaging shows, this course responds directly to the industry’s need for collaborative and highly skilled creative explorers. From the start, you'll be trained by makers, practitioners and academics as you develop a diversity of theatre making skills in addition to performance prowess – including devising, directing, writing, scenography and digital technology, building your confidence as an industry-facing professional.

Taught within our Academy of Music & Theatre Arts (AMATA), underpinned by intensive practical work, you will collaborate across disciplines, creating performances that push the boundaries of technology and art and given the freedom to express an individual approach to your practice.

With the emphasis on learning by doing and interrogating all elements of live productions, you’ll graduate as a creatively confident and physically skilled practitioner who can manage, produce, perform and professionally facilitate your own work – ready to build your name in the industry.

Why study this course at Falmouth?
Work with highly skilled and experienced practitioners, artists, academics and creative technicians.
Have access to the latest resources and technologies, including green screen, motion capture and virtual reality resources, as well as an extensive range of technical sound, lighting and recording and editing equipment.
Benefit from AMATA’s year-round performance programme, which attracts top artists and performers across a range of disciplines.
Build industry links through workshops, guest lectures and visits by companies such as Ad Infinitum, Beyond Face, Gecko, Prodigal Theatre, Wildworks, Miracle Theatre and The Royal Shakespeare Company.
Create and take part in a diverse range of collaborative performance projects, including a major immersive production and your own Professional Project.

This course is an accredited degree with Spotlight and Equity. Students are eligible to join Spotlight in the first term of their final year. Inclusive of their membership, they have a wealth of support, content and events tailored explicitly towards this membership group from Spotlight.

With consistent and in-depth professional skills training, you’ll learn to create and respond to performances. You’ll explore techniques and methods in different environments; from solo performances to full public productions, from work for traditional spaces to site-specific, immersive and unusual contexts. You’ll also develop your vocal and physical abilities, as well as the imaginative, digital, collaborative and reflective skills needed to thrive in the industry. As well as leaving with a Theatre & Performance degree, you’ll gain a unique mix of conservatoire practice, backed up by the experience and knowledge of the AMATA community – a working venue offering year-round theatre, dance and other live events. .

Year one:
You’ll develop essential foundational skills and approaches for voice, body, movement and imaginative practices. You will also develop your knowledge and skills in relation to digital and immersive technologies and explore their potential in making live performances more engaging for modern audiences. We’ll also investigate global issues, historical contexts and modern practice and ideas.

Modules
Performance Skills
Culture & Contexts: Stage and Screen
Play Texts
Making Skills 1
Stagecraft: Physical and Digital Scenography
Ensemble Performance

Year two:
In your second year you’ll take on advanced body-based training and learn about technical theatre, directing, writing and creating drama on stage. You will also develop scenography skills and engage with design thinking, adapting the stage to the story. Alongside this, you’ll create and present a solo performance of your own making, influenced by a range of styles like scripted monologue and stand-up comedy.

Working as part of a theatre company, you’ll create and put on a public production focusing on the relationship between a show and its audience. You’ll also create original material and develop your professional portfolio of skills by studying advanced performance techniques.

Modules
Extended Making Skills: Physical, Vocal, Digital
Immersive and Participatory Theatre
Theatre Futures
Page to Stage: Writing, Directing and Dramaturgy
Show in a Bag
Modes of Making: Socially Engaged Practice

Year three:
In your final year, you will extend and deepen your techniques and making skills, as well as your personal, social and philosophical approach to theatre. You will work towards becoming a proactive, independent and entrepreneurial practitioner, who is resilient, able to transfer your skills to other disciplines and able to manage a sustainable career.

Using your critical and reflective skills, you’ll research and write a paper on an area of theatre making that inspires and interests you. You’ll also develop performance material – individually and in companies – honing creative process skills through delivering scratch work (‘test’ performances) in several different contexts.

You will finish the year developing and performing your own professional work for public production to industry specialists and audiences. You’ll also take on a professional development project, where you’ll prepare for the industry by learning about how its infrastructure functions, and how to develop a career as a performer, theatre maker or company. You will create a professional identity for yourself ready to share on a range of platforms and networks.

Modules
Creating Companies
Professional Development
The Thinking Practitioner: Student-led Research
Master Classes: Physical, Vocal & Digital
Professional Production

As part of our process of continuous improvement, we routinely review course content to ensure that all our students benefit from a high-quality and rewarding academic experience. As such, there may be some changes made to your course which are not immediately reflected in the content displayed on our website. Any students affected will be informed of any changes made directly.

The Theatre & Performance course assessment approach reflects and enables an incremental, developmental learning experience.

The assessment for the Award consists of 100% coursework, including:

Practical Assessment (group, individual) – which includes in-class presentations, discussions, demonstrations/process showings, studio-based practice, productions, and final year performances.
Written and reflective assessment – including essays, research writings, digital/physical portfolios, critical reviews and live discussions.
Regular giving and receiving of feedback during practical work enables effective individual and group critique and reflection.

A range of disciplined practical activities (workshops, demonstrations, seminars, lectures, tutorial supervision) are used to develop skills and abilities and demonstrate outcomes including workshops and lectures with professional performers, companies and directors.

These opportunities will help develop independently minded practitioners and are designed to help you prepare for the range of activities you will engage in as graduates: to be able to demonstrate expertise in negotiation and pursuing shared goals; handling creative, personal and interpersonal issues; and communicating through a variety of media and platforms.