The Performance Arts course at the Central School of Speech and Drama
Performance Arts is a collaborative, entrepreneurial programme for those who wish to 'make', research, question, produce, write, administrate and discuss performance.
The Performance Arts programme is interested in challenging and re-thinking assumptions about the creation and understanding of live performance. Students are asked to look to the future of performance with an emphasis upon the intercultural and the interdisciplinary as they \'make\' performance. The work of Performance Arts is international in its focus, recognising the importance of understanding and learning through the exchange of ideas, cultures, and experience.
Although you \'learn through the body\', the course does not offer a practical training for actors.
Instead it offers \'makers\' and producers of performance, an opportunity to grasp performance skills such as voice and movement, which are put into practice for the duration of the programme, and beyond. Many practical workshops and projects may also be completed in areas as diverse as Butoh, Puppetry, Dramaturgy, Photography, Site-Specific, Carnival, Street Arts, Opera, and Mime, among many others, with leading practitioners from across the world.
The programme develops creative leadership, authorship, and ownership of your work. It is the intention of the programme that you will develop your skills within enterprise and entrepreneurial creative practice so that you may develop a business plan upon graduating.
As a student of Performance Arts you will also investigate the way that performance can shape culture and form identity, and have the opportunity to develop preliminary skills across the creative and contextual disciplines of performance practice, and interdisciplinary studies, including writing for performance, interactivity, theories of directing, creative producing and entrepreneurship, performance theory and dramaturgy, and develop an understanding of the uses of sceneography and dramaturgy.
You will work in a highly collaborative environment, and be expected to undertake a range of roles, challenging your own process. Therefore the programme is well suited to the future leaders of performance venues, organisations, and companies. A visit to the programme prior to application is recommended in order to see Performance Arts in action.
Projects are taught through collaboration with London-based and international arts organisations. Projects, festivals, classes, and performances have been undertaken previously with The ICA, The English National Opera, Kinetika, Dreamthinkspeak and Punchdrunk, among many others - ensuring that you are placed alongside, and learn from, leading practitioners from across the world. Students from the Performance Arts programme have also taken their work to New York, Prague, Montenegro, Slovakia, Estonia, Brazil, Russia, Scotland and more.
For more information about the course please click here
Or, for more about the Central School of Speech and Drama please visit: www.cssd.ac.uk
