Undergraduate Units of Study
This page contains general information on undergraduate units of study in Performance Studies for both semesters of 2009. If you would like further information about any of these units of study, please contact the unit of study coordinator. Some timetabling information is available below or you can use the 'Timetable' menu on the left of this screen. Further details, including unit of study objectives and outcomes, can be found on the Faculty of Arts' main unit of study outline page here.
Second Year Core
PRFM 2602: An Audience Prepares
Total of 3 hours face to face teaching
Timetable information
Lecturer: Dr Paul Dwyer
How do the members of an audience make meaning from the complex weave of words, movements, costumes, lighting, sound and other effects that fill the stage? To what extent are these meanings shaped by the context in which the performance event takes place? In this unit, students will develop a technical/critical language and a ‘feel’ for analysing live performance through lectures, practical workshops and by attending events at a number of Sydney theatres.
Second Year Option
PRFM 2604: Sociology of Theatre
Total of 3 hours face to face teaching
Timetable information
Lecturer: Associate Professor Ian Maxwell
How is theatre made? What factors, influences and institutions constitute the field of theatrical production? This unit will move beyond the rehearsal room and performance space to examine the contexts within which theatrical practice takes place.
Note: you may not take this unit if you have already completed PRFM 3012 Sociology of Theatre.
Third Year Options
PRFM 3604 Embodied Histories
Total of 3 hours face to face teaching
Timetable information
Lecturer: Dr Amanda Card
Can we investigate and understand historical moments and social movements through a study of dancing bodies? In this unit we will be looking at popular dance practices in western cultures over time. From the charleston, the lindy and jive, through musical comedy and jazz, to gogo, disco and hip hop we will develop an understanding of the relationship between movement, music, time and place. This will be done through a combination of observation and practical participation – no former dance training required.
PRFM 3605 Cross-Cultural and Hybrid Performance
Total of 3 hours face to face teaching
Timetable information
Lecturer: Dr Amanda Card
This unit will analyse the development of cross-cultural and hybrid performance in Australia, Britain and the United States. Concentrating on a range of Indigenous and non-indigenous performance practices - football mascots, contemporary dance, pop music and text based theatre - we will utilise postcolonial theories, as applied to performance, to explore diverse understandings of innovation and appropriation, ownership and copyright in colonial and post-colonial societies since the 1950s.
PRFM 3611 The Secret Art of the Dramaturg
Total of 3 hours face to face teaching
Timetable information
Lecturer: Dr Laura Ginters
What is a dramaturg? How do you read a play? Write a non-text-based performance? Prepare a production of a classic play? This course will investigate the various roles of the dramaturg, focusing on new play dramaturgy, background research for historical texts, translation and and the role of the dramaturg as co-creator in non-text-based work. The course will include practical exercises in analysing and workshopping a new Australian play or text for performance.
Special Entry
PRFM 3961 Rehearsal Studies
Total of 2 hours face to face teaching
Timetable information
Lecturer: Dr Laura Ginters
This unit of study is structured around a performance project involving professional actors and a director. Students observe and analyse a rehearsal process, which will take place during the mid year break. In this unit, the theoretical and methodological groundwork is laid: accounts of rehearsal by participants and observers, ethnographic theory, video recordings of rehearsal, prompt books and other materials are examined with a view to establishing an appropriate level of awareness of the task and a methodological approach.
Second Year Core
PRFM 2601 Being There
Total of 3 hours face to face teaching
Timetable information
Lecturer: Associate Professor Ian Maxwell
In this unit of study, students are introduced to some key periods in the history of theatre and performance, with the aim of contextualising current Australian practices. Students are introduced to anthropological and intercultural perspectives in order to locate theatre and other genres within a broad spectrum of performance. Additionally, this unit of study addresses methodological issues concerning the historiography of performance, with particular attention paid to sources other than play-texts.
Second Year Option
PRFM 2603 Between Impro and Text: Making Performance
Total of 3 hours face to face teaching
Timetable information
Lecturer: Dr Paul Dwyer
Some performances seem firmly text-based (a David Williamson play; the libretto/score of a Wagnerian opera). Others involve more or less spontaneous “composition-in-performance” (Commedia dell’Arte, Theatresports, “free jazz”). Yet, whatever the form, performance is always the thing you get when skilled artisans “assume a responsibility to an audience and to tradition as they understand it” (Dell Hymes). In this unit, we analyse the interactions between literary and primarily oral traditions of performance, questioning assumptions about the historical primacy of texts.
Third Year Options
PRFM 3603: Playing Politics
Total of 3 hours face to face teaching
Timetable information
Lecturer: Dr Paul Dwyer
Many theatre practitioners and performance artists have sought to make their work an explicit cultural intervention into movements of social and political change. Here we will critique in detail, and to some extent explore practically, the strategies adopted by a number of key artists and companies, past and present: from Brecht to Boal, from ‘community theatre’ to ‘contemporary performance’. We will also consider the way protest actions and, indeed, mainstream processes of parliamentary democracy appear to have become increasingly theatricalised.
PRFM 3606: Theories of Acting
2hrs (wks 1-5) 4hrs (wks 6-13)
Timetable information
Lecturer: Dr Glen McGillivray
We will explore theories of theatre from Plato through to post-modernism, with a particular focus upon processes, practices and theories of, acting. In addition to this historical focus, we will develop critical perspectives, drawing upon ethnography and theories of subjectivity to understand the 'implicit theories of acting' operating within particular cultural and historical milieus.
PRFM 3619: Performance Analysis and Documentation
3 hours per week
Timetable information
Lecturer: Robin Dickson
This unit of study deals with two of the tasks which are fundamental to the developing discipline of Performance Studies: performance analysis and the documentation of performance. Students will attend theatrical performances, develop and refine their analytical skills and explore the semiotic theories which underpin the analytical practice. Video recordings and photographs of live performance are also analysed, and the opportunities and new problems that video poses for performance practitioners and scholars will be discussed: aesthetic, political and ethical questions in relation to the recoding of live performance will be explored, and students will have hands-on experience in using both video and still photography to document performance, and to assess the value of different modes of documentation for archival and analytical purposes.
Special Entry
PRFM 3962: Rehearsal to Performance
Corequisit: PRFM3961
Full time project observation + 15 hours of seminars in 2nd Semester
Timetable information
Lecturer: Miranda Heckenberg
In the July break, students observe professional performers–this year, Alan Schacher's [[italics||The Bland Project]–in rehearsal. They document and record the process with a view to writing a casebook about the work. The classes in the first part of the semester provide students with the opportunity to unpack the experience, to undertake some analysis of the resulting performance, and to rethink the theoretical and methodological issues in light of the practical experience.