BA Contemporary Performance Practice
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BA Contemporary Performance Practice is a practical programme designed to develop the knowledge, skills and understanding required to realise your potential as an autonomous artist who specialises in the making of performance work for themselves and for others.
Important information
This information is relevant only for current students at RCS studying this programme.
This programme is currently not accepting new applications.
Programme Structure (for current students)
The concern of the programme is to provide opportunities for you to develop a personal critical perspective, and an arts practice situated sustainably in the broadest possible ecological context.The programme does this through engaging you in the following four strands:
Ecological and Social Performance Practice
The Ecological and Social Performance Practice strand is fundamental to the day-to-day development of performance skills and understanding in a performance-making degree. Through performance-making tasks and projects, you will explore the urgency of making performance work which has ecological and social value. This means making work and following creative inquiries which explore ideas or involve methodologies which have a contribution to the world in which we live.
Aesthetics and Composition
The Aesthetics and Composition strand examines the potential of the visual, material, spatial, technological and environmental aspects of performance to shape its making and experience. This includes explorations of instant composition, performance-installation, documentation, mark-making and scenography expanded.
Critical and Contextual Understanding
The Critical and Contextual Understanding strand aims to embed understanding of research and enquiry-led learning; from initial introductions to critical thinking in Level One of study; a focused development of theories of social practice in Level Two; deep exploration of research methods and application of these within Level Three; and demonstration of praxis and research supporting an ecological performance practice in Level Four.
Embodiment and Wellbeing
The Embodiment and Wellbeing strand enables you to develop into a compassionate and resilient graduating artist who can work effectively across discipline and context. This strand uses a Somatic Movement Education (SME) approach and Nadine George Voice Work as a means of developing, enhancing and supporting a sustainable arts practice. You will begin to develop an understanding of your body, including your voice, as an active material in performance. The strands are present at every level of the programme either through distinct classes (most notably in the first year) or interwoven into your project-based modules.
Meet the Staff
- Year 1: Digging from where you stand
- Year 2: Radical Pedagogy in Action
- Year 3: An Ecology of Mind
- Year 4: Living a Sustainable Practice
You will learn about the methods and strategies of making performance using your autobiography as your material. You are encouraged to question your attitudes, values and understandings, and translate these discoveries into original performance work.
- Module 1: Personal Archaeology in Performance (40 credits)
- Module 2: Persona and Context (40 credits)
- Module 3: Re-imagining Classic Text (30 credits)
You will explore how to apply your arts practice in social and participatory contexts. You will take part in a residency within a community which will result in an original piece of performance work and new site-based choreographic work. This stage of the programme focuses on your development as a socio-centric artist and how you engage with other people.
- Module 1: Performance as Social Practice: Experimentation (20 credits)
- Module 2: Performance as Social Practice: Application (30 credits)
- Module 3: Choreography, People and Place (30 credits)
- Module 4: Radical Pedagogy (20 credits)
The emphasis is on the researching artist. You will learn how to create text for performance, supported through individual mentoring by a performance tutor. Your research works towards a performance research document and a collaborative performance project exploring ideas relevant to your own performance practice. You also undertake a professional placement.
- Module 1: Collaborations (20 credits)
- Module 2: Placement (20 credits)
- Module 3: Performance Research (30 credits)
- Module 4: Performance Writing (30 credits)
In your final year you will work towards developing a sustainable arts practice that will support your development into your chosen professional field. You will make an original performance work for the Into the New festival. You will have the opportunity to select additional projects which focus on directing, arts in prisons, site-specific work or an international professional secondment.
- Module 1: Into the New: Performance-making or Producing (60 credits)
- Module 2: Artist in Development (30 credits)
Option modules for your final term (all 30 credits):
- Site-specific performance
- Arts in Prisons
- Directing: Re-imagining Classic Text
- Secondment
Graduate destinations
We place great emphasis upon preparing you for a range of diverse careers in professional practice and there are a range of opportunities to engage with the sector while undertaking your studies. Performance and professional collaborations with national and international cutting-edge practitioners, companies, festivals, and arts venues are central to the programme. Projects include work with the National Theatre of Scotland, Glass Performance, Tramway, Janice Parker, Imaginate, and Nic Green. Several students have gone on secondment to international locations such as the USA, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, and Zambia.
Our graduates are working as solo artists in the live arts sector; directors and performers in devised, community, or educational contexts, and as freelance drama workers. A significant number of graduates have set up their own companies. Other graduates have undertaken further study at masters and doctoral level and also become drama teachers, teachers and specialists.
BA Contemporary Performance Practice Photo Gallery
Student Work & Graduate Pathways
The Student Experience
Why RCS?
We are the only place in Europe where you can study all of the performing arts on the one campus. There is a distinctive creative energy at RCS and you’ll be made to feel part of our inclusive and diverse environment from the very beginning of your studies.
Our graduates are resourceful, highly employable and members of a dynamic community of artists who make a significant impact across the globe.
At RCS, students develop not just their art but their power to use it.
World Top Ten
We were voted one of the world’s Top Ten destinations to study the performing arts (QS Rankings) in 2024, the eighth time we have been placed in the top ten since the ranking was established in 2016.
Perform & Collaborate
Our curriculum is built around performance and collaboration and we hold professional partnerships with all of Scotland’s National Companies. Join forces across artforms and be part of the 500+ performances we give each year.
Outstanding Alumni
Our graduates are employed across the world and we take pride in the impact they have on their art forms. We’ll equip you with the skills to thrive as a professional and join their ranks.
Learn from the Best
More than 1,000 lecturers, tutors, artists, technicians, co-ordinators and support staff work at RCS across all our art forms. Study with some of the finest educators and performing and production artists in the UK.
A Campus Built for You
Our facilities are world-class. From rehearsal rooms and recording studios to our five professional performance venues, we have a campus to showcase and develop emerging artists to the highest standards.
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