MA Devised Performance

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The University of Winchester is a small institution located just one hour away from London set in the rolling Hampshire hillside. The University has occupied its main campus since 1860, which is situated close to the city centre. Postgraduate study and research embraces a wide range of opportunities within a friendly, relaxed environment. Programmes range from PGCEs (Primary and Secondary) to a wide selection of MA and MSc courses in humanities, arts, social sciences, performing arts and business, as well as research MPhils and PhDs. The majority of courses can either be studied full-time or part-time. There are also a range of professional and short courses designed to enhance career development. In the 2008 RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) 75 per cent of the Universitys research submitted was considered internationally recognised, with some research achieving the highest grade possible (4*) and a rating of quality that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour. For more details about courses on offer, studying at Winchester, tuition fees and financial help please contact the Course Enquiries and Applications team on +44 (0) 1962 827234 or email course.enquiries@winchester.ac.uk

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MA Devised Performance

Building on the substantial expertise of the BA Performing Arts programme staff, along with invited guest artists, the MA Devised Performance provides an intensive, advanced level immersion in the creative processes of devising at the emerging professional level, and allows for creative practical and/or scholarly enquiry into these processes to take place. The programme integrates professional performance making and academic reflection on performance in ways that provoke dialogue between the creative and the analytical, and where reflection feeds the performance making process. It welcomes candidates who want to nourish, extend and refine their interest in devising as a processes and in the devised work as a product, as well as those whose practical reflection feeds scholarly interests. The programme supports group and solo work in an innovative programme that offers a commitment to in-depth process and high quality work. Modules begin with a focus on the self as resource (Devising

and the Performer), moving outwards to an examination of performance texts (Advanced Approaches to Text and Performance Writing), then on to work within public contexts (Devising and Site). The Advanced Performance Project offers a chance to develop performance skills according to group interests; alternatively Creative Production provides a starting point for professional curation and production. The culmination of the MA is a negotiated Independent Research Project which will reflect your unique interest, practice and exploration, building skills in scholarly and/or practice-based research. It is important to make clear that the programme functions at a competitive and professional level and that it demands both practical and intellectual skill.

FACT FILE
Full-time: 1 year Part-time: 2 years Start Date: September Entry requirements: Normally a first or second class Honours degree in a related subject or professional experience in the area of study. Application process: By both application and audition/interview. For this exercise students will need to prepare and show a devised solo performance excerpt. If English is not your first language: Students should have 600 TOEFL or IELTS 6.5 (including 6.5 in academic writing) or equivalent. If your score is below this level you may be required to attend a presessional course.

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MA Devised Performance

Programme content
Making performance is at the core of the MA Devised Performance. Students are asked to reflect upon, theorise and contextualise this performance making.

with text in devising as well as cultivating new forms of writing for performance. The module introduces students to a range of adaptation and deconstructive approaches enabling them to develop innovative ways of working with text for and in performance. Interested in addressing the perceived gap between non-text and text-based practices, we look at contemporary practices where classical texts are explored in innovative and critical ways as well as contemporary devising practices that use writing and text as a key element. Students are introduced to the latest discussions and debates concerning the use of text in contemporary performance and are subsequently asked to situate their practice in relation to ongoing discussions and developments. These questions and issues are, for example, collaborative writing, authorship, appropriation, ownership, the impact of modern technologies on performance writing. Research Methods

Modules
Semester 1: Introductory module: Devising and the Performer This is a reflective performance project, focusing on the self and autobiographical material as a resource. The module begins from the premise that one inevitably devises from autobiography, in the sense that all of our attitudes, opinions and creative impulses emerge from the constellation of corporeality, personality and life experience that we call the self. Aesthetic preference is not neutral or objective, it is deeply subjective. We explore devising using this attitude as a starting point and extend it into new realms of performance practice and reflection. Advanced Approaches to Text and Performance Writing This module addresses strategies for working

This module is designed to facilitate research both for those students wishing to negotiate an entirely written thesis and for those

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focusing on practice-led work, and thus helps prepare students for their Independent Study. Theoretical, practical and hybrid methodological approaches in performance research are explored.

Students undertake two of the following three modules. Students intending to study to MA level must take Gateway to Independent Study. Advanced Performance Project

Semester 2: Devising and Site In this module students create a performance, event or installation in a public space. They are encouraged to draw on a widening field of concern, as the student is invited to consider not only the physical, but also the socio-political environment within which the work is situated. This environment will be regarded as resource, provocation, field of resistance and site of collaborative exchange. This module involves students in an analysis and critique of contemporary sitespecific art, with a particular emphasis on its socio-political commentary and function. The module investigates the ways in which sitespecific performance and the critical writings and creative practices that inform it are frequently concerned with radical political, social or indeed aesthetic intervention or negotiation.

This is a performance project in which students will create a performance of an appropriate standard for an emerging company who may wish to tour professionally. The project will be negotiated and managed by the student company. This project responds to the pressures of professional practice in that the devising will take place over a three week intensive rehearsal period, although the planning of the project, including practical planning, will have taken place throughout the period of the MA. The intensive devising period is followed by further rehearsals and performance labs prior to the final performance. Each company has a tutor as supervisor and mentor, although the student company is responsible for all aspects of the project, including sound and lighting design, scenography, text and direction. Emphasis will be placed on the specific audience for the performance. The project

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MA Devised Performance

thus replicates the process that an individual artist or emerging company goes through in order to realise their first professional project.

prepare for a practice-led or more traditionally academic final independent project. Independent Study

framework. However, learning and teaching will be undertaken through a variety of mechanisms, enabling students to establish their own learning strategies and preferred research methodologies as they inform, analyse and build on their practical experience through lectures, debates, seminars and assignments involving critical writing and documentation. Since the course aims to offer an understanding and knowledge of professional practice, the teaching includes significant input from professional performance makers, both visiting lecturers and permanent members of staff, many of whom have their own established practices. Practical workshops and student labs are the key teaching method since the subject is a Performing Arts degree. At MA level these workshops are also an opportunity for students to engage in more intensive modes of learning. For example, in the Advanced Performance Project there is an intensive devising process replicating a professional one. It is expected that work with practitioners will take place during weekend workshops also. The processes and outcomes of practices

Creative Production This module is designed to introduce and familiarise the students with the roles and functions of creative production and the factors that are involved in the relationship between the performance practitioner and the creative producer. This module may be of particular interest to students who wish to prepare for professional engagement with the creative industries as part of their career plan, as well as for those who might be interested in the production role and its creative possibilities. Gateway to Independent Study Students proceeding to the full MA must take this module, which builds on the Research Methods module and will enable students to develop their proposals for independent study, identifying a topic under supervision. They will produce a research plan including key strategies and a list of performance/ bibliographic resources, enabling them to

A project negotiated between the student and the programme leader, leading to a portfolio of work which could include a combination of creative manifesto, dissertation, performative essay and independently devised performance with reflection on the process and outcome. It could also lead to a traditional academic dissertation, or a combination of this with practice-led research strategies, depending on the nature of the project and the students post-MA goals. This negotiated project can be designed to be of relevance to the onward career development of the graduating student.

Learning and teaching

The MA programme offers the opportunity to focus on creative practice as research, so that the rehearsal space as performance laboratory is central to its pedagogy. Many aspects of the learning experience revolve around an experiential pedagogy that seeks to develop creative skills within a theoretical, historical, critical and analytical

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will provide examples of work which students can reflect upon and refer to in the seminars, lectures and tutorials. This reflection leads on to further testing through performance making. Tutorials for groups and individuals are a vital part of Masters level study. They are used, for example, to discuss issues in advance of presentations and assignments, for feedback on assignments, guidance on specific and general issues relating to independent study and/or discussion of the Independent study. They facilitate specific and directed guidance and feedback on both conceptual and procedural matters, and seek actively to develop student-centred independent learning. Student presentations require individual students to defend before their peers and tutors argument that evaluates, assesses and synthesises research-based evidence pertaining to specific issues, concepts, theories and practices. Presentations develop the skills of independent research, which include library and computer research,

information gathering and writing skills. They develop in the student the ability to weigh critical and theoretical positions, construct argument and structure ideas. They develop skills of discussion and argument; skills of organisation, time management and presentation; also oral and communication skills. Professional practitioners provide vital opportunities for students to bring real world experience into the institution, working closely with students and offering a range of specific devising methods for specific audiences. Assesment is usually by portfolio, including, but not limited to specific assignments, in order to encourage an holistic approach.

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MA Devised Performance

Teaching team
The MA Devised Performance has been initiated by members of the Centre for Research into Expanded Dramaturgies and the Centre for Research into Negotiating Performance.

Fevered Sleep on productions including An Infinite Line: Brighton Festival, 2008; dramaturg for Simon Plumridge/Platform 4 on R&D phase of The Tempest (touring nationally 2009). Current projects include dramaturg for Douglas Rintoul and choreographer Darren Johnston on In a Dream dreamt by Another (2010/11) and On Ageing with Fevered Sleep/ David Harradine (2010). Yvon Bonenfant Yvon Bonenfant is a performance maker and practice-led researcher who works in intermedia from the perspective of extended voice. In 2009, he was artist in residence at the Experimental Music and Performing Arts Centre, Troy, NY USA where he created and premired the voice-video work Beacons (with video artist David Shearing). In 2007/8, Yvon Bonenfant received research-creation funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. With the ensemble the Galloping Cuckoos, he made a movement-street intervention work called The Opposite of Trauma (2008) (showed Paris, London, Cardiff). With painter and videographer Ludivine

Allegue, he created the installation B(earth) (2007) (shown Paris, Cardiff, Alsager); the videodance experimental film Intimacies (2008) (premiered 2e Mostra de Videodanza de Sao Carlos, Brazil) and the video work Beacons (2008) (exhibited at the Alsager Gallery in 2009). His voice and text appear in Micah Silvers installation The End of Safari at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2009/10. His performance for maximum five audience members at a time, Soie Soyuse (2007) played in Paris, New York, Wales and the video version in Tallinn. He has published in Performance Research, STP, SCAN Journal, Body, Music and Dance in Psychotherapy among others and his artists book Soie soyeuse was published by Editions Talmart, Paris in 2009. Richard Cuming Richard is a performer, deviser and director, who has worked both nationally and internationally. His interest is in the synthesis of different performance forms and the space between the real and the fake. With his company fishproductions he created two projects in unusual spaces, The Family Outing

Staff profiles
Synne Behrndt Synne is the co-author of Dramaturgy and Performance (Palgrave, 2008), with Cathy Turner and joint editor of a special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review on new dramaturgies. Other academic writing includes a chapter on seminal company The People Show for forthcoming Making Theatre Happen: Documentation and analysis of interactive devising processes, ed. Jackie Smart and Alex Mermikides (2010). Forthcoming publication includes Invisible Things. Documentation from a Devising Process with David Harradine (2010). Synne works as dramaturg and dramaturgical advisor for various directors and companies. Her recent UK dramaturgical collaborations include collaboration with David Harradine/

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MA Devised Performance

Caravan Holiday (recipient of a Year of the Artist Award in 2000) and Love Me Tender, performed in a lost property office (1997). With Fuse Performance he created Caf Lente (2006/7), an immersive performance event which combined sound, film and live performance which played at Visual Arts Festivals. In 2009 he was dramaturg for Fuse Performance on their performance event The Village Fete. He is Chair of the Board of Platform 4 Theatre Co and a member of the editorial board of Total Theatre magazine. He is a Principal Lecturer and Head of Performing Arts at The University of Winchester Janet Lee Janet Lee is a physical theatre performer and puppeteer whose specialist areas are Physical and Visual Theatre. She has directed for and performed with Strange Arrangements for the past 10 years as well as collaborating with Australian puppetry company Spare Parts Puppet Theatre. Janet is currently researching dance/puppetry as interdisciplinary practice. She recently co-created Dead Reckoning with Nigel Luck

and has published on dance and puppetry in Animations Inprint. She is a Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts at the University of Winchester. Dr Millie Taylor Millie Taylor graduated from Birmingham University with a degree in Music, Drama and Dance. She worked as a freelance musical director for almost twenty years and completed an MA in Theatre Practice and a PhD in Drama and Music at Exeter University. Recent publications include British Pantomime Performance (Intellect 2007) and Singing for Musicals: A Practical Guide (Crowood Press 2008) as well as articles and chapters on pantomime, musical theatre, experimental music theatre and voice. She is currently working on a monograph, Musical Theatre, Realism and Entertainment to be published by Ashgate Press. She is a member of IFTR working groups on Popular Entertainment and Music Theatre and member of the editorial boards of Studies in Musical Theatre and Popular Entertainment Studies. She is a Reader in Performing Arts

and Programme Leader for the MA in Popular Performances. Dr Cathy Turner Cathy Turner is a Reader in Performing Arts and convenor of the Centre for Research into Expanded Dramaturgies. She gained her PhD from Exeter University Drama Department in 1996. She is a core member of Wrights & Sites, a group of reflective practitioners committed to creating and researching sitespecific work and authors of An Exeter MisGuide (2003) and A Mis-Guide to Anywhere (2006). The company has also curated work for the Vienna Festival/Tanzquartier Wien (2007) and the Belluard Bollwerk International Festival, Switzerland (2008). Cathy is joint author, with Synne Behrndt, of Dramaturgy and Performance (Palgrave 2008) and has written articles for Performance Research, STP, New Theatre Quarterly, Studies in Writing for Creative Practice and Contemporary Theatre Review. In 2008, she was awarded research funding from AHRC to support Writing Space, a project investigating new approaches to dramaturgical work with writers across an expanded field.

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MA Devised Performance

Assessment
Assessment on the programme is by a variety of means. Some modules are assessed by portfolio. As in a fine art portfolio, examples of arts practice are included in the portfolio. While live performances cannot be physically incorporated into a portfolio, their documentation can, and the performances themselves are considered as contributing to the overall portfolio mark. It is important that students should be equipped to elect to submit a dissertation for their Independent Study and the portfolios will therefore include extended critical writing in response to assignments and relevant criteria will be applied to the portfolio contents (for example demonstration of the ability to analyse and debate contemporary performance through critical writing). The portfolio offers some flexibility so that students can develop its contents as appropriate to specific projects and concerns; on the other hand, parity will be maintained in that each will contain specified elements (for example, a piece of critical writing; a journal; creative documentation of work), and there will be clearly defined expectations of the whole.

The portfolio thus serves two purposes. Firstly, it is an assessed document with specific assessments required by the module, but secondly it provides an archive for the student practitioner enabling them to reflect upon their process, and acts as a resource for the planning of future projects. Methods of documentation of live performance practice are increasingly being discussed in professional practice, and the portfolio will also serve as an artefact for debate around the documentation of practice. Essay and presentation-based assessments are also used in some modules. Assessment of the independent project is negotiated in relation to each project, yet with reference to flexible models appropriate to different research methodologies. Again, this reflects the programmes strategy of balancing flexibility with clearly defined expectations and criteria.

Career opportunities
The course might act as a bridge towards developing a professional practice: it aims to create strong, independent performance makers, who have knowledge of the professional performing arts sector and are creative and critically reflective practitioners. Alternatively, it could be a first step towards a PhD and would be particularly appropriate as a step towards a practice-as-research PhD.

Contact us
Yvon Bonenfant Programme Leader Telephone: +44 (0) 1962 854485 Email: Yvon.Bonenfant@winchester.ac.uk Course Enquiries and Applications Telephone: +44 (0) 1962 827234 Email: course.enquiries@winchester.ac.uk

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Facilities on campus
Martial Rose Library The Library offers study places for more than 450 readers, including 150 computers linked to Winchesters network. The library has a collection of more than 250,000 books, videos, DVDs and sound recordings and receives some 1,000 journals, in printed and electronic form. Centre for Research and Knowledge Exchange The centre offers core services to research students, consisting of a dedicated office with full IT provision, a meeting room and other facilities which are open 14 hours a day, seven days a week. The centre is also home to Wired Wessex which is a business support network working with micro businesses in the new media and IT Industry. The Stripe This is a state-of-the-art lecture theatre complex encompassing an auditorium, lecture theatres, seminar rooms and studio spaces. The facility is used for lectures, seminars and as a performance space. A number of key public events also take place inside The Stripe throughout the year. University Centre The University Centre creates an impressive gateway to the King Alfred Campus. It opened in September 2007 and includes the Student Union, academic bookshop, minimart convenience store and places to eat and drink. The Centres Learning Caf provides an informal atmosphere to relax or study, offering 24-hour Internet access seven days a week. It is installed with wireless Internet technology allowing for laptop use or alternatively people can use one of the 50 networked PCs. Art and Culture As well as being one of the most popular centres for higher education for performing arts courses in the UK, Winchesters campus is a thriving network of art activity. The campus itself has a vast range of performance and rehearsal space including the new 6 million West Downs Performing Arts Centre. For more information about the University of Winchester go to www.winchester.ac.uk

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Finding out more...

Course Enquiries and Applications Telephone: +44 (0)1962 827234 Email: course.enquiries@winchester.ac.uk

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