Year 2 Acting Module

Module MT8:

UK Credits: ECTS: Level:

Year 2 Acting

35 17.5 HE5

Outline

You will explore a variety of acting styles and techniques and develop ownership of your creative process. You will also further strengthen your vocal technique.

Overall Aims

To enable you to develop your ability to: • Perform confidently in a variety of performance situations, including musicals and plays. • Perform to a professional standard with discipline, energy and technical control.

What will I be expected to achieve?

On successful completion of this module, you will be expected to be able to: Skills • Perform confidently and truthfully with energy and focus. • Use imagination and creativity in performance. • Work in an effective and disciplined way as a member of a group in performance. • Develop an ownership of your own creative process. • Be in full control of your body and voice in performance. • Develop confidence in the use of a range of acting styles and techniques Knowledge and Understanding • Demonstrate a developed understanding of textual analysis. • Demonstrate a developed understanding of the performance of text. • Demonstrate a confident understanding of the techniques and terminology of professional theatre.

Acting

Tutor Rohan Tickell Tutor led Hours 4.5 x 30 + 1.25 x 3 = 138.75 hours

Aims

To enable you to: • Further develop the skills of creativity, imagination and group work. • Further develop the ability to work productively through self-directed study. • Further develop textual analysis skills. • Cultivate an expanded practical understanding of character development/design

• Cultivate an understanding of/empathy for other actors’ creative processes. • Reinforce the first year work on theatrical discipline and health and safety • Further develop the use of vocal and physical skills in performance. • Further develop an ability to reflect on your work as an actor.

What will I be expected to achieve?

On successful completion of this component, you will be expected to be able to: Skills • Take responsibility for character development. • Work creatively in a group or individually • Improvise both spontaneously and with preparation. • Work instinctively and without self-editing. • Research and find appropriate scenes. Knowledge and Understanding • Demonstrate an advanced understanding of the requirements of an actor in a rehearsal room and performance situation. • Demonstrate an advanced ability to implement Stanislavski’s system of textual analysis. • Demonstrate an understanding of a range of acting methodologies. • Further develop the creation of believable characters. • Further expand the understanding of the value of research and textual analysis. • Further develop knowledge and understanding of the creative process.

Speech & Voice

Tutor Tutor led Hours Adam Wallis, Caitlin Stegmoller 4 x 30 = 120 hours

Aims

• To free the actor through an embodied vocal technique - extending the awareness of the difference between our habitual voice and our free voice. • To further explore the interdependence of body and breath in developing a free, supported and placed voice. • To develop connections between speech/voice and the expression of thought, emotion and imagination. • To explore how vocal choices support acting choices and vice versa. • To develop the ability to maintain vocal technique in performance. • To develop strategies for exploring a variety of texts • To introduce and develop sight reading skills • To encourage personal responsibility in the development and application of vocal techniques. • To extend abilities in the practice of a number of accents for performance.

What will I be expected to achieve?

On successful completion of this component, you will be expected to be able to demonstrate: Skills • A free supported voice that is responsive to imagery, emotion, thought and external stimuli. • A voice that is able to use a full range of vocal variety to serve the needs of all types of performance and character without constriction and unnecessary tensions. • Techniques to cope safely with extended vocal demands such as shouting and screaming. • Ability to sustain convincingly in performance any of the accents which have been studied in depth. • Ability to create a basic accent breakdown by listening to a recording of an accent • Ability to mark up a text using phonetics Knowledge and Understanding • an understanding of how voice techniques free the actor’s communication and ability to play with truth. • theory of the placement, posture, intonation, vowel and consonant changes and dialect changes of the accents studied. • Enhanced understanding of the IPA as it relates to the accents studied Values and Attitudes • an increased appreciation of words and language through a variety of text

How will I learn?

In the second year vocal technique is reviewed and extended through regular technique classes. There is an increasing emphasis on personal responsibility for vocal preparation and development. The year’s work will focus on extending the vocal range and articulatory agility of the performer through a succession of performance texts from classical through to contemporary play texts and poetry. Articulation and speech skills will also be refined by using a bone prop and classical drill work as part of your daily practice. As you develop your ability to work with increasingly complex and demanding texts the focus will be on embracing truth on a large scale with accompanying vocal technique extending to shouting and screaming, and then incorporating these into performance. Vocal practice is extended into scene work to enable the connections to be made between acting and vocal theory and practice. Practical text skills are also developed through the study of sight reading techniques. In dialect classes, you listen to a variety of source materials and are asked to analyse the placement, posture, intonation and major sound changes in each accent. With guidance from the tutor and access to detailed dialect breakdowns, you develop your skills in speaking and inhabiting the accents, applying them to a number of texts as well as developing the ability to improvise in each accent. Development is continuously assessed through class

performance. Dialects studied are General American, Southern American (Texas), and New York (Brooklyn).

Lift Off

Tutor Rohan Tickell, Visiting Guest Tutor, Visiting Musical Directors Tutor led Hours 1.25 x 10 = 12.5 hours

Aims

To enable you to develop your ability to: • Move truthfully and seamlessly from spoken to sung text whilst maintaining /developing character and narrative. • Deliver dialogue effectively and creatively in connection with underscoring. • Invoke a range of tactics and tools to enable different styles of transition between the sung and spoken. • Unite the technical and performance skills of acting with those involved in the delivery of song. • Work effectively with Directors and Musical Directors on the integration spoken and sung material.

What will I be expected to achieve?

On successful completion of this component, you will be expected to be able to: Skills • Integrate acting into singing • Achieve the affective transition from spoken dialogue to song • Time dialogue to underscoring • Time spoken text within a song • Perform excerpts from through sung musicals, including recitative, with confidence and clarity • Work confidently with vamp bars

How will I learn?

You will participate in a sequence of practical classes, working with a Director and a Musical Director on excerpts of musicals. Excerpts may include scenes of dialogue, underscoring, singing and spoken text within a song.

Fitness, Health and Safety

The planning, implementing and maintaining of personal health and fitness is an intrinsic part of Year 2 teaching.

Acting

Students are instructed on all aspects of theatre discipline, health and safety and best practice. This is reinforced in the performance year both in class and in rehearsal.

Voice

You are given instruction on how to use the voice safely.

Emphasis is placed on the individual’s responsibility for the voice, its development and care.

What will I be expected to achieve?

At the conclusion of the Acting Module you should have developed a professional level of understanding of how to: • prepare and execute suitable warm-up exercises in order to protect the body and the voice • be aware of other performers on stage – mass exits, discipline & control of actions • be aware of the dangers of unrehearsed action • have respect for other performers – confidentiality, personal hygiene, kissing, spitting • be aware of self – misuse of drugs and alcohol • take care of the voice – shouting, stage whisper • maintain the condition of the vocal mechanism • maintain safety for self, other performers, stage management and audience in all staged encounters and to maintain distance and adjust where necessary for safety.

MODULE TEACHING PATTERN

Teaching Component Type Contact Hours Self Directed Study Hours

Total Student Learning Hours Acting Workshop classes 138.75 40 178.75 Speech and Voice Technique classes 120 30 150 Lift Off Workshop classes 12.5 8.75 21.25

Totals 271.25 78.75 350

How will I be assessed?

Monitoring of your progress in each of the components of the acting module is continuous. Tutors inform the Head of Acting immediately if they have any concerns about your level of attainment, discipline or attendance. The purpose of assessment is to enable you and your teachers to identify your strengths and weaknesses in the key areas of the programme. The main assessment methods are: • Continuous observation in all Technique classes • Mid and End of Year evaluation in Acting, Voice and Speech • End of Year assessment in Acting, Voice and Speech • Practical assessment in projects and studio performances • Observation of written assignments, tests, notebooks and diaries

Mid and End of Year Class work

Tutors give students indicative grades half way through the year in mid February and formal classwork marks at the end of the year in June. Mid and end of year class work grades are awarded on the basis of your response to, and development through, the process. Assessment is made with reference to the component-specific learning outcomes described in the relevant module and the following general criteria relating to Professional Employment skills:

• commitment, preparedness for work; self-directed study • concentration; application; personal motivation • receptiveness to the process • ability to accept, and act on, notes and corrections • ability to work within group (listening; sensitivity; responsiveness; generosity; co-operation) • progression: growth and development of skills and knowledge • development of flexibility and spontaneity • capacity to experiment and take risks • development of awareness of the working process You must achieve a pass grade in each subject to progress to Year 3. In addition, you are provided with a written report on your work in these components.

End of year Assessments

At the end of the summer term you will be formally assessed in each of the disciplines before a panel which may include an external assessor. The formal assessment in acting consists of performance of a duologue or scene chosen and rehearsed in class with support from your tutor. Your acting in the scene will be assessed separately from your voice work. You will also be required to select and perform a short (two minutes maximum) monologue and rehearse it in all three core American accents you have learned in class. On the day of the assessment you will perform the speech in your chosen accent, and then you will perform it a second time in an accent chosen by the panel. In support of your practical work you will be required to submit a written deconstruction of each accent together with appropriately marked up scripts.

MODULE ASSESSMENT PATTERN

Assessment Component Acting Speech and Voice

Lift Off

Assessment Type Acting assessment class work Voice assessment 70% Accent assessment 30% class work class work

Weight ing 75% 25% 75%

Pass Mark

Pass/ Fail 40% No 40% No

25% n/a n/a Yes

What do I have to pass?

You are required to achieve a grade of 40% or above in the end of year acting, voice and accent assessments, and in your class work in Acting and Speech and Voice, and to pass the other components. Assessment criteria and grade descriptors can be found at the back of this handbook. The overall mark for the module is calculated according to the following weightings:

Acting 70% Speech and Voice 30%

How and when will I get feedback on my assessments?

Individual one-to-one feedback will be provided by the Head of Acting and the second year voice tutor towards the end of the assessment fortnight. Clarification of feedback or extra tutorials can be requested from the Head of Department during weekly bookable tutorials.

READING LIST

Title Author Publisher Year

Different Every Night A Challenge for the Actor The Ode Less Travelled Bounce Mike Alfreds Nick Hern Uta Hagen Methuen Stephen Fry Arrow Matthew Syed Robinson 2013 1991 2007 2012

The Complete Stanislavski Toolkit Bella Merlin Nick Hern 2014

Shakespeare’s Advice to the Players Peter Hall Oberon Books 2009

Why Is That So Funny? John Wright Methuen 2006