Overview

DMU has a long-established reputation as a Centre for Excellence in Performance Arts, which reflects our commitment to innovative and excellent teaching and learning.

This course incorporates many contemporary arts disciplines, such as acting, dance, voice, physical theatre, music theatre, sound design and digital video. It celebrates and investigates the possibilities of live and digital arts in a range of performance contexts, from the traditional to the avant-garde.

With a focus on making performance, you can tailor your studies across three themes – contemporary performance, digital performance or applied arts and education. You will be supported to develop as an innovative artist able to create, perform and manage yourself, and others, within the national and international performing arts industries.

Our graduates are dynamic, creative practitioners who can take a piece of performance right through from creative brief to public performance – skills that are attractive to potential employers. As a graduate, you will be equipped with a high level of resilience and a range of skills and experience that will enable you to respond flexibly to the changing landscape of the sector.

Key features:

• You will study a range of topics such as physical theatre, dramatic performance, digital sound and film, site specific, and contemporary music theatre in an intensive project-based approach mirroring the performing arts industry.
• Graduates have gone on to pursue a variety of roles and performance opportunities, including teaching and training, projects at Curve theatre and Audience of the Future – collaborative research and development with the intention of delivering an immersive live performance on multiple platforms.
• Boost your exposure in the field through our excellent industry links. Recent internationally renowned visiting companies have included Frantic Assembly, Imitating the Dog and Gecko.
• Real-life experience is offered though a placement module in your final year, where you can gain valuable knowledge with a professional organisation and develop your artistic voice by building a range of practical skills.

• DMU is recognised as a Centre for Excellence in Performance Arts, with great facilities providing specialist studios and rehearsal spaces designed specifically for performance learning activities. Access digital video cameras, sound recording equipment and editing suites to enhance and perfect your craft.
• Take part in our international experience programme, DMU Global. Students have benefited from trips to the Utrecht Spring Dance and Theatre Festival in the Netherlands, a performing artist’s residency in Valletta, Malta, and the opportunity to visit creative spaces and perform in New York.
• Benefit from the cutting edge research and practice carried out by Performing Arts staff in the Research Institute of Drama, Dance and Performance Studies Research.

Structure and assessment

Course modules

Teaching and assessments

Structure

The degree has a strong core of modules that develop your skills in performance-making for stage and screen-based media, alongside contextual knowledge of contemporary performing arts through the 20th and 21st centuries. Around the core, you have the freedom to construct your own specialist programme within three broad themes:

Contemporary Performance
This theme includes a range of innovative contemporary practices across live and digital media.  You will develop your understanding and skills in the creation and performance of all manner of contemporary performance, including immersive theatre, site specific, music theatre and Live Art. You can do this through a range of optional modules including Devising in the second year, as well as International Performance Project, Performance Company and/or Live Art in the final year. Recent graduates who focused on this theme have gone on to the Performance Practices MA or pursued a career in performance making in the UK and overseas, including Frankie who made and toured solo work in Berlin.

Digital Performance
This theme explores the extraordinary use of digital technology in the context of live theatre, dance, interactive installation, music, gaming and internet performance and software development.  Develop the skills to make work for screen, or digital soundscapes, or even performance in the virtual world.  You can explore this theme in a range of option choices including Performance, Interaction and Digital Technologies in the third year. Recent graduates who focused on this theme include Amy and Ruth who set up a professional company delivering mixed reality workshops to schools, James who has created sound designs for several professional theatre companies, and Laura and Andrew who set up a successful theatre and media production company in the East Midlands.

Applied Arts and Education
This theme develops your understanding and skills in how arts inform and enrich our lives in community, healthcare and educational settings. Module option choices with this focus include the second-year module Applied Performance which leads on to Education and the Performing Arts in the final year. These can be combined with other specialist applied arts modules and/or a wide range of practice-based modules such as Devising or Performance Company. This prepares you for further training in teaching or applied arts careers such as leading community workshops. Recent graduates pursue careers in a broad spectrum of applied arts including Alex who works with adults with special needs in Staffordshire and Sarah who teaches performing arts at a school in Shropshire.

Contact hours
You will be taught through a combination of lectures, tutorials, seminars, group work and self-directed study. Assessment is through coursework (presentations, essays and reports) Your precise timetable will depend on the optional modules you choose to take, however, in your first year you will normally attend around 13 hours of timetabled taught sessions (lectures and tutorials) each week, and we expect you to undertake at least 25 further hours of independent study to complete project work and research.

Facilities and features