KSB125 Theatricality and the Contemporary Audience
To view more information for this unit, select Unit Outline from the list below. Please note the teaching period for which the Unit Outline is relevant.
| Unit code: | KSB125 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisite(s): | KSB115 |
| Credit points: | 12 |
| Timetable | Details in HiQ, if available |
| Availabilities |
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| CSP student contribution | $1,164 |
| Pre-2021 CSP student contribution | $996 The pre-2021 commonwealth supported place (CSP) contribution amount only applies to students enrolled in a course prior to 2021. To learn more, visit our Understanding your fees page. |
| Domestic tuition unit fee | $4,356 |
| International unit fee | $4,668 |
Unit Outline: Semester 2 2025, Kelvin Grove, Internal
| Unit code: | KSB125 |
|---|---|
| Credit points: | 12 |
| Pre-requisite: | KSB115 |
| Coordinator: | Caroline Heim | caroline.heim@qut.edu.au |
Overview
This introductory unit develops your understanding and skills in creating acting performances that dynamically engage with live audiences, requiring you to investigate ways of combining physical and vocal embodiment with genre-appropriate, audience-focused staging conventions. Your enquiry includes exploring how realism and theatricality can be combined to intensify the impact on the audience of dramatic meaning, social commentary and visual storytelling. This enquiry will be informed by engagement with a range of play texts and theoretical perspectives relating to acting issues associated with this form of theatre and its political, social and cultural contexts. The unit challenges you to apply your developing acting, voice, imaginative and embodiment skills and techniques, to the demands associated with performing dynamic roles from complex source material of different genres and cultural contexts.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this unit you will be able to:
- Creatively investigate the interplay of theatrical staging and a developing embodied instrumentality in the performing of works to live audiences.
- Apply skills in contextual research, interpretation and creative development to the adaptation and staging of traditional dramatic texts for contemporary audiences.
- Demonstrate an embodied understanding of the literary, rhetorical, dramaturgical, and staging codes and conventions associated with complex dramatic texts.
- Demonstrate a capacity for independent learning and practice aligned with industry expectations and opportunities.
Content
This unit focusses on the continuing cognitive and imaginative development required of an actor, introducing instrumental, textual, imaginative and interpretive skills and techniques that can be applied to complex creative challenges in a variety of acting contexts. It includes experimenting with performance outcomes that dynamically engage with live audiences using a range of forms and techniques. Texts include Shakespeare, as well as contemporary source material such as political speeches or stand up comedy, and are chosen to enhance a holistic approach to developing the understanding, skills, methods and techniques associated with an embodied art form.
Learning Approaches
In this unit, you will learn by engaging in the following:
you will engage in a series of workshops and acting projects in the studio or other acting settings designed to challenge your developing abilities as an actor engaging with live audiences, and to help you extend and integrate your acting, voice and movement skills and artistry.
Workshops will include direct instruction, rehearsal direction, play-based exercises, group collaboration and problem-based learning.
The expectation is that you will learn by setting your own goals and by systematically and independently mastering skills and techniques introduced to you, and by testing their application to your material in autonomous rehearsals.
Feedback on Learning and Assessment
Feedback in this unit is provided to you in the following ways:
- a range of formative tasks and roles will be offered to facilitate progressive feedback to assist you in your learning
- comments on summative assessment work in addition to criteria sheets, both for group work and individual endeavour
- criteria sheet grading.
Assessment
Overview
There are three assessment items in this unit. The first two are practical and give you the opportunity to demonstrate your ability to explore the relationship between the actor's fully embodied voice and physical presence to visual and physical storytelling, using a wide range of rhetorical devices and textual features. The reflective journal tracks cognitive and artistic discoveries, requiring you to reference your thinking to a range of theoretical perspectives, expressing your ideas in scholarly language fully supported by academic referencing.
Unit Grading Scheme
7- point scale
Assessment Tasks
Assessment: Presentation
A short presentation of foundation concept of character transformation.
Assessment: Examination (practical)
Presentation of a complex character transformation within a scripted text.
Assessment: Reflective journal
A culmination of the semester's reflections of practice, presented as a cohesive journal utilising tools of reflection on skills development, and problem-solving underpinned by contextual research based in scholarly works.
This assignment is eligible for the 48-hour late submission period and assignment extensions.
Academic Integrity
Academic integrity is a commitment to undertaking academic work and assessment in a manner that is ethical, fair, honest, respectful and accountable.
The Academic Integrity Policy sets out the range of conduct that can be a failure to maintain the standards of academic integrity. This includes, cheating in exams, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion and contract cheating. It also includes providing fraudulent or altered documentation in support of an academic concession application, for example an assignment extension or a deferred exam.
You are encouraged to make use of QUT’s learning support services, resources and tools to assure the academic integrity of your assessment. This includes the use of text matching software that may be available to assist with self-assessing your academic integrity as part of the assessment submission process.
Breaching QUT’s Academic Integrity Policy or engaging in conduct that may defeat or compromise the purpose of assessment can lead to a finding of student misconduct (Code of Conduct – Student) and result in the imposition of penalties under the Management of Student Misconduct Policy, ranging from a grade reduction to exclusion from QUT.
Requirements to Study
Requirements
All students are requested to visit and review the Health and Safety information on the HiQ web pages (CIESJ Tier 1 HSE requirement)
This unit also requires a Tier 2 CIESJ Health and Safety Induction which is provided by the technician on site in the theatre, workshop or studio.
Resources
Required reading will be available online through the unit's Canvas site.
Resource Materials
Recommended text(s)
Other unit readings and reference material will be available online.
Risk Assessment Statement
For risks associated with using campus buildings or QUT facilities, refer to the HiQ Health and Safety information. For CIESJ Tiers 2 and 3 Health and Safety requirements, you will be instructed on safe procedures and the required safety gear for all studio and workshop processes that are demonstrated.
As all performance-makers understand, creating a performance potentially carries with it certain physical and/or emotional risks, both in the rehearsal room and in the theatre. Indeed, taking risks is an integral component of the art form’s processes. Some rehearsal warmups and exercises, and some performance events may include physically or emotionally strenuous activities. Managing this risk to ensure working conditions are safe, is always a high priority in the production process. It is therefore extremely important that if you are aware of personal physical or emotional vulnerabilities that make you feel unsafe or at risk in any way, you should immediately inform teaching staff or other supervisors, so that your situation can be evaluated, and appropriate rectifying action can be taken.
Theatres and other performance spaces are also potentially dangerous places, particularly backstage during performances when low light conditions prevail. You will be warned by the stage manager, the production manager or the director of any specific risks that you will need to be aware of, when your project team first moves into the theatre. Whenever moving into a new performance space, you should always conduct your own risk assessment, and notify your team or director of any hazards you have personally identified.
Every effort is made by QUT staff to ensure that you work in a safe environment. Conversely you are absolutely expected to follow all safety rules, procedures and directions, and to ensure that you do not put at risk the safety of others, or yourself, or of the highest artistic fulfilment of the project in any way.
Course Learning Outcomes
This unit is designed to support your development of the following course/study area learning outcomes.CA01 Bachelor of Creative Arts
- Cite and discuss a broad and coherent knowledge of historical and contemporary cultural contexts for creative practice, including the contribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges.
Relates to: ULO1, ULO2, ULO3 - Identify and demonstrate knowledge of the techniques and concepts underpinning your field of creative practice.
Relates to: ULO1, ULO2, ULO3 - Communicate independent learning clearly and coherently in diverse modes relevant to your field of creative practice.
Relates to: ULO3, ULO4 - Communicate, represent, and promote your work in ways relevant to your creative field.
Relates to: ULO4 - Discern, critically analyse, and synthesise knowledge in complex creative and critical settings.
Relates to: ULO3 - Work productively as a leader and collaborator in disciplinary and interdisciplinary practices.
Relates to: ULO2, ULO3 - Formulate and apply an independent perspective through contextual research, reflection, and by acting on the informed critique of others.
Relates to: ULO4 - Demonstrate respect for cultural and social differences, sustainability, and work with integrity across all practice and professional settings.
Relates to: ULO1, ULO3 - Operate with initiative, ethical judgement and professionalism, both alone and in groups.
Relates to: ULO2
CA02 Bachelor of Creative Arts (Acting)
- Cite and discuss a broad and coherent knowledge of historical and contemporary cultural contexts for creative practice, including the contribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges.
Relates to: ULO1, ULO2, ULO3, Presentation, Examination (practical) - Identify and demonstrate knowledge of the techniques and concepts underpinning your field of creative practice.
Relates to: ULO1, ULO2, ULO3, Presentation, Examination (practical) - Communicate independent learning clearly and coherently in diverse modes relevant to your field of creative practice.
Relates to: ULO3, ULO4, Presentation, Examination (practical), Reflective journal - Communicate, represent, and promote your work in ways relevant to your creative field.
Relates to: ULO4, Reflective journal - Discern, critically analyse, and synthesise knowledge in complex creative and critical settings.
Relates to: ULO3, Presentation, Examination (practical) - Work productively as a leader and collaborator in disciplinary and interdisciplinary practices.
Relates to: ULO2, ULO3, Presentation, Examination (practical) - Formulate and apply an independent perspective through contextual research, reflection, and by acting on the informed critique of others.
Relates to: ULO4, Reflective journal - Demonstrate respect for cultural and social differences, sustainability, and work with integrity across all practice and professional settings.
Relates to: ULO1, ULO3, Presentation, Examination (practical) - Operate with initiative, ethical judgement and professionalism, both alone and in groups.
Relates to: ULO2, Presentation, Examination (practical)