KSB236 The Actor in the Performance Space
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: | KSB236 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisite(s): | KSB126 or KSB108 or KTB121 |
| Equivalent(s): | KSB229 |
| Credit points: | 12 |
| Timetable | Details in HiQ, if available |
| Availabilities |
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| CSP student contribution | $1,118 |
| Pre-2021 CSP student contribution | $957 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 | $4,104 |
| International unit fee | $4,320 |
Unit Outline: Semester 1 2024, Kelvin Grove, Internal
| Unit code: | KSB236 |
|---|---|
| Credit points: | 12 |
| Pre-requisite: | KSB126 or KSB108 or KTB121 |
| Equivalent: | KSB229 |
| Coordinator: | Mark Radvan | m.radvan@qut.edu.au |
Overview
This unit introduces practical opportunities to apply your voice, movement and acting skills to the development of complex stories in a performance space. The foundation of expert performance skills lies in the combination of all acting skills, applied to performance texts, and expressed in dynamic and evocative realisation of stories on stage. This unit seeks to allow you to develop the ability to interpret the voice, movement, acting, stylistic, and cultural demands of a performance text, and realise them through clear staging, in a powerful way, enriching the audience’s experience of the fictional world presented in the work. The unit thus seeks to extend and integrate your developing knowledge, understanding and skills in acting, within the cultural and stylistic demands of the text, and the realisation of the text on stage, as you prepare for the demands of the acting profession.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this unit you will be able to:
- Reflect on and critically analyse the artistic and methodological issues encountered in a performance project.
- Apply appropriate methods and processes of acting to the realisation of ideas and critiques associated with staging dramatic texts.
- Apply an understanding of cultural codes and conventions to the presenting of dramaturgically complete character.
- Work both independently and collaboratively in response to a variety of project demands.
Content
This intermediate unit focuses on your continuing development as an actor for the stage. It involves performance outcomes and expands your skill-set and challenges your capacities to work within collaborative creative frameworks towards live performance.
Learning Approaches
In this unit you will engage in a series of rehearsals and performance projects of playscripts designed to challenge your developing abilities as a screen and stage actor, and to help you extend and integrate your acting, voice and movement skills and artistry. The expectation is that you will learn by setting your own goals and by systematically and autonomously mastering all skills introduced to you, and by testing their application in rehearsals and performances under the guidance of directors and teachers.
Feedback on Learning and Assessment
Throughout the progress of workshops and rehearsals, teaching staff will provide feedback to you which will inform all assessments items. You are required to keep a journal as a record of your discoveries and feedback through the course of your study and as a resource for the Reflective Journal written assessment task in this unit.
Feedback in this unit is also provided to you in the following ways:
- comments on summative assessment work in addition to criteria sheets, both for group work and individual endeavour
- generic comments back to the cohort via QUT Canvas
- criteria sheet grading.
Assessment
Overview
There are two performance exercises, designed to enable you to maximise your opportunities to apply and develop your skills in acting in specific and limited contexts. These are authentic assessments as they reflect the requirements needed for professional acting practice within the Australian context. You will also be required to keep a written reflective record of your progress and personal discoveries, related to acting.
Unit Grading Scheme
7- point scale
Assessment Tasks
Assessment: Reflective Journal
You will create weekly reflections throughout the semester, evaluating your learning, including critical analytical reflection referencing contemporary discourse around issues of acting methodology, staging and/or dramaturgy, relating to one of your performance projects in this semester. You will highlight the research, textual analysis and character development you have been addressing for each performance outcome. You will be assessed on the final summary reflection.
This is an assignment for the purposes of an extension.
Assessment: Performance
A performance of a character/s in a play or theatrical event, addressing simple or accessible cultural codes and issues, with simple staging for an audience.
Assessment: Performance
A performance of a character/s in a play or theatrical event, addressing complex or unfamiliar cultural codes and issues, with staging for an audience informed by simple aesthetic codes.
Academic Integrity
Students are expected to engage in learning and assessment at QUT with honesty, transparency and fairness. Maintaining academic integrity means upholding these principles and demonstrating valuable professional capabilities based on ethical foundations.
Failure to maintain academic integrity can take many forms. It includes cheating in examinations, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion, and submitting an assessment item completed by another person (e.g. contract cheating). It can also include providing your assessment to another entity, such as to a person or website.
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.
Further details of QUT’s approach to academic integrity are outlined in the Academic integrity policy and the Student Code of Conduct. Breaching QUT’s Academic integrity policy is regarded as student misconduct and can lead to the imposition of penalties ranging from a grade reduction to exclusion from QUT.
Resources
Required equipment is listed in the Resource materials section.
Required play scripts – the choice of these will be advised as and when the performance season is approved. Other required reading will be available online.
Resource Materials
Safety and protective equipment
Proper clothing appropriate for active studio work is required, including closed-in shoes.
Risk Assessment Statement
All students and staff are required to complete the Tier 1 CIF General Health and Safety Induction for access to campus buildings and facilities. This must be completed online. This unit also requires a Tier 2 CIF Health and Safety Induction which is provided by the technician on site in the theatre, workshop or studio.
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 warm ups 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 your teacher, director or stage manager, 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 in to 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 Drama staff at QUT 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.KK34 Bachelor of Fine 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: ULO3 - Demonstrate complex problem solving through iterative experimentation and the creative and critical development of ideas and outcomes.
Relates to: ULO1, ULO2 - Demonstrate technical proficiency in at least one area of your field of creative practice.
Relates to: ULO2, ULO4 - Communicate independent learning clearly and coherently in diverse modes relevant to your field of creative practice.
Relates to: ULO1 - Discern, critically analyse and synthesise knowledge in complex creative practice settings.
Relates to: ULO2 - Work productively as a leader and collaborator in disciplinary and interdisciplinary creative practice.
Relates to: ULO2, ULO4 - Formulate and apply an independent perspective through reflection and by acting on the informed critique of others.
Relates to: ULO1, ULO4 - Demonstrate respect for cultural and social differences, and work with integrity across creative practice networks.
Relates to: ULO3, ULO4 - Operate with initiative, ethical judgement and professionalism in creative practice, both alone and in groups.
Relates to: ULO3