Writing for Performance 2 (Collab)

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2015:

120 Hours

For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Student Support and Engagement Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Overview, Learning Outcomes, Assessment and Generic Skills sections of this entry.

It is University policy to take all reasonable steps to minimise the impact of disability upon academic study, and reasonable adjustments will be made to enhance a student's participation in the University's programs. Students who feel their disability may impact on meeting the requirements of this subject are encouraged to discuss this matter with a Faculty Student Adviser and Student Equity and Disability Support: http://services.unimelb.edu.au/disability

In this practice-based subject the student writer undertakes a range of writing classes and exercises with the aim of developing techniques for the generation and structuring of original material for live performance within a collaborative context; in working to a brief in diverse professional circumstances; and in developing the skills necessary to negotiate a collaborative creative vision. Students engage in a range of collaborative writing exercises including working with performers on a small group devised project, team writing, improvisation, writing with/for communities, and collaborative adaptations of existing dramatic texts. The subject focuses on the relationship between form and content, and between performers and the audience, on tensions between order and disorder, questions of authorship, and what constitutes performance in the hyper-real digital age. New international and Australian forms of ‘decentered’ collaborative dramaturgy, in which a multiplicity of trends, narratives and directions run in parallel and/or intersect in various innovative ways, will also be explored. From time to time there will be master classes with visiting professional performance writers.

On completing this subject students will be able to:
• demonstrate an ability to write for performance collaboratively and in diverse ways at a high standard;
• work productively and creatively at various levels, both as an individual and as a team member, in a wide variety of performing artist environments;
• demonstrate skills in the gathering and organisation of research materials;
• effectively document the creative process;
• demonstrate the ability to write collaboratively in new forms;
• demonstrate the capacity to respond in writing creatively, imaginatively and rigorously to diverse stimuli and by means of diverse processes;
• demonstrate an advanced understanding of the building blocks of dramatic and other forms of writing for performance.

Ongoing participation in class work, readings, workshops and discussions 10%

Portfolio of collaborative writing works and their performance-readings, equivalent to 3,000 words 70%

Casebook and individual reflection paper to set topic, equivalent to 2,000 words 20%

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.

On completing this subject students will be able to:
• demonstrate the capacity to evaluate and synthesise data and other information;
• demonstrate an ability to access data and other information from a range of sources;
• demonstrate an advanced ability to discourse on artistic practice in the context of wider aesthetic, social and historical domains;
• demonstrate an ability to apply relevant research processes to specific cultural practice;
• demonstrate the ability to communicate in oral and written form;
• demonstrate the capacity for critical thinking.