Theatre and Performance Studies is taught across many schools and departments of King’s College London. We have attempted to collate modules that may be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates, early career researchers or faculty members with investments in Theatre and Performance Studies. This includes modules that directly engage in the field, research or writing practice of theatre and performance. This list likewise includes modules where the central driving question is tied to the conceptual or critical grounding of theatre and performance as a field. Finally, we have included modules where the field of study sits within an expanded understanding of what constitutes performance, such as immersive media, exhibitions and museums, history, image, object and gesture, memory, and the moving image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Genres of World Literature<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Caribbean Drama<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Art and Activism in the Digital Age<\/a>, co-created module recipient of a Curriculum Innovation Award<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Late Shakespeare<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Film of the Play<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Twentieth-Century American Fiction<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Multi-Ethnic American Modernisms<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Introduction to American Literature<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Experimental Theatre: Poems, Playtexts, Manifestos<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Science, Nature and Performance: From Biopolitics to Bioart<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Performance in Medieval Culture<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Text and Performance: An Introduction to French and Francophone Theatre and Film<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n History into Literature<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Aeschylean Theatre<\/a> The Ancient Pantomime Dancer and his World <\/a> Roman Comedy<\/a> The Reception of Roman Comedy<\/a> Attacking the Theatre in the European Theatrical Tradition <\/a> Defending the Theatre in the European Theatrical Tradition <\/a> Digital Media Production Cultures<\/a> Immersive Media and Extended Realities<\/a> Exhibitions, Identities and Politics: In Museums and Other Exhibiting Organisations<\/a> Global Digital Audiences<\/a> Early Modern Playhouse Practice: The Spaces, The Companies, The Business<\/a> Global\/Local Shakespeares<\/a> Shakespeare on Screen<\/a> Staging Shakespeare in Early Modern Playhouses: Actors, Audiences and the Experience of Theatre-Going <\/a> Theatre, Gender and Culture across Jacobean London<\/a> Theatre and Performance Research Methods<\/a> Performance Lab <\/a> On Speed: Accelerating Culture since the 19th<\/sup> Century<\/a> Advanced Topics in Literary Studies: Africa\u2019s Radical Narrative Arts<\/a> Ecology and the Moving Image<\/a> Rights before Human Rights: Eighteenth Century Theories and Representations<\/a> Text, Image, Object and Gesture in Twentieth-Century French Writing<\/a> Documenting the Camp: Testimony, Memory, Legacy <\/a>Department of Digital Humanities \/ Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Department of English<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Department of French<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Department of German<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Classics<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
This module will offer a comprehensive overview of Aeschylean theatre as performed in its original context(s), its relationship with earlier poetry (Homer, lyric) and its reception in ensuing literature and art, both in antiquity (drama, iconography) and in modern times. It will develop one students\u2019 understanding of the very few surviving documents of ancient Greek culture, alongside students\u2019 critical understanding of theatre performance as an artistic practice and in relation to Athenian religious, political and legal institutions, as well as cultural currents. The course includes a research trip to the National Theatre Archive<\/a>, to explore the productions of the two NT Oresteias of the 20th century.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the greatest aesthetic attractions in the ancient world, from the end of the first century BC to at least the end of the sixth century AD, was pantomime dancing, a ballet-style stage entertainment in which a silent, solo male dancer impersonated successively a series of mythological characters to the accompaniment of instrumental music and sung narrative.The module will undertake a close reading of primary sources that can help us reconstruct something of the atmosphere of such an electrifying art form and glimpse the pantomime’s body in action. All sources will be studied in translation therefore no knowledge of Greek or Latin is formally required.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This module will provide an understanding of the different approaches to Roman Comedy through the study of texts (in translation) and paraphernalia as well as some aspects of the reception of Roman comedy. By the end of the module the student will be able to demonstrate knowledge of the linguistic, literary, cultural and socio-historical contexts in which Roman comedy was written, read and produced as well as some aspects of its reception history. Topics covered include: laughter, slaves in Roman Comedy, stagecraft, comic technique, metatheatre, and theatre reception.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This module will provide an understanding of different approaches to the Reception of Roman Comedy. It will develop students’ ability to evaluate how the writing of Plautus and Terence has shaped and is shaping the European comic tradition. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Attacking the Theatre is a research-led module aiming to follow the anti-theatrical thread in European literature (including theatre itself) and culture from the Greek dramatic texts to the aesthetic and performative explorations of the twentieth century. Part of the intellectual challenge offered by this module arises from the detection of recurrent patterns, concerns and anxieties across geographical, chronological and cultural borders.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a research-led module aiming to follow the pro-theatrical voice as heard in European literature (including theatre itself) and culture from the Greek dramatic texts to the aesthetic and performative explorations of the twentieth century. Part of the intellectual challenge offered by this module arises from the detection of recurrent patterns in the struggle to legitimate theatre and acting\/dancing across geographical, chronological and cultural borders.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\nDepartment of Culture, Media and Creative Industries<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
A critical introduction to \u2018spaces of production\u2019, with an emphasis on the effect of rapid technological innovation on project-based creative media industries. The module examines how these industries and the people within them adapt or initiate resistance to this rise in digital working methodologies. Aspects of the module that may particularly interest students of theatre and performance include: From Film Practice to Data Process; Spectacular work in the VFX and games industry; Representational practices, texts, aesthetics and the politics of invisibility; Audiences, fans and publics; The hope economy \u2013 volunteering, interning, labour and playbour; \u2018Live\u2019, \u2018Event\u2019 and \u2018Experience\u2019 \u2013 emergent hybrid economies. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Drawing on theories and debates in media and communication studies, cultural studies, and media industry studies, this module interrogates both industry and audience perspectives on a wide range of digital (VR, AR, MR) and nondigital (immersive theatre, pervasive gaming) immersive media. This module hence posits a critical perspective of theatre, film, game, storytelling and documentary as immersive realities, examining sites of everyday performance \u2013 education, training, engineering, art and health \u2013 through a same lens. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This module introduces students to debates around the role that museums, galleries and other exhibitionary institutions play in the articulation and negotiation of cultural identities. Theatre and performance students will be particularly interested in the focus on presentation, and displays of inclusion, exclusion and power.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nDepartment of Digital Humanities<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Drawing on the legacy of audience studies, this module investigates how technological affordances may have changed ideas of interpretation and participation. The module equally weighs theories of audiences against case studies and social and technological realities in the Global North and the Global South. Theatre and performance students will be challenged to re-evaluate their idea of an \u2018audience\u2019 considering how audiences differ to \u2018users\u2019 within a global context. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nDepartment of English<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
This module examines the conditions of early modern performance by exploring the material, social and economic contexts of the London theatre industry. The module investigates the material and repertorial practices of early modern theatre companies and their associations with particular playing spaces. the construction and alteration of playhouses; the composition and practices of adult and boys\u2019 playing companies; commissioning, writing processes and censorship. In practical and theoretical terms the relationship between text and playhouse in the early modern period.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This course aims to develop students’ familiarity and understanding of complex intercultural appropriations of Shakespeare on stage and film. Culturally diverse primary texts encourage students to challenge the familiar binary oppositions between \u2018global\u2019 and \u2018local\u2019, \u2018dominant\u2019 and \u2018marginal\u2019 or purely \u2018hegemonic\u2019 or \u2018oppositional\u2019. Considering the shift from Shakespeare as \u2018national poet\u2019 to \u2018global playwright\u2019 students will look at the universalising force or potential of theatre, as a medium through which Western values are imposed, challenged or radicalised. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This module explores screen adaptations of Shakespeare, from silent films to Hollywood blockbusters and the proliferation of Shakespeare\u2019s narratives in alternative cinema culture. The focus will be on the presentation of Shakespeare\u2019s language and narratives, a range of adaptation from close to loose, and the works of performers and directors. The schedule may involve public screenings or events around London. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This module aims to introduce students to primary materials and scholarly debates surrounding the material, sensory, experiential and emotional experience of playgoing in the late sixteenth- and early seventeen-centuries. Using play-texts and other primary and secondary material, and drawing on the ‘laboratory’ venues of Shakespeare’s Globe and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, it will enable students to evaluate the distinctions between different sorts of playing space in early modern England and the potential impacts of these spaces on plays and performance. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The unit offers an analysis of the relations of theatre, gender, and culture in London, 1603 – 1625, providing an advanced introduction both to the current state of criticism of Renaissance drama and to the representation and construction of gender and culture in a defined period. Module materials include key plays in the Shakespeare canon and cognate texts by other writers, mostly dramatic, so as both to develop an understanding of the Shakespeare canon and to demonstrate that Shakespeare offers only one of many contemporary ways of addressing Jacobean culture. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This module introduces you to advanced scholarly research and writing practices in the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies, with an emphasis on language, historiography, ethnography, and practice-led-research, as well as performative writing and fictocriticism. Students will develop a keen understanding of issues central to theatre and performance research work, including the composition and recording of field notes, diaries, and journals; reviews; histories; compendia; and dramatic criticism.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This module provides students with the opportunity to develop individual performance projects as investigations into critical concepts in performance studies. Students are exposed to the idea of ‘practice-based research’ in which theoretical questions are explored through practical exercises, leading to critical reflection and analysis in written form. This will take place through a series of led workshops and unsupervised project time.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does technology impact upon culture, bodies, and ways of understanding, both of the self and of the environment? \u2018On Speed\u2019 reflects upon the ways in which technologies and theories of speed and acceleration have interacted with artistic form and style to create new aesthetic and political possibilities. The module will familiarise students with writers such as Bergson, Benjamin, Kittler, Virilio and Latour, amongst others. This would provide a solid critical grounding for theatre and performance students invested in material histories, labour and performance, performance philosophy, technology and performance, and theories of modernity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This module inquires into a range of African narrative arts\u2014both \u2018\u00e9lite\u2019 and \u2018popular\u2019\u2014that assert a vitalism that defies the cultural negation imposed by colonial and neocolonial orders. The module both looks at well-known aesthetic interventions on the continent, such as the Black-consciousness surrealism of N\u00e9gritude, the \u2018engaged cinema\u2019 of Ousmane Semb\u00e8ne, and the native-language people\u2019s theatre of Ngugi wa Thiong\u2019o, and popular arts including anti-Apartheid music, film and cartooning. Theatre and performance students will gain the ability to evaluate the inter-constituting nature of aesthetics and politics, both in application to performance and to other art forms.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nFilm Studies<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The main aim of this module is to introduce students to some of the principal ways in which ecology and the moving image have come to have such a close and important relationship over recent years. Students will bring together ecophilosophy and ecocinema in order to investigate: the ways in which Hollywood has engaged with climate change and the environment transnational filmic; interrogations of the age of the Anthropocene; international films that explore relations between humans and the landscape; audio-visual as well as silent explorations of the non-human animal world and vegetal life; post-anthropocentric cinema.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\nDepartment of French<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
This module considers the changing language of rights from the perspective of emerging new literary and theatrical representations of sovereignty. The question of \u2018representation\u2019 is especially salient given that it contains both a political and imaginary or \u2018ideological\u2019 dimension. This module pairs together a series of political \u2018discourses\u2019 with theatrical representations in order to investigate the following questions- what is sovereignty? What is obedience and submission? What are the limits of tolerance and compassion? How can rights be vindicated and by whom? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This module explores French thought and writing in the twentieth century through three interrelated focal points: the object, the image, and the gestural movement of a body. The module will be particularly interesting to those theatre and performance students invested in performance philosophy, and more specifically, in subjects such as the ontology of the image, objected-oriented ontology, phenomenology and anthropology. This module may be taken by students without a reading knowledge of French.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nDepartment of German<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
This module helps students to situate and critically analyse cultural engagements with camp spaces, beginning with the concentration camps of the Third Reich, before turning to their colonial precursors in Namibia, as well as present-day refugee and transit camps. It provides a critical grounding in Carl Schmitt\u2019s theory of \u2018states of exception\u2019 (\u2018On Dictatorship, 1921), and Hannah Arendt on the political, as well as further thinkers Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. This course is particularly useful to theatre and performance students looking to specialise in Memory Studies, historicisation, history and display, the archive, or political, aesthetic and ethical dimensions of mechanism of exclusion. This module is taught and assessed in English.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n