This programme combines academic, theatrical and civic interests in Shakespeare, generating a new, creative and forward-looking conversation about what Shakespeare is and can be. You will produce traditional academic written work as well as creative work, all of which will explore Shakespeare’s potential in the modern world.
You will complete 120 credits of taught modules, including four core modules as follows: [full module descriptions below]
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Shakespearience
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Shakespeare and Creative Practice
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The Shakespeare Ensemble
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Shakespeare and Society
Your remaining 40 credits – equivalent to two taught modules – can be chosen from a range of Shakespeare Institute modules.
Shakespearience and optional modules are each assessed by one 4000 word essay; Creative Practice, the Shakespeare Ensemble and Shakespeare and Society all combine shorter written assignments with creative work.
Following completion of your taught modules, you will also produce a supervised 80000 word PhD thesis.
You will also attend weekly Thursday Seminars at the Shakespeare Institute (term-time only), which feature papers presented by a range of established visiting scholars as well as Institute and University of Birmingham staff.
Visiting the Shakespeare Institute
We are holding a launch event at the Institute to introduce our new programmes in Shakespeare and Creativity on Wednesday 20 March. If you are considering postgraduate study with the Shakespeare Institute, this is an ideal opportunity to find out more about the programme, meet Institute staff and current students and explore the Institute itself. Booking is essential. To find out more, please visit the event webpage.
We also arrange open afternoons at the Institute to coincide with two of our weekly Thursday seminar series each term – the next open afternoon will take place on Thursday 14 March 2013.
You will study the following four core modules:
Shakespearience
This module considers the ways in which Shakespearean language and drama bears on experience, with a view to making the experience of Shakespeare more available to contemporary Shakespeare scholarship and creative practice. It is, above all, a shared experiment in experientially alert and susceptible close reading. In a series of intensively collaborative workshops, on the special course blog and in seminars, it will dwell and linger in Shakespeare’s language and stagecraft in order to explore how its complexity produces experiential meanings, in readers, audience members and in characters. “Shakespearience” will be about reading as process rather than product, and as such, at least potentially, experientially exciting and adventurous.
Shakespeare and Creative Practice
This module will provide you with experiential knowledge that will inform the way that you interrogate and interpret performance evidence in a variety of media. Through a series of workshops and performance assignments, you will explore three different systematic approaches to performing the language of Shakespeare: the first approach is rooted in the verse and text work of John Barton, Peter Hall, Cicely Berry and Patsy Rodenberg; the second approach explores the legacy of Stanislavski in the Shakespearean work of 20th/21st century practitioners including Katie Mitchell and Mike Alfreds; the third approach brings the devising techniques of prominent physical theatre practitioners to a creative examination of Shakespeare’s text.
The Shakespeare Ensemble
In this module you will work as part of an ensemble of creative artists – actors, directors, writers, designers – exploring and testing the theory and practice of performing Shakespeare today, culminating in an assessed performance of a re-imagined Shakespearean text. The module seeks to equip students with a range of skills pertaining to creating a new piece of work - creative dramatic writing, devising as an ensemble and music in the ensemble as well as including sessions with the RSC on new writing, the ensemble, design and lighting.
Shakespeare and Society
Featuring tuition from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the new Birmingham Library (which has an important civic Shakespeare collection and premises), this module explores and tests the scope for bringing Shakespeare into the world beyond the academy and the theatre. You will undertake focused study of Shakespearean civic creativity from Garrick's 1769 Jubilee onwards before producing your own piece of civic creativity inspired by Shakespeare.
You will also choose two optional modules from the following:
History of Shakespeare in Performance
This module will consider trends of acting and directing Shakespeare from the Restoration to the present day, and will exploit the Stratford archives to undertake studies of individual actors and directors from the eighteenth century onwards. Subjects of study might include Colley Cibber, David Garrick, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, Laurence Olivier, Peter Brook, John Barton and Sam Mendes. There will be opportunities to analyse and interpret primary evidence and to consider the cultural context(s) of performance. Plays studied include some or all of Richard III, Hamlet, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Shakespeare’s Legacy
This module considers the adaptation and appropriation of Shakespeare’s plays, persona, and possessions from the seventeenth century to the present day. It pays special attention to how changes in theatre practice, aesthetic tastes, politics, and commercial markets have shaped the history of Shakespeare’s ‘afterlife’. Plays studied include some or all of King Lear, The Tempest, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Measure for Measure.
Shakespeare’s Craftsmanship
This module focuses on the construction of Shakespeare's plays and considers the manipulation of source material and genre, the structuring of the dramatic narrative and the use of language for dramatic function and effect. Plays studied include Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, and The Winter's Tale.
Shakespeare’s Text
The module will develop a critical awareness of the textual foundations of Shakespeare's plays. Topics covered include: the relationship between a modern edition of a play and the earliest printed texts, the nature of the printing process that first made the plays available to readers of books, the characteristics of Shakespeare's dramatic composition, the treatment of the text in the theatre (including censorship, revision and adaptation), and Shakespeare as a collaborator. Plays studied include some or all of Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Sir Thomas More, Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, King Lear, Measure for Measure, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Timon of Athens.