This module introduces learners to the history of film within the wider cultural, aesthetic, and technological movements/contexts of the 20th and 21st centuries. Learners will study key filmmakers such as D.W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, Leni Riefenstahl, Vittorio, de Sica, Akira Kurosawa, Orson Welles, Lars Von Trier, Paul Thomas Anderson, Paul Haggis, Haifaa-alMansour, Kathryn Bigelow, Alejandro González Iñárritu, for example. Learners introduced to terms and concepts for "reading" of film and to key movements in cinematic history.

1. apply the terms and concepts of film studies to analysis of film text
2. analyse relationship of prescribed films to eachother and to their cultural, social, aesthetic and historical contexts
3. demonstrate analytical competency in understanding and reading film style in terms of cinematic movements
4. present ideas and lead class in discussion of prescribed film, using film clips
5. construct a written analysis of film demonstrating ability to \”read\” filmic elements and to engage in cultural analysis
6. research cultural, aesthetic and historical contexts of prescribed film as well as research readings/interpretations of the film text

Emerging from the twilight of the 19th century, experimental artists revolted against traditional aesthetic boundaries in search of more fundamental forms of creative expression. This module introduces learners to a variety of poets, directors, playwrights and novelists who shattered contemporary rules by creating their own. Learners will be given an overview of the history of experimental writing generally related to the literary movements of Dada, Surrealism, Literature of the Absurd, Le Nouveau Roman, Oulipo, magic realism, speculative fiction, fabulist fiction and bizarro fiction. The module will examine structural, stylistic and thematic innovations including the use of non-sequitur, parataxis, collage, absurd situations, anti-heroes/heroines, ironic bathos, cut-up techniques, stream-of-consciousness, hybrid discourse, genre mashing, alternate cultures, hyperbole, unconventional syntax, fragmented narration and metafiction.

1. Identify and analyse avant-garde, innovative or experimental practices in a range of literary work.

2. Develop his or her own experimental practice in one or more genres studied for this module.

3. Write an accompanying reflective essay exploring the nature of the avant-garde and explaining why their work can be defined as experimental or innovative.

4. Examine the theory, philosophy and tradition of experimental literature, drama and writing.

This practical module focuses on enhancing students' physical, spatial and vocal awareness through a series of technical exercises designed to cultivate professional skills in voice and movement. Throughout the module, students will develop and refine various physical and vocal techniques and principles, applying these skills to solo/duet/group compositional studies for performance. Students are encouraged to assess their individual progress, integrating feedback, reflection and research into their learning process.

1. Apply voice and movement techniques in warm-ups and training development.
2. Demonstrate increased self-awareness in the use of voice, body and space.
3. Integrate diverse vocal and physical techniques into the performance.
4. Experiment with a range of vocal and movement techniques to discover new expressive possibilities.
5. Embody concept, compositional elements, structure and presentative skills within the creative process and performance.
6. Evaluate the development of practice in a reflective journal.

7. Synthesise vocal and movement techniques in selected projects.

A further exploration of the practice of stage management and technical production in the performing arts. The learner explores the roles of production manager, technical manager and stage manager in the production and running of a stage performance. It teaches the practical skills of technical/stage management in collaboration with other students in a fully realised production situation.

Topics include technical script analysis, scheduling, cue markings and prompt scripts, organisational requirements, technical rehearsals, digital theatre technologies, show calling and technical operation. Working collaboratively will be key to this module.

1. Prepare and manage a prompt copy, which defines actors’ movements and calls,technical cues, stage elements, props and moving scenery.
2. Understand the roles of production manager, technician andstage manager in allthe various stages of a production process.

3. Be able to analyse and interpret the script, plans, models and designs for all relevant technical and production information.
4. Prepare for rehearsal and obtain all necessary resources, such as props, costumes, and settings.
5. Give cues for lighting, sound, cast entrances, moving scenery and other performance elements.
6. Demonstrate an understanding of OH& S issues and take appropriate actions where necessary.
7. Demonstrate a familiarity with the configuration and operation of the lighting, sound & multimedia equipment found in a modern theatre /performance space.

This module is designed to enable the learner to develop the ability to create a believable characterisation through the medium of heightened or poetic text.

1. adhere to the professional requirements of a theatre practitioner
2. apply research and textual analysis to characterisation
3. employ appropriate techniques towards characterisation
4. display appropriate voice and movement skills and apply them to the demands of non-naturalistic depiction of character and heightened or poetic texts
5. apply direction creatively
6. document, reflect on and evaluate the creative process and personal progression
7. demonstrate an ability to apply the Michael Chekhov technique principlesof characterisation and transformation to the chosen text

This module is designed to develop practical and intellectual skills to explore a wide range of acting techniques, styles and genres. Research, rehearsal and performance of 20th century texts enable the student to develop the ability to create a believable characterisation in different acting styles and demonstrate a functional knowledge of the systems and theories which inform them: realism, epic theatre and the theatre of the absurd.

1. adhere to the professional requirements of a theatre practitioner
2. make appropriate and creative use of research
3. analyse text as a means of defining character and show the ability to take textual references into characterisation
4. develop a systematic methodology towards characterisation
5. demonstrate ability to present character in a believable manner within the appropriate style and convention for the selected text
6. develop skills which will ensure a range of capabilities in voice and movement
7. take and apply direction
8. document, reflect on and evaluate the creative process

This module is designed to further develop the interdisciplinary nature involved in the process of creating theatre. It enables learners to develop methodologies in the context of visual and material culture which define directorial approaches from a range of possibilities through shared experiences. It provides the learner with practical experience working with peers in small groups. Learners will explore 20th century key theatre and visual art movements and examine dominant influences to inform and enhance their development. They will further develop directing skills in terms of approaches to the technical aspects of theatre production (sound and lighting design) and develop a deeper understanding of the complete theatrical language of live performance. Their individual responses to conanical 20th century texts will be developed.

1. recognise the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of creating a work of theatre/performance
2. process information on a range of visual, cultural and creative disciplines which can inform and develop the process of creating performance
3. explore how original concepts can be realised in in the creation of a work of theatre
4. articulate and reflect on the challenges, successes and failures of the process verbally and in writing
5. demonstrate understanding of key 20th century practitioners who have strongly influenced the development of theatre and performance movements
6. explore space, objects,cultural and visual material to create images that convey meaning
7. develop an understanding of the complex nature of theatre production including the importance of lighting and sounddesign

This module introduces students to twentieth-century modern literature, including poetry, plays and novels. Writers include W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, John Keats, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich, Derek Walcott, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, E.M. Forster, Samuel Beckett, Luigi Pirandello and James Joyce for example. Changes in science, industry, technology, mass production, urbanisation as well as approaches to religion are examined. Issues of gender, identity, culture and politics are explored. The practical aspect of this module requires learners to work with primary and secondary level students using a selection of modern texts as the foundation for ideas for a series of workshops they will organise and carry out.

1. critically examine a range of texts from a modernist context

2. understand the diverse trends surrounding modernism

3. develop team working skills which will practically demonstrate modernism in seminars and workshops

4. carry out a series of workshops using modernist texts as their inspiration

5. Become familiar with the artistic philosophies of modernist writers

This module introduces learners to facilitation strategies and provides opportunity to practically apply techniques in workshop environment. Emphasis is on the facilitation process and acquisition of skills, culminating in the structuring and delivery of facilitated workshops to primary and secondary school students. Theories of applied theatre and practical facilitation methodologies explored. Learners develop collaborative skills, planning and designing the workshop in self-directed teams, and they learn strategies for creative thinking inspiring others in storytelling whether it is visual, dramatic or storytelling through words.

1. Outline and communicate strategies/techniques for facilitating others
2. Apply facilitation techniques to empower others in an act of learning
3. Collaborate withothers ina team,making decisions, assigning tasks, collating information and achieving common goals
4. Apply strategies for brainstorming and creative thinking, generating ideas with others to creatively access the Shakespeare text
5. Structure, design and deliver a facilitation workshop for Leaving Certificate students
6. Critically evaluate a Shakespeare play, analysing themes, genre, and cultural context
7. Generate written documents that record personal growth, moments of learning, shifts in praxis and reflect on learner as facilitator

Physical Theatre introduces students to the physical work of the actor and the world of professional, specialised actor training. Predominately practical in nature, it challenges the student to adopt the body as their sole means of expression thereby heightening awareness of the need to train the body and regard it as a powerful and under-utilised tool of the contemporary actor.

1. use the body as a mode of expression and a starting point toward its mastery in performance
2. develop physical controlin physicalperformance through such techniques as rhythm, body articulation,flexibility, strength, co-ordination, balance, discipline, playfulness, spontaneity, precision and imagination
3. experience a style of theatre that places the actor as the central point for theatrical creation where the primary focus is physical rather than textual
4. Understand the importance of the physicality of the actor in the creation of visual, metaphorical theatre
5. work as an ensemble, creating both solo and group compositions
6. understand the professionalism and dedication required of the professional actor
7. identify the roots of physical theatre and its place in the world of theatre

A practical module that explores a range of processes and approaches to devising theatre for the stage and other contexts. Students will develop the skills to initiate, explore, develop and notate a devised show.

They will move from initial ideas to final product through a series of exploratory workshops.

1. Understand the dramaturgical variables necessary for structuring a devised project.
2. Develop a new range of critical and communicative competencies
3. Know how to develop an ensemble capable of dynamically creating safe and active spaces for dialogue.
4. Know how to produce an imaginative and fully defined characterisation and performance.
5. Develop, through Michael Chekhov Technique, an architecture of performance with focus on Improvisation ,Composition and Style

6. Understand through movement/dance that the body is the site of improvisation.

In this module learners investigate "Live Art" practices and create original works/happenings that integrate performance, installation, music, media arts and socially engaged practices. Performance history approached from non theatrical methods such as Surrealist, Dadist, Futurist, Fluxus, Situationist and resistant performance movements including Punk and postmodern performance. Module explores history and theory of the avant garde in visual and performance art and explores how performance and installation provoke and implicate the viewer, address the location specifically and perform a cultural/political intervention. Use of the photo/digital image from 1980s into the 21st century studied in reference to identity and cultural politics. Artists explored might include, Laurie Anderson, Pina Bausch, Joseph Beuys, Christo, Gilbert & George, Piero Manzoni, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Robert Wilson.

1. identify, delineate and operate in a contested space
2. record and document live art project
3. contextualiselive art workin the historical, cultural and theoretical movements of the 20th and 21st centuries
4. create a work/performance that engages/implicates an audience
5. project manage event or \”happening\”
6. stage manage and organise supportive technology for a live art event
7. analyse and critique live art work

Directing 3 explores postmodern theatre directing, bringing together critical theory and contemporary theatre practice to provide valuable tools for directing in today's expansive performance world. Postmodern theatre places new and novel demands on stage directors. It is more experimental, and the boundaries of what constitutes a performance have shifted. Dialogue is no longer always the primary mode of communication, and music, sound, movement, and other visual elements will be explored as ways to make meaning onstage. Learners will develop skills across relevant creative disciplines and inter-disciplinary practices in a highly collaborative environment. Using visual and cultural research, demonstrations and presentations, learners will reflect on a variety of approaches to the development of theatre by key practitioners and dominant forces, including e.g. Meyerhold, Brecht, Beckett, Artaud, Wilson, Foreman, Mitchell and others.

1. Learners will have an understanding of the dominant forces of theory and practice in the development of theatre in a postmodern world

2. Learners will explore the interchange between performance and e.g. visual art, movement, theatre, writing, sound, multi-media and so on,in a collaborative environment.

3. Learners will have an understanding of the dynamics of space and how spacial principles inform all aspects of postmodern performance.

4. Learners will examine various sign-systems that can be manipulated by directors to bring about ‘meaningful’ communication in a postmodern context.

5. Learners will know the process of transforming a playscript or concept into a living postmodern performance.

This module explores the intellectual history of postmodernism, and will consider a range of postmodern styles, political contexts and aesthetic practices for literature and performance. The module examines the work of theatre companies, productions, designers, writers, philosophers and plays in an effort to explore how postmodern performance practice encapsulates some of the definitions of the postmodern and how this transforms the theatrical, performance and literature landscape.

1. Understand the various generic and formal manifestations of postmodernism in writing practices including poetry, fiction and the dramatic arts

2. Examine the problematic conceptual history of postmodernism

3. critique a range of writing and performance media from the postmodern framework

4. understand the visual potential of photography, painting, lighting, colour, mood; or the impact of devising, the internet facebook and secondlife on the postmodern moment

5. investigate the impact of postmodernism on issues such as gender, cultural identity, violence, nationhood and power for example

This module aims to provide students with the capacity to analyse and evaluate their individual vocal, physical and emotional inhibitors. They will work with appropriate vocal and physical exercises and techniques, applying them to text and choreography to develop creative and original responses. They will be expected to design and deliver appropriate warm-ups, increase self-awareness and perform to a high professional standard.

1. Devise and delivervocal and physical warm-ups that focus on the physical, technical, emotional, and psychicneeds of a given role.

2. Use the body and voice effectively in a creative, imaginative, expressive way, appropriately synthesising training in both voice and movement.

3. Explore and apply presentedphysical and vocal principlesto create appropriate individual and group responses to creative stimuli and complicity.

4. Perform with spontaneity, physical, psychic, emotional and vocal clarity, playfulness, awareness of space, dynamic, rhythm, empathy and presence.

5. Advance their intellectual, emotional and performance competencies through actively changing acquired physical, vocal and psychological habits, reflective journalling and integratingthe training process into their professional and personal lives.

6. Apply, compose and evaluatetools of improvisation and compositional devices within the creative process and performanceofduet/trio composition study.

7. Utilize research and appropriate literature to support and extend their knowledge of voiceand movement training.

Year 3 seeks to integrate the ensemble focus of Year 1 and the learners' individual development of Year 2 into a coherent rehearsal and performance practice. Students will prepare for and rehearse a full-length play and perform it to an audience.

1. demonstrate a high level of professional conduct
2. demonstrate a well-grounded knowledge and understanding of the world of the playwright, the world of the play and the style of presentation required by the director
3. display an appropriate and fully developed characterisation
4. select appropriate choices from a range of voice and movement skills
5. collaborate as an active member of an integrated ensemble
6. consistently demonstrate the high levels of energy and vitality necessary to sustain and support the work at all times and the ability to develop a part through rehearsal into performance and from one performance to the next
7. show the ability to relate to an audience based on the Chekhov Technique principles of giving, receiving and establishing communion with the audience.

8. document, reflect on and evaluate the creative process and personal progression

This module considers the application of the actor's technique to the business of acting to camera. It will also explore the shift in screen acting practise and philosophy around motion capture and acting to absent places or characters. It will look at how performers and visual and special effects crew work together to produce work of aesthetic value and verisimilitude in an industrial system of technological reproduction.

1. Demonstrate an understanding of the vernacular of film making terminology pertaining to the actors relationship to the camera

2. Demonstrate a competency in the art of self taping for audition.

3. Demonstrate an ability to deliver a believable performance under highly artificial circumstances.(Green screen, Composite image)

4. Choose and use the acting tool most appropriate to the acting circumstance (Draw fromChekhov Technique/Suzuki/Viewpoints/Stanislavsky Method)

In this module the learner will develop, participate in a process, and perform a small number of solo/small group performances around given themes or texts.

The learner is guided through an autonomous yet collaborative creative process that will serve to demonstrate the skills acquired throughout the course and further the development of the learner as a competent theatre practitioner, demonstrating their creative individuality and autonomous skill base as an emerging artist.

The learner will demonstrate a clear understanding of the theoretical underpinning of their process and engage in theorised practice.

1. demonstrate competencies as an autonomous yet collaborative practitioner

2. display an embodied understanding of one or more tool from the Michael Chekov technique

3. have developed a portfolio of performance (monologue/duologue/group piece)

4. demonstrate a number of technical skills in he areas of lighting /sound/set/ stage management

5. apply the Chekhov technique of the Psychological Gesture to one or more of the pieces developed.

Creative Writing Practice will introduce writers to a range of writing, reading, and editing, including playwriting, short story writing and poetry. Learners will gain confidence in the craft and technique of writing as well as establishing their own voice. Learners will be challenged to play, experiment and take risks in their work.

1. write a bite-size play

2. write a piece of flash fiction

3. Write a poem – a haiku/a sonnet/a poem in free verse

4. Examine the craft and technique of various forms of writing

5. Produce samples of writing which mimicwell established writing styles

6. Read a diverse amount of writing across a range of genre

This module introduces learners to lighting design and digital technologies used in the theatre. The aim of this module is to provide opportunities for learners to develop skills in technical design practices for performance. Learners will participate in an individual and/or group project related to the performing arts and will also be advised to take an approved work placement relevant to the field. Learning experiences available include the opportunity to design, plan and deliver a collaborative and inter-disciplinary creative project over the duration of the semester working with other students and with visiting professionals. Field trips are arranged to nurture investigative and research skills. Students learn how to encounter a physical performance space and its technical facilities, using computer controlled lighting boards, robotic lighting instruments and audio visual projection.

1. undertake a project that will develop technical abilities as a designer and creative practitioner

2. have reflected on the interchange between theatre, performance,art, film, digital media and other disciplines

3. further develop digital and media skills

4. explore the use of lighting design as a creative element in the dramaturgy of a performance

5. have enhanced awareness of theatre and interdisciplinary disciplines through contemporary use of digital technologies and explore the wider landscape of performance related technical disciplines

6. demonstrate best practice in productivity, time management and planning for the technical requirements of lighting and digital design