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Tuesday 3 September 2013

BA (Hons) Drama

Terry
Hey, my name is Terry and I am about to enter my third and final year of my BA Hons Drama course. I started drama when I went into year ten and picked my GCSE options, I only picked the course as an easy ride to a C+ but over time I began to really enjoy performing and learning about the art of performance. So after GCSE’s I took my BTEC in Performing Arts, which was the first time I had ever done any form of public singing and dancing which was quite scary and nerve wrecking to begin with and now I am a HUGE fan of dance, not so much singing, but I try.

When it came to picking my University degree, I didn't put much though behind it because I knew what I wanted to do, I wanted to perform. As for Universities I wanted to come to Greenwich because my friend in the year above me at college had gone on to Greenwich University and I had heard so many stories about the course and what she got up to that I wanted to come here as well. Due to the fact that I had taken a gap year, I already had my grades from my college BTEC so it was just a simple Unconditional offer, which I didn't mind as it meant I didn't have to sort it out through Clearing and leave it till the last minute, I could just accept and wait for the course to start.

When I began the course I immediately fell in love with one particular course, Making Theatre, this is a compulsory course in your first year, this course taught me so much about the world of the theatre that I didn't previously know. For example I had learnt how to rig a lighting system, how to use a sound system, how to create a prompt book and so much more. What this course does is allow the first years to become the technical crew for the third year productions (usually there is 5-7 separate third year shows). I was blessed to be placed as Stage Manager for a production for Fear and Misery of the Third Reich written by Bertolt Brecht, I was even luckier that this was the one third year production to be performed at Greenwich Theatre, so not only was I Stage Manager for a well acclaimed masterpiece of a script, I was also going to be the Stage Manager for a show performed at Greenwich Theatre, not bad for a first year student. Other roles within the technical crew included light technician, sound technical, prop master, set designer, costume designer, deputy stage manager, so there are a lot of opportunities for people with different abilities and different preferences. This course turned out to be my highest scored mark in the Drama course so far, so I was very proud of my work on the show. It’s because of this course and the help I got from the director as to why I now, in my third year, would like to go on to be the director in my own third year production. Other courses available for first year students include Early Stages, another compulsory course in which you will learn about the origins of theatre starting way back from Greek Theatre and leading up to Shakespearean theatre. The other two options that I chose were Writing for Stage and Screen and Introduction to Film Making, both were quite new to me and what I was used to so once again I learnt a lot of new information.

When second year came by I was quite excited once again by the options that I had chosen and the compulsory ones. This year was quite strange when it came to picking the modules, there was one compulsory course, which was Modern Stages, this followed on from Early Stages and we looked into more modern plays such as Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht, A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen and more recently Angels in America by Tony Kushner. This course was quite exciting as it gave me much more acting opportunities and the opportunity to learn more about the development of theatre over time. We then had a choice between two courses which were Physical Theatre and Applied Drama, we had to complete one of these modules as compulsory but we could then pick the other one as one of our option, this is what I chose to do. Physical Theatre was very, very fun and taught me a lot about the body and different styles of movement, as I said previously dance was something that I enjoyed a lot so Physical Theatre was a way to get me back into a movement based course. This module also resulted in a final 10-15 minute piece of physical theatre which I found was an amazing opportunity to have. With Applied Drama, we got to learn a lot more types of theatre, outside of the normal every day theatre surrounding. We learnt theatre for the Special Education Needs, Reminiscence Theatre, Theatre in Prisons, Museum Theatre and so much more. The final course I chose for my second year was Theatre Studies, this course was quite exciting as it broke down into four six-week courses, in this we learnt Eco Critical Theatre, Theatre Criticism, Plays by Women from 2000, and Revenge Tragedies, this course was quite fun as there was a lot of play reading, which I think we should be doing as Second Year degree students.

Now I am going into third year I am quite excited for the possibilities offered to me, as I said earlier I am hoping to direct a full scale third year production so all summer I have been researching plays that I would like to direct which is quite fun. The courses I am about to take in my third and final year are Other Stages and Contemporary British Theatre which are both compulsory. Other Stages is basically the weird and wonderful forms of theatre that don’t fit into either Early or Modern Stages, so I predict this course to be very fun and very strange at the same time. Contemporary British Theatre will be looking at quite recent plays from playwrights such as John Osborne, Sarah Kane, Caryl Churchill, Mark Ravenhill, Laura Wade and many more. The other options I have chosen are Drama Production, in which I will (hopefully get to direct) and have a team of actors and Work Placement, where I will get to put my knowledge to the test in a 100 hour work placement.

As of yet I haven’t decided where I would like my career path or my degree to take me but I can say that there is no way that I will ever give up on performance or the theatre, I feel that I have put everything into the past seven years studying Drama/Performing Arts at GCSE level, BTEC level and now University level. So hopefully you will see me on TV or on Stage one day, who knows.

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