MUSTHEAT 2002 - Music Theatre Performance 2B

Dance: This course extends skills and techniques learnt in the first three semesters. The dance stream continues incorporating techniques of various dance and physical theatre forms. The dance styles taught will include: jazz/contemporary dance, tap, classical ballet and pas de deux. Dance as a soloist, collaborative creation and variety in style and form will feature more distinctively. Skills covered will include stretching techniques, turning, isolation and complementary movement as well as the interpretation of various historic and contemporary dance pieces to an advanced level. Voice/Movement: Students continue to integrate neutral awareness and physical release within space, time, body and text. An exploration of a variety of texts as a means to integrate an authentic body/voice connection to naturalistic and heightened language. A sound theoretical and practical grasp of voice and speech along with text analysis underpin this process and students continue to develop appropriate technical skills that support a spontaneous, flexible and muscular voice. The student actor will develop a rigorous daily voice practice regime that is designed to support work being undertaken in rehearsals and presentations. This course introduces a variety of naturalistic texts as a means to integrate an authentic body/voice connection to naturalistic language. Acting: This Course builds on the foundational skills achieved throughout the first three semesters of study by focussing on the issue of performance 'style'. Students will be asked to explore text with a mind to formulating a range of work methods and personal rehearsal strategies pertaining to the specific style of naturalism. The course will begin with an examination of theatre forms developed in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, primarily in the mode of naturalism, before moving forward to a study of more contemporary material. The focus will be on both deepening an understanding of the possibilities of performance and further developing the range and repertoire of personal rehearsal strategies available to the musical theatre performer.