Dramatic Arts

This course introduces a broad spectrum of performance practices that may be identified as local cultural expressions found in Singapore. Such practices occur in varied spaces and mediums, and include street opera, getai [song-stage], animal performances, theatre, film, religious festivals, national day parades, YouTube video performances and mobile gaming. The course explores the rich performative histories of these practices and studies concepts of performativity, liveness, and mediation. It also covers the ways in which technology and media play a crucial part in cultural expression and identity formation. 

Acting Theories surveys approaches to the art of acting, beginning with Stanislavski’s tools for the creation of psychological character. Approaches stemming from Meyerhold’s emphasis on physical expressivity are also explored, and the course continues to look at approaches which fall within two major categories of acting techniques: techniques for the creation of a psychologically truthful character and techniques for immediate expressivity or training an actor to physically respond to images. As each approach is introduced, in-class exercises demonstrate some of the techniques used by that particular acting teacher.

This course investigates the representation of illness and disability in performance. It focuses primarily on contemporary performance and live art practices by artists with illnesses or disability but is contextualized by the history of disability performance, e.g. in the Victorian freak shows. Students are introduced to ways of understanding discourses of disability and illness, and the ways in which they become manifest in performance. Students discuss issues of representation, lived experience, and agency as they relate to disabled and unwell bodies in performance.

The course introduces various basic projects at the implementation level of theater lighting technology, which are roughly divided into the introduction of theater lighting systems; common theater lamps; basic electricity and color paper; optical angles of lamps, and basic practical operations.