SEL2232 : Stagecraft in Early Drama
- Offered for Year: 2025/26
- Module Leader(s): Dr James Cummings
- Lecturer: Dr Kate De Rycker
- Owning School: English Lit, Language & Linguistics
- Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus
- Capacity limit: 150 student places
Semesters
Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.
| Semester 1 Credit Value: | 20 |
| ECTS Credits: | 10.0 |
| European Credit Transfer System | |
Aims
This module involves studying pre-modern texts in their original language. It also involves reading parts aloud in seminars because we are approaching these plays as performances.
Themes explored in this module include:
- Performance (e.g. audiences, actors, staging, metadrama);
- Material culture (e.g. props, special effects, costumes);
- Dramatic representation and construction of identity;
- Politics and religion (e.g. containment v. subversion)
This module takes a creative, imaginative, and practical approach to pre-modern drama. Our focus on ‘Stagecraft’ means that we will be investigating scenes from late-Medieval and Renaissance plays to see how they actually worked under the conditions for which they were written and how they might be performed today. We will explore how you can conjure up a devil onstage, decapitate someone, what makes effective stage blood, and consider what it was like to see a female audience member hijack a performance. Early drama was partly a community-building exercise but also a commercial one, and yet it was often a subversive medium of entertainment, and so we will be exploring the wider social and political ramifications of these plays. If an actor can perform royalty simply by putting on a crown, then what really is the difference between a stage-king and a real one? Why does a strongly religious culture produce plays which contain blasphemous jokes or profanity?
Outline Of Syllabus
The texts studied in this module range from the late-medieval period up until Shakespearean commercial theatre. This was a time of cataclysmic religious and social changes. This module challenges you to think about connections across these very different time periods, engaging with plays according to shared themes (e.g. practical performance opportunities, theatrical subversion, and the supernatural). While well-known authors like Christopher Marlowe and medieval plays like 'Mankind' will be making an appearance, this is also an opportunity for you to discover some less well-known, but fascinating, plays. This module will focus on the original staging of early drama. What sort of special effects were possible at this time, and how did the theatrical space help or hinder these effects?
Note: Some reading-based performance of texts in their original Middle English and Early-Modern English will be required in seminars.
Teaching Methods
Teaching Activities
| Category | Activity | Number | Length | Student Hours | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning And Teaching Activities | Lecture | 11 | 2:00 | 22:00 | Module Lecture |
| Guided Independent Study | Assessment preparation and completion | 1 | 80:00 | 80:00 | Preparation of project/portfolio assessment |
| Guided Independent Study | Directed research and reading | 1 | 78:00 | 78:00 | Lecture / Seminar preparation |
| Scheduled Learning And Teaching Activities | Workshops | 10 | 1:00 | 10:00 | Module Seminar/Workshop |
| Guided Independent Study | Student-led group activity | 10 | 1:00 | 10:00 | Student Study Groups |
| Total | 200:00 |
Teaching Rationale And Relationship
Lectures will introduce the students to key literary texts, key concepts, and critical paradigms. They will also provide textual investigations to help students with the language and close reading of early texts. As all the texts are dramatic, seminars will investigate the texts of these plays and their performance possibilities. Some investigation of practical performance skills will take place during the seminars. These also help to develop students’ communication and analytical skills. Study groups will help to develop students' teamwork, leadership and problem solving skills.
Assessment Methods
The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners
Other Assessment
| Description | Semester | When Set | Percentage | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Written exercise | 1 | M | 10 | Participation and Student Reflection (10%, 500 words) |
| Portfolio | 1 | A | 80 | Final Essays or Project (80%, 3000 words) |
| Written exercise | 1 | A | 10 | Weekly Canvas Quizzes (10%) |
Assessment Rationale And Relationship
The weekly low-stakes Canvas quizzes are worth 10% of the module grade. Near the end of the module students will submit a reflection on their participation which (when combined with a tutor engagement measure) is worth 10% of the module grade (~500 words). The final assignment is a portfolio (80%, ~3000 words) which consists of either a single long comparative essay, two separate essays, or a previously-agreed project’s outputs and reflective rationale.
Reading Lists
Timetable
- Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
- SEL2232's Timetable