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Course module: UCHUMMAP31
UCHUMMAP31
Contemporary Performance: Mapping The Everyday
Course info
Course codeUCHUMMAP31
EC7.5
Course goals
After completing this course students are able to:
  • Understand some of the ways in which everyday life may be used as a source for performance imagery.
  • Understand some of the demands, challenges and social responsibilities of the Community based, or Site-Specific Artist.
  • Utilize critical skills in analyzing the possible functions of the performing arts in contemporary society.
  • Understand how a specific site can be utilized as a synthesis of different disciplinary approaches.
  • Construct ways of approaching other sites and use them as a source for both creativity in general and performance making in particular
  • Enter into a creative relationship with the everyday.
  • Think ‘outside of the box’ (or auditorium) when approaching performance both as maker and as spectator.
Content
Increasingly contemporary performance practitioners are leaving ‘the auditorium’ and working in a diverse range of locations not normally associated with theatricalisation and performativity. This may involve working with a specific community of people or in a specific geographical location, or a combination of the two. There are many reasons for this trend which we shall explore both in practice and in theory.  
Using a site as a starting point for performance making allows for a multi-disciplinary approach. The site of the UCU campus, given it’s history, is immediately interesting for people concerned with, for example, religious studies, gender studies, geography and in military history. It is, in it’s present day incarnation, a subject of much interest to anthropologists and educationalists. Our immediate neighbours are the Dutch army which connects us, inextricably, with the world of politics. It is anything but an empty stage !
On the UCU campus the primary ‘actors’ can be, economically speaking, divided between those that pay to be on the campus and those that are paid to be there. Both groups have significantly different perspectives on campus life, but each have their stories to tell. You will be involved with the people that work on campus. You will have the opportunity to get to know the campus from a unique perspective, as performance makers/researchers, interned, if you like, in your own everyday. From that everyday experience we will look at the notion of ‘free speech’ and the very real ethical and moral dilemmas this brings with it. We will look in a broad sense at how stories are told in the postmodern world.
We will be researching the everyday, the yesterday and remediating our research into some sort of performative ‘present’ at the end of week 4 of the autumn semester.

Format
This is an intensive course.  It starts on the Monday two weeks before the start of the autumn semester. Participating students have to be free from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday for these two weeks before the semester starts.  During these two weeks we will establish a time-table for the rest of the course, which will take into account the other courses students will be following. This will mean we may well be working in the evenings and weekends outside of the normal college time-table. So prospective students need to be both flexible and committed.

Prerequisites
The course is automatically open to all students who have completed both a 2 Level 1 and Level 2 course within the Performng Arts track. Other students will be considered, especially if they have significant practical experience and a genuine interest in performance and medial processes that happen outside of the auditorium.
A course like this can only work if the group spirit is right and participants are willing to pull their own weight. It therefore requires a high level of maturity, sense of responsibility, a willingness to engage with others, and an essential openness to exploring new and old ground.
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Kies de Nederlandse taal