Course units
Unit 1: Performance and play
This unit will develop your skills as a live performer, focusing on playful and improvisational approaches for the creation of new performance and characters. Studio workshops examine and cultivate students’ approaches to character development, fostering a playful, creative and supportive environment in which to test new work.
Performances are tested at a series of public scratch nights that run alongside the unit, giving performers an opportunity to try out and develop original performance work in front of audiences. By the end of this unit, you will have developed a 10-minute solo character performance through a combination of workshop sessions, scratch nights, tutor and peer feedback and independent study.
Unit 2: Lights, camera, action! Navigating the industry
This unit develops your practical knowledge of contemporary industry practices and the marketplace, honing the fundamental technical and creative storytelling skills to be a successful freelance comedy writer/performer. You’ll learn how to best showcase your work: how to win at securing existing opportunities, but also take control and create your own opportunities. Verbal pitching skills will also be developed on this unit.
You’ll create and deliver a new idea for a TV or audio series, featuring a central character that you will play. Taking what you’ve learnt about contemporary industry needs and practices, you’ll deliver a verbal pitch to sell your idea, with an accompanying written pitch document.
Unit 3: Don’t laugh. Storytelling, scriptwriting (and pitching)
Starting from scratch, this unit develops the fundamental storytelling and scriptwriting skills you’ll need to be a professional writer/performer.
The skills developed on this unit will enable you to create and deliver a scripted narrative, starring a nuanced central character, ideal for you to play. You’ll learn everything you need to develop a scripted narrative idea from scratch. You’ll learn the technical side of writing – script layout – and how to effectively employ improvisation to make your script as strong and winning as possible.
You’ll deliver an industry-level script for a short form comedy, which will serve you as an industry calling-card for your writer/performer skills. Alongside your script, students also deliver a 2-minute taster tape, bringing your central character and script to life.
Unit 4: Performing across media
Building on the live performance skills developed across Semester 1, and utilising sketch writing skills just learned in unit 3, this unit equips students with the skills to film, edit, and share character performance across video and audio platforms.
Collaborating with your peers in duos and trios, you will create and produce a series of short audio and video pieces, building new characters from scratch for a range of different media. This unit sees you writing and creating characters not only for yourself but working with other members of the course. Alongside developing and showing a series of rough shorts across the semester for peer and tutor critique, technical skills in audio and video production will also be developed through workshops. For the final assessment, you will work in pairs or trios to develop a portfolio of character content for a platform of your choice.
Unit 5: ‘Snazzily titled 60-credit unit’
Drawing together the skills and portfolio developed across the previous 2 semesters, students will work towards developing original performance work for a showcase alongside an extended essay that interrogates the creation of the work. The core performance work can be a further development of characters and writing already created as part of the course or something brand new. Their final major project will be a mix of written script with either live or pre-recorded performance.
The reflective essay sees students drawing together theory and thinking around the creation of their pieces, considering their role as the practitioner in relation to this. The document will offer your tutors a greater understanding of the process of research, development, techniques and approaches. However, the core performance element (whether live or recorded) needs to stand on its own as part of the showcase.