1. How does the Theatre Studies department define interdisciplinary study?

Introduction to Performance 2008-2009 - http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/ug/intro/year_1/intro_to_performance_0708/

Module description

• “Performance studies will be presented as an interdisciplinary practice which, on the one hand, can be applied as a method with which to interrogate and understand social and cultural processes, incorporating modes of enquiry related to such fields as ethnography, psychoanalysis, philosophy, politics and geography. On the other it encompasses ‘performance’ as a vital artistic phenomenon – taking a whole range of singular and hybrid forms – which has a direct correlation with contemporary everyday life and which offers, in itself, a means of cultural critique”

2. In what ways do single honours, combined honours and joint honours degrees claim to be interdisciplinary?

Aims and objectives - http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/ug/aims/

• “historical context”
• “awareness of international trends and of global developments and of key debates within the Humanities”
• “literary skills”

The Undergraduate Handbook 2008-2009 http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/ug/handbook_08-09/#2

• Course aims & Learning Outcomes

• “build on a firm historical and conceptual base in order to introduce students to the work of key contemporary playwrights, theoreticians and theatre practitioners, and to the debates that have underpinned developments in contemporary performance practice”
• “Knowledge of historical and contemporary contexts of production and the impact on forms and styles of theatre”

Keywords: historical and conceptual base, practitioners, contemporary context, impact on forms and styles of theatre

The Theatre studies department appears to encourage the use of historical knowledge to encourage students to gain a concept of the context of performance

Introduction to Theatre- 2008- 2009 http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/ug/intro/year_1/intro_to_theatre/

• “will introduce students to historiographical and methodological problems in the study of theatre”

Part 1- The European Legacy - http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/ug/intro/year_1/intro_to_theatre/european_legacy/

• “The sessions will not follow a strictly historical approach, concentrating rather on significant performative elements from the periods examined – namely, Plays and Players; Performance Spaces; and, Spectatorship. All these elements will be looked at in terms of the cultural contexts in which they took place”

Contemporary Theatre and its Context http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/ug/intro/year_1/theatre_text_and_context/

Aspects of Practice- Hip Hop Theatre and Performance http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/ug/intro/year_1/th108/hiphop/

• “In this module we will examine the developing genre of hip hop theatre and performance and explore how to create theatre out of contemporary rhythms, movements, stories, politics and aesthetics”

Aspects of Theatre and Performance – (2^nd year core) http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/ug/intro/year_two/aspects_of_theatre/

• List of course components includes sections which appear to be very interdisciplinary through their relation to historical and cultural studies. For example:

“Staging Imagined Communities’: the role of history, memory, myth and symbol in the 20th Century Irish Theatre” - http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/ug/intro/year_two/aspects_of_theatre/staging_imagined_communities/

• “In Irish drama the mirror does not give back the real; it gives back images of a perceived reality. The play as mirror up to nation, rather than to nature in Hamlet’s sense, results in a dynamic in process: you have to stop it in freeze-frame to distinguish what happened (history) from might yet happen (politics)”

South African Theatre - http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/ug/intro/year_two/aspects_of_theatre/south_african_theatre/

• “It will particularly focus on how the socio-historic and economic changes have affected the development of theatre in South Africa”