Popular Entertainment and Performance Documentation (DRA2089)

30 credits

This module will introduce you to the study of popular performance through a series of case studies of popular entertainment forms such as circus, music hall, spectacle, and vaudeville. You will work with the collections in the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, as well as other archival materials available locally, to learn the basic principles of archival research. By looking at historical popular entertainments and their modern-day counterparts, you will also learn about sources and performance documentation. You will consider the ways in which performances of the past can be reconstructed, and consider how you might document current performances. How can an understanding of performance documentation help us tell stories about performances from the past, and how might this influence contemporary performance practitioners who want to creatively document their work?