The central idea behind the CAPITAL Centre, funded by HEFCE under its CETL (Centres of Excellence in Teaching and Learning) initiative, is that the arts and practices involved in making theatre are closely allied to those that foster the best in many dimensions of teaching, learning and the dissemination of transferable skills. A partnership between the University of Warwick and the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Centre builds on an existing collaboration in process since 2002. With the help of additional funding from HEFCE in January of this year, the collaboration will be extended to include the Shakespeare Institute of The University of Birmingham, to reinforce the position of Stratford-upon-Avon and the West Midlands as a centre of excellence in theatre and literary studies.
The aim of the Centre, led by Professors Jonathan Bate and Carol Rutter, is to foster and disseminate widely – through the University of Warwick, in the local community, nationally and internationally through online delivery – an approach to teaching and learning that emphasises the arts of imagining other minds, role-play and improvisation, trust and teamwork, as a paradigm of discovery throughout the creative process.
The Centre was formally launched on 23 February 2006 though it came into existence almost a year ago. The first year of CAPITAL is being viewed as a Laboratory Year to test a number of teaching and learning options within Warwick’s Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies and the School of Theatre Studies. Our objectives have been to enable students to move from the texts of literature to the texts of performance; to offer them an opportunity to engage with one kind of text through lecture and seminar teaching and learning and the other kind through masterclasses and workshops; and to imagine, devise and begin real research work not just on Shakespeare and his contemporaries but on new writing and writers, in partnership with practitioners and specialist research collections.
Theatre visits have supplemented the study of plays already in the syllabus or provided a focus for improvised work which may lead to practical performance. In several cases it has been possible to enhance a theatre visit with additional events and work involving practitioners based on play/production. Duska Radosavljevic, the RSC’s Higher Education Programme Manager, who is CAPITAL’s primary link with the Company, describes one of these events below. Where an event is not an integral part of a course students have been asked to volunteer and colleagues involved have agreed to include in the assessment process an opportunity for these students to use the experience they have gained.
In CAPITAL’s second year the workshop model of learning will be embedded into the curriculum and new programmes of study will be created. For example a third-year undergraduate module in English and Comparative Literary Studies titled ‘From Page to Stage: Modes of Production and Reception’ has been created by Paul Prescott, CAPITAL Centre Lecturer and Duska Radosavljevic, which aims to break down barriers between the theatre and the academy to investigate and pioneer non-traditional modes of teaching. Discussions are well advanced for a module on Teaching Shakespeare for 2007/8 which will combine RSC workshop techniques, traditional Shakespeare lectures and teaching practice in schools carrying credits towards a Postgraduate Certificate of Education. Introducing an enlarged element of practical work to these courses has highlighted the need to review and extend assessment methods for literature courses beyond the traditional essay or examination paper and to learn from other disciplines like drama and theatre studies, for example the use of video and experiential journals.
A number of other CAPITAL initiatives will come on stream in the next academic year. The first RSC/Warwick Playwright in Residence will be in post in June and will contribute to a new module in Writing for Theatre and Performance and to the Warwick Writing Programme. Fellowships in Creativity and Performance will be inaugurated, offering support to both theatre practitioners and academics for projects which explore approaches to teaching and learning which emphasise the arts of imagining other minds, role play, improvisation, trust and teamwork. A production of Lope de Vega’s The Capulets and Montagues, drawing on the whole of the University’s student body, will be performed in August as part of the fringe programme of the RSC’s Complete Works Festival and will offer practical experience for actors, technicians, and directors.
The CAPITAL Centre provides a shared space for academics, teachers and students and practitioners, writers and actors to inform each other’s work. Michael Boyd’s vision as Artistic Director of the RSC involves a particular emphasis on the model of the RSC community as a ‘campus’ where research and learning are integral to the process of making theatre. Thus the RSC/Warwick Playwright in residence will create new work for the company, University staff are contributing to the RSC’s innovative Artists’ Development Programme and outreach is being achieved jointly through the Learning Network being taken into UK schools by the RSC’s Learning Department.
The English Subject Centre will be one of the main channels for the dissemination of the CAPITAL Centre’s work to the higher education community beginning with a joint conference on the teaching of Shakespeare in September 2006 (for details, see the Events Calendar on p.4 above). We hope to share our experiences of the CAPITAL Centre’s development and progress in this Newsletter.
