BA (Honours) Performance for Stage and Screen
Three years full-time
UCAS code • W491
Location • City Campus
Subject area • Stage and screen
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Watch a group of our BA (Honours) Performance for Stage and Screen students perfoming as part of their final year coursework.
Listen to music performed by our undergraduate final year students as part of their performance coursework.
A 360 degree tour of The Void film theatre.
Find out about Creative Spark, our annual graduate showcase of final year students' work, and Brightest Spark, an exhibition featuring projects completed by our elite students.
Read why Sheffield is an ideal base for creative media.
Find out about staff working in stage and screen.
At a glance
Examine the nature of performance for stage, screen and broadcast from a variety of perspectives on this challenging course. As well as practical performance work within these three different media, you develop and enhance your understanding of performance by engaging and challenging academic viewpoints. You can also prepare for a performance-related career with a tailored work placement.
Key points
• Attend theatre productions and cinematic screenings as part of your studies.
• Develop your knowledge of performance in a range of traditional and non-traditional spaces.
• Be inspired by an academic team that includes many professionals in their field.
• Enhance your career prospects with a tailored placement in a stage, screen or broadcast setting.
What is performance for stage and screen?
Performance for stage and screen considers the nature of performance and its reception across a range of media and spaces. Whilst some of these are traditional, others are unusual and invite the performer to explore alternative and exciting performance dynamics.
Performance students are also encouraged to investigate how their skills might be applied in other professional settings including health and education environments.
This course
Develop your understanding of performance for stage and screen from a variety of perspectives. You explore practical approaches to performance for traditional and non-traditional performance spaces, for the screen and for broadcast.
As well as gaining a practitioner’s perspective, you also consider the role of audience in these media. Your investigations are achieved by blending a practical approach with a clear theoretical understanding.
During the course you
• develop practical performance skills for stage, screen and radio
• learn to apply the skills you have learnt into established theatre and non-theatre settings
• explore and analyse dramatic and cinematic works through a range of perspectives
• attend theatre productions and cinematic screenings to study the relationship of space, performance and audience
• explore your own creative and professional development and look at ways of preparing for your chosen career
You take modules across various media from the position of the performer, critic and spectator. Whilst some key modules are core, others are optional modules. This allows you to tailor your study towards your interests and career ambitions.
Your studies are led by academics and a range of industry professionals, made up of core teaching staff and guest lecturers and workshop presenters. For example, the visiting professor for performance for stage and screen is the world-renowned playwright, John Godber.
As part of the course, you apply what you have learnt on a work-based learning placement. This is a great opportunity to gain professional work experience and enhance your CV.
In the past, placements have included work at local flagship theatres such as the Crucible Theatre and the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, and with theatre companies such as Point Blank, Third Angel and Paper Birds.
Films are shown in our high-tech cinema The Void. You also have access to our learning centre, holding a library of appropriate books and journals as well as thousands of films on DVD, Blu-ray and videotape, plus individual viewing facilities.
Key areas of study
Key areas include • the performer and the text • broadcast performance • studying for stage and screen • actors' training studio • performance spaces and places • performance and spectatorship • scriptwriting for stage, screen and radio • popular music • stand-up comedy.
Teaching staff on the course include two people who have previously run professional theatre companies for more than fifteen years, an international chart-topping musician and a director with almost 100 professional directing credits.
Find out more about BA (Honours) Performance for Stage and Screen
Related courses
You apply for this course through UCAS.
2013/14 academic year
For 2013 entry, mandatory UK field trips are included in the course fee.
The course fee may be subject to annual inflationary increase. For further information on fees and funding see www.shu.ac.uk/study/ug/fees-and-funding
2013/14 academic year
Typically £10,680 a year
2014/15 academic year
Typically £11,250 a year
The course fee may be subject to annual inflationary increase. For further information on fees, scholarships and bursaries see www.shu.ac.uk/international/fees
• practical performances • presentations • learning diaries • reports • portfolio • essays • viva – oral examination
Key Information Set 
Final year project (3:04)
BA (Honours) Performance for Stage and Screen final year coursework.
Watch a group of our students performing a variety of scenes as part of their final year coursework.
Kidnapping (1:51)
Final year project peformed by BA (Hons) Performance Arts students.
Gary Oliver, Sophie Brown, Helen Dodds and Charles Nolan, performed a 'kidnapping' during the Creative Spark 2010 event. Ashley Barnes discusses his experience following his kidnapping.
More videos
Final year project (3:04)
BA (Honours) Performance for Stage and Screen final year coursework.
Kidnapping (1:51)
Final year project peformed by BA (Hons) Performance Arts students.
Paul Agakoba - Sophia (3:47)
Sophia was performed as part of Paul's final year coursework.
Ziggy Elgin - Little Madam (2:39)
Little Madam was performed as part of Ziggy's final year coursework.
Simon Hartley - Peace after pain (3:07)
Peace after pain was performed as part of Simon's final year coursework.
Chris Ryan - Times we tried (2:52)
Times we tried was performed as part of Chris's final year coursework.
The Void film theatre
Films are shown in our purpose-built film theatre, the Void. It combines new technology, including Blu-ray DVD through an HD digital projector, with older technology, including 40-year-old Westrex 7000 35mm projectors. These projectors can show both recent and rare, culturally valuable films in their original cinema format, including silent films at the correct speed.
We are one of the few universities in the country that has these capabilities. You can view films as they were originally meant to be seen, an experience that cannot be replicated through DVD alone. The Dolby 5.1 surround-sound system enhances your viewing experience.
We continue to enjoy a close working relationship with the British Film Institute (BFI). We have privileged access to the BFI national archive, which contains more than 50,000 fiction films and over 100,000 non-fiction titles, most of which are not available on VHS or DVD.
The Void also hosts extracurricular activities such as the Student Union Film Society and was used as part of the international film festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest in November 2009.
Spark - be creative
Subjects included are • animation • architecture • computers • creative writing • digital media production • engineering • fashion design • film and visual effects • film and media production • fine art • furniture and product design • games design • graphic design • interior design • jewellery and metalwork • performing arts • photography • product design.
Creative Spark
Creative Spark is an annual showcase of student work and celebrates the innovation, creativity and imagination of our most talented graduates. Creative Spark is hosted across four university venues • Owen • Cantor • Sheaf • Arundel Gate Court and S1 in the city centre.
For further information visit the Creative Spark website.
Brightest Spark
Brightest Spark is an exhibition housed in the SIA Gallery and Cantor building. This exhibition features the elite students in each Sheffield of Institute of Arts course as chosen by industry professionals.
For further information visit the Brightest Spark website.
Project Spark
Sheffield Hallam students have the opportunity to play a key role in the promotion of the Creative Spark and Brightest Spark exhibitions by submitting entries for Project Spark. The 2012 competitions included • concept design • branding and wayfinding • creative writing • image • brightest spark logo and branding.
For further information visit the Project Spark website.
Creative media in Sheffield
We believe that Sheffield forms an ideal base for our activities and for your future work in film and television, whether you work with a traditional provider or independently.
Sheffield's Cultural Industries Quarter was one of the UK's first serious developments which was implemented to help the growth and support of the cultural industries sector. It draws together the wealth of creative talent and experience that exists in and around the city.
The city also has both BBC and independent local radio stations and a community radio station, Sheffield Live. Its central location means that we are within easy access of London, the BBC centres in Manchester and Leeds, Yorkshire Television and major independent companies including Chameleon Television (Leeds) and Zenith North (Newcastle).
We have strong links with the world renowned Sheffield Doc/Fest. Every year you can go to the screenings and join the seminars and debates between documentary makers, television commissioning editors and independents. You can also attend the cutting edge Lovebytes Digital Arts Festival, offering a variety of screenings, events and visiting filmmakers/artists at the five screen Showroom Workstation.
Phil Charles
Senior lecturer in screenwriting
I lecture and script workshop on second and third year screenwriting modules in the department of stage and screen. Working at Sheffield Hallam on a part-time basis, I'm a commissioned scriptwriter who's written for TV series Shameless, Murphy's Law and Doctors. I've also had an original comedy drama series transmitted on BBC radio. I presently have various original TV and film projects in development. Before discovering my love for screenwriting I worked as a copywriter at various advertising agencies including J. Walter Thompson.
I am totally passionate about screenwriting and very much enjoy working with new writers, helping them to develop their ideas and craft their screenplays to an industry standard. Being a working writer means I have links with the TV and film industries and am able to pass on to students up-to-date information.
Jon Bridle
Senior lecturer
I am the co-course leader for the BA Scriptwriting with Screen Studies and teach a range of modules at both undergraduate and postgraduate level including • introduction to screenwriting • the screenwriter in film history • contemporary British TV • screenwriting and professional practice.
I gained a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Derby in 2001, an MA in Writing for Performance and Publication from the University of Leeds and a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education from Sheffield Hallam University in 2011. I am a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
I am also a television/radio comedy writer and have written sketch and stand-up material for a range of shows such as • That Mitchell and Webb Look • That Mitchell and Webb Sound • Scallywagga • School of Comedy • Ask Rhod Gilbert • Bearded Ladies. More recently, I have successfully developed and sold a sitcom pilot, co-written a feature film treatment for Warp Films and am currently developing a sitcom with Little Comet productions.
My teaching/research interests include screenwriting and British television history and I am especially passionate about helping my screenwriting students follow their ambitions and get their work out into the ‘real world’!
Dr Chi-Yun Shin
Senior lecturer
Since joining Sheffield Hallam in January 2003, I have taught a range of modules in the film studies group including • contemporary East Asian cinema • concepts in film theory and criticism • alternative cinemas • contemporary British cinema • Hollywood to 1950 • studying cinema • silents to sound.
My research interests are in the areas of East Asian cinema and transnational cinema, especially cinema of Diaspora. I am particularly interested in the issues of genre, gender, cross-cultural inter/exchanges as well as the reception of East Asian cinema in the West.
I am the co-editor of New Korean Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2005), and I have contributed to journals and anthologies including Jump Cut, Paragraph, Seoul Searching: Culture and Identity in Contemporary Korean Cinema (State University of New York Press, 2007), Horror to the Extreme: Changing Boundaries in Asian Cinema (Hong Kong University Press, 2009) and Postcolonial Media Culture in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).
I am currently working on pan-Asian horror remakes and editing an anthology on Asian Film Noir. I am also a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema.
Neil Sissons
Senior Lecturer in performance
I first started teaching at Sheffield Hallam University in 2010 and became a full-time lecturer in 2011. I teach • performance • approaches to text • performance for radio • performance for TV.
Before this, I spent the whole of my working life in the professional theatre, and directed just under 100 professional productions.
I was the artistic director of Compass Theatre Company from 1982 until 2007. Compass’ repertoire focussed mainly on the classics, aiming to make lucid, emotional and intelligent productions that engaged with the heart of the text in a contemporary manner. This work toured to small, medium and large scale theatres throughout the UK. The company also toured internationally, including work throughout Europe, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Malaysia.
Additionally, amongst other freelance work, I was associate director of Hull Truck Theatre Company for eight years. Of the many shows I directed for Hull Truck, three played in the West End. I have an ongoing association with the new John Godber Company.
This has given me experience in both the subsidised and commercial theatre sectors.
During this time I have written a number of new plays, adaptations and created new translations of Ibsen’s 'A Doll’s House' and Chekhov’s 'The Proposal' and 'The Evils of Tobacco'.
Alongside my theatre work I have run workshops and master-classes in a number of colleges and universities across the country.
Suzanne Speidel
Lecturer
Phone: 0114 2256222
E-mail s.speidel@shu.ac.uk
I currently teach modules on film adaptation and film narrative. I also enjoy teaching courses on British cinema and European cinemas. I am the module leader for the MA module, adaptation reloaded, which covers adaptations across film, literature, theatre, television, radio, comic book and computer game.
My teaching reflects my academic background in English literature, and my particular interest is in developing modules on the BA English and Screen Studies.
My research is interdisciplinary across film, literature and television. I am very interested in relationships and comparisons between mediums, in the ways that one narrative may influence another, and in how stories are adapted across media.
I am currently writing a book, Adapting Forster, on film adaptations of the novels of E. M. Forster, which is due to published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2011. This book is a new departure for me, in that it has a special focus on screenwriting.
Other publications include 'The Ending Is Out There,' in The X-Files and Literature, Sharon Yang (ed.) (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007), 'Film Form and Narrative,' in An Introduction to Film Studies (Fourth Edition), Jill Nelmes (ed.) (Routledge, 2007), and 'Post-impressionism and the cinema: how we are 'made to see' in Conrad's Victory' in Joseph Conrad and the Performing Arts, Katherine Baxter and Richard Hand (eds.) (Ashgate, 2009).
I can offer expertise in film adaptation, costume drama, contemporary American television and German cinema.
James McNicholas
Lecturer in performance
I began teaching at Sheffield Hallam University in 2009. I have both current and past experience of performing and teaching in both the UK and also USA, crossing the areas of acting, dance choreography and music. My previous training includes being under the tutelage of some extremely experienced and energetic theatre professionals, such as Opera North Co-Founder Paul Wade and Choreographer Eddie Copp of Momentum Dance.
My teaching ranges from text-based performance, through to devised physical theatre. I expect a high level of dedication from my students, and enjoy working on poignant and dynamic performances with them. Alongside my teaching, I am also completing a PhD in theatre improvisation and intercultural theatre practice. One of my most recent research interests includes a growing relationship with emerging all-female devised theatre company; The Paper Birds. My research work also includes my teaching and performance work.
Sheldon Hall
Senior lecturer
Sheldon Hall lectures on film history and criticism in the department of stage and screen. His research interests are primarily in American and British cinema, especially large-scale films of the 1950s and 1960s, but he has also been known to enjoy subtitled continental conversation pieces. He recently talked to the BBC's Timewatch about epic movies.
He is the author of Zulu: With Some Guts Behind It (2005), co-author of Epics, Spectacles and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History (2010) and co-editor of Widescreen Worldwide (2010), and has written numerous articles for a wide variety of books and journals.
A journalist and film reviewer in a former life, he has also recorded DVD commentaries and contributed to Channel Four documentaries. As well as leading the MA in Film Studies at Sheffield Hallam, Dr Hall organises extra-mural courses at Sheffield's Showroom Cinema and is external examiner at Kingston University.
Dr Sophie Bush
Lecturer in performance
My background includes teaching, research and theatre making: three areas I am delighted to be able to unite in my position at Sheffield Hallam.
Broadly speaking, my research and teaching interests lie in contemporary theatre history and practice, and the processes of playmaking. I am currently adapting my doctoral research on the playwriting of Timberlake Wertenbaker for a monograph for Methuen, and have published several articles and delivered numerous conference papers on this topic.
I also run a small female ensemble (Bread&Roses), with whom I devise original work. I began teaching at Sheffield Hallam in 2010 and became a full-time member of staff in 2012.
Teaching interests
• contemporary British theatre
• theatre history and historiography
• women's theatre and playwriting
• theatre criticism
• studying, interpreting and creating texts
Publications
• (2010) Review of International Dramaturgy: Translation and Transformations in the Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker by Maya E. Roth and Sara Freeman (eds.). Modern Drama, 53(2).
• (2010) ‘Battered if tenuously optimistic’: Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Female Bodies. Bodies of Work [online]. (http://www.bodiesofwork.info/Battered.html)
• (2010) Interview with Valerie West. British Library Theatre Archive Project [online]. (http://www.bl.uk/projects/theatrearchive/westv4.html)
• (2009) ‘The inevitable need to speak in order to be’: On the loss of voice in two plays by Timberlake Wertenbaker. FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts, 9 [online]. (http://forum.llc.ed.ac.uk/current_issue/09/Bush.php)
Ashley Barnes
Lecturer
E-mail ashley.barnes@shu.ac.uk
Phone 0114 225 6220
I have taught performance at Sheffield Hallam University since 2007 and formerly at the University of Leeds. However, my work firmly bridges both academia and professional practice as I am also the founder and artistic director of Dead Earnest Theatre.
Dead Earnest is an applied theatre company working with clients from across the country to use theatre techniques to engage, inspire, empower and consult. Most of Dead Earnest's work is in the fields of creative learning and health and wellbeing.
The clients I have worked with include the
• General Medical Council
• Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service (CAFCASS)
• The Child Workforce Development Council
• Creative Partnerships
• hospitals and primary care trusts (PCTs)
• councils
Applied theatre is tailoring theatre interventions to specific audiences and for specific goals, and I am interested in developing the range of techniques that can be used to measure its success in achieving behaviour change.
Shelley O'Brien
Principal lecturer in screen studies
I developed my love of film at a very early age, encouraged by my parents. I was finally able to study the subject seriously when I gained a place at Sheffield City Polytechnic. I graduated in 1992 with a BA (Hons) History of Art, Design and Film, and began teaching film classes in 1992. I gained an MPhil award from Sheffield Hallam in 2000, for my thesis entitled Body Horror Movies: Their Emergence and Evolution.
Although teaching was not initially my intention, I discovered that I enjoyed being able to put my passion for film to good use.
My main areas of research and interest are horror cinema, Japanese cinema, and film music. Recent conference papers have looked at the so-called 'torture-porn' cycle, and the art of sound in movies.
I have recently written a book chapter to be included in the McFarland publication, Roman Catholicism in Fantastic Film, entitled 'Killer Priests: The Last Taboo?'
Martin Carter
Principal lecturer
After a career in IT I decided to do something interesting with my life and follow my passion for film by taking a degree and masters in film studies at Sheffield Hallam.
I have been lecturing here for more than five years, specialising in • British cinema • Hollywood • documentary. I love teaching, especially encouraging students to engage with film from places and periods that are unfamiliar to them. Seeing students discover films that change their lives is an unforgettable experience, and one that we hope every student will have whilst studying here with us.
Teaching interests
• British cinema – classic and contemporary
• The history of documentary filmmaking
• Hollywood on Hollywood
• British science fiction – film and TV
I have presented numerous academic papers at conferences over recent years and am a contributor to Vertigo magazine.
Research interests
• British cinema – particularly 1930s and 1940s
• Hollywood – film noir, political cinema and independent film production
• Documentary – the work of Dziga Vertov, Humphrey Jennings, Chris Marker and Werner Herzog
• European horror cinema of the 1960s and 1970s
Profiles
Phil Charles
Senior lecturer in screenwriting
Jon Bridle
Senior lecturer
Dr Chi-Yun Shin
Senior lecturer
Neil Sissons
Senior Lecturer in performance
Suzanne Speidel
Lecturer
James McNicholas
Lecturer in performance
Sheldon Hall
Senior lecturer
Dr Sophie Bush
Lecturer in performance
Ashley Barnes
Lecturer
Shelley O'Brien
Principal lecturer in screen studies
Martin Carter
Principal lecturer
