About Theatre Studies
Theatre Studies is a subject that is easy to become passionate about. It provides keys
that unlock your understanding about the nature of performance, allowing you access to the tools of a creative performer,
as well as the critical and analytical skills to apply to what you see performed. You can take a scholarly approach, and you can learn by doing,
but primarily you will find that practice, analytial investigation and critical thinking inform and support one another.
You will learn with staff who maintain their own passion and enthusiasm for theatre via a strongly
maintained association with professional theatre.
They work in the fields of acting, directing, stage design, lighting and sound design, playwriting and translation.
And then there is our Lunchtime Theatre programme at Allen Hall, which is your testing ground
as a performer, director, playwright and in all aspects of stagecraft. It is a weekly performance
fixture unique to Theatre Studies at Otago, and something to celebrate.
Theatre Studies is based in Allen Hall, a fully-functioning
theatre which doubles as a teaching space, which means that
you will be working in an environment that is actively performance-oriented.
Allen Hall is a vibrant, user-friendly space to which students
have full access. Performances occur regularly, thanks to
our Lunchtime
Theatre programme every Thursday and Friday during the
teaching year. We also host occasional visiting productions
and plays staged by staff and students. In 2004, for  example,
we hosted a performance from the Odin Teatret in Denmark,
and earlier that year a cast of students from all levels of
Theatre Studies presented their own intriguing, fresh adaptation
of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Cockroach Races, under
staff direction.
One of the great things about Allen Hall is that it provides
students with inside knowledge on how a theatre actually operates.
It is a real hands-on operation, where you may find yourself
selling tickets at the box office one day, acting the next,
then perhaps rigging and operating lights or sound. Instruction
in key theatre tasks is a part of some of the papers we offer.
You will have chances to test your ideas and your theatrical
imagination in a supportive environment with access to expert
advice.
Allen Hall also provides a place to study and to meet with
other theatre students, and provides some resources such as
access to a small theatre library, and to audio-visual and
editing equipment, as well as rehearsal spaces for a variety
of projects. Above all, it gives you the opportunity to feel
part of a theatre community, which reflects our teaching philosophy
of ensemble work.
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