Research Events
Some of our department’s academic staff pursue interdisciplinary interest and are active members of research groups hosted by the University’s Research Centre for Culture, Communication, and Society (CCCS). Explore details about these research groups: Language and Technology, Health Humanities.
Drama and Theatre Performance at ALS
Our mission: To learn about drama through experience.
Starting in 2023, we have included dramatic theatre production in our annual programme of student activities in literature, writing, and translation. Every year, student volunteers will produce and perform in English a piece of theatre in close collaboration with academic staff specialised in drama. Our first production will be Old Times, a drama by the English playwright Harold Pinter about marriage, relationships, and memory.
Studying literature and drama performance together
In our literature programme, the study of drama and theatre is given equal weight to the study of fiction and lyric poetry. We recognise the need to provide a rigorous and structured study programme for dramatic literature. This is reflected in our new module offering – Elizabethan and Jacobean Tragedy, starting in 2023 – and our plans for future drama modules.
Dramatic literature is particular among literary genres as it encompasses both sensory and linguistic components. From any perspective through which we study literature – historical, formal, ideological – the writing of dramatic literature is inseparable from its actual or theoretical performance. Simply put, dramatic literature is written in most cases with performance in mind.
Our department believes that students cannot understand dramatic literature without experiencing theatrical performance. Seeing and performing live theatre is uniquely exciting for English learners. Performance internalises the object of study – drama – in ways that are relevant to the student experience.
Dramatic productions benefit students of English generally, regardless of whether a student specialises in literature, as they activate a wide range of abilities and interests, not only speaking and reading but also visual design, costumes, music, technical practice, digital programming, and creativity.
Student productions also serve as effective English-language collaboration projects. Of all student cooperation efforts (competitions or readings, for example), drama is the most effective in boosting a student’s speaking and reading capacities in a relatively short time. This is because of the increased motivation and urgent necessities of production and collaboration with colleagues, academic staff, and English speakers with experience in drama and theatre.
For example, in 2021, staff member Dr Peter Yacavone co-directed a production in Shanghai of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV Part I” that involved about 40 local university students. Actors were trained to understand, memorise, and recite hundreds of lines of Shakespearean verse. You can learn more about the aims and achievements of this production by watching the performance on Bilibili or YouTube.
The Department of Applied Linguistics and Social Sciences hosts a number of research groups, including the following: