The Arts of Adaptation: Creative Climates

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 5
• Convenor: Dr Elizabeth Bennett
• Assessment: a practice-based project presentation (50%) and coursework of 3000 words (50%)

In this module we explore how social, cultural and political concerns and debates are represented, adapted, transposed and meditated via drama, theatre, performance, literature, audio, digital and visual forms.

One strand of the module offers an overview of adaptation theory and techniques across a range of art forms and enables you to engage with the key debates, theories and practices of adaptation. The second strand of the module focuses on how social, cultural and political issues pertaining to climate and environment have been adapted across a range of media, while providing you with opportunities to create your own adaptation in film, radio, installation, drama, performance, installation, visual art or literature. To this end, each class includes a mixture of seminar and workshop-style teaching and learning experiences.

Indicative syllabus

• Adaptations, adapters and audiences
• Adaptation: from text to stage
• Literary adaptation for stage: from prose to performance
• Adaptation for radio: audio drama
• Adaptation between screen and stage
• New technologies and transmedial adaptation
• Intercultural adaptation
• Adaptations project presentations
• Guest artist workshop

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• critically and creatively engage with different aspects and examples of adaptation across artistic media
• demonstrate understanding of the key debates in adaptation with a focus on literary, audio, theatrical and visual forms
• account for how climate and environmental concerns are adapted across artistic forms
• respond critically and creatively to/with adaptation practices.