Master of Directing for Performance (MC-DIRPERF) // Attributes, outcomes and skills

Intended learning outcomes

Through laboratory-based workshops, seminars, lectures, self-directed exercises, tutorials, practical master classes and national and international internships the key learning outcomes will be:

• Specialist skills in directing for performance, such as processes of rehearsal, dramaturgy, devising, composition, performance-making;
• Advanced ability to engage creatively and imaginatively with textual, visual and performed sources and artworks;
• Ability to work across disciplines and multiple contexts of performance practice;
• Understanding of the interplay between theory and practice, and their mutual enrichment through praxis;
• The knowledge, practice and critical approaches required to build the Australian performance culture of the future;
• The skills to be flexible practitioners who can operate as leaders in multiple contexts;
• Embedded research skills and knowledge;
• Advanced critical, artistic and conceptual skills;
• Ability to comprehend, interpret and intelligently engage with the work of significant practitioners and theorists in the field;
• Advanced dramaturgical awareness, providing the skills to understand one’s own and others’ work within its socio-cultural environment;
• An awareness of intercultural and international differences, with a focus on Asia;
• Collaborative networks from within the cohort and the VCA, and the knowledge and skills to build future collaborative networks nationally and internationally through industry placements and internships.

Generic skills

On completion of this course the students should demonstrate the ability to:

• work across disciplines, create and organise a range of aesthetic material
• work as a leader showing initiative and openness
• communicate verbally and orally
• collaborate and be flexible
• use a range of research tools and methodologies
• lead others in the skills of problem solving
• interpret and analyse with a capacity for critical thinking
• reflect and evaluate to employ innovation methodologies
• network, broker and mentor

Graduate attributes