Adaptation as Interdisciplinary Practice

Overview

This module asks students to examine the process and challenges of adapting works, either within the same medium in a different time or place, or between different media, with staff from across the school collaborating to offer students an understanding of how different media work, and how the differences between those media impact the process of adaptation.  The class will also examine how adaptation plays an integral role in the process of translation.  Each week students will examine several versions of a play, novel, and/or film script (or watch them), looking at originals from the Greeks forward to see how adaptors have grappled with great works of different eras and cultures in an attempt to make them more accessible to contemporary audiences, while at the same time (in most cases) attempting to preserve something of their original context.  The class will also look at theoretical models of adaptation.   Ultimately, students will be asked to examine the adaptation history of a single original work in an academic essay, and will try their own hand at adaptation in presenting a treatment for a work of fiction, drama, film, or any other form, adapted from a prior work.

Learning Objectives

Having completed this module, you should:

Understand the history of adaptation in drama and other forms. 
Be able to analyse translations and adaptations
Be able to identify the rationale behind what is altered and what is kept. 
Become adapters on their own.

Skills

Research and analytical skills
Performance skills
Communication and speech
Interacting with others (both in interactions between performer and director, as well as performer and audience)
Technical proficiency

Assessment