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Performing Arts

Assignment Summary

Assessment Task 3: Research and analysis of the Live Performance of your choice. 1,500-2,000 words, 30% due April 17 (beginning of Week 7)

Question: Choose a live performance that you consider to be of heightened style (i.e. that is, not naturalism/realism). What style of theatre is this and how does the performance you are viewing shape the experience of an audience member?

  • Refer to a particular style or era that we have studied this semester.
  • Consider the choices made in the production by the director, designer, and actors
  • Consider the cultural and historical context of the text
  • Consider the spaces in which the audience experiences this performance.
  • You must include a bibliography following Chicago Note Style, citing a range of:
    •  books
    •  journal articles 
    •  reviews from newspapers, magazines, or websites (eg: The Age, The Australian, The Guardian, Crikey.com, ArtsHub, Herald Sun, Limelight, and Blogs - if they are interesting.)

N.B. Make sure you include reference material from your unit on moodle.

Assessment criteria Marking Guide  

How clearly you have addressed the question

 20%

How your analysis of the work reveals your wider research into and understanding of the history of style in theatre.

 20%

The clarity of your written expression and your ability to structure a logical and clear argument

 20%

Your ability to provide significant examples from the performance, you are reviewing

 25%

Your ability to clearly reference and provide an adequate bibliography following Chicago Style

 10%

Tips!

  • Be as specific as possible, a quote from the play, programs, and reviews, and where appropriate, cite details that you have noted from the live performance itself.
  • When discussing a production (live or historic) note key creatives (director, designer, lighting, costumes, etc) and actors. Note key productions of the past and their impact.
  • Take a pen and paper into the performance so that you can make notes about stagecraft choices on the spot. Use Patrice Pavis’ Questionnaire (in your reader) to guide your thinking.

Check out live performances at the following theatres:

  • Ballarat; Her Majesty`s
  • Melbourne; MTC, Malthouse, Victorian Arts Centre, Red Stitch, La Mama, fortyfivedownstairs, Chapel off Chapel, and many more.

Plan Your Search

Planning your search is critical to obtaining the most relevant and appropriate sources of scholarly information for your assessment.

Start planning your search by:

  1. Identify the key concepts in your assignment scenario. 
  2. Consider alternative terms that authors might use for these

You may need to alter your search terms if you don't find what you need.

Keywords Alternative terms
theatre play, theater, performance
heightened  "heightened performance"
"greek theatre" "greek theater", Greek tragedy", "Greek comedy"

Now use Boolean operators to connect your search terms. 

Use OR to combine all the terms for the same concept: theatre OR theater

Use AND to combine terms from different concepts: "heightened performance" AND wicked

Use quotation marks to search for a phrase: "heightened performance"

Use an asterisk to retrieve variations on a word: theat* finds theatre, theatres, theater, theaters

  • Works better in databases rather than QuickSearch

Use brackets to group all terms from the same concept together

Watch the following video to learn more about Boolean operators

When you put it together:

(heightened OR "heightened performance") AND "greek tragedy"

(theatre OR theater OR play*) AND heightened

Please note, these are examples intended only to demonstrate a search strategy. It does not include all possible variations. You will probably need to alter your search terms as you go.

Search For Resources

Suggested databases for this assessment are:

Search newspaper databases to locate many newspaper titles from Australia and around the world. 

Major newspapers often have their own websites, for example:

I know, I know, we told you not to use Google for your assignments

However, Google has some great features for searching for organisations, government reports, policies, statistics and other useful documents. (But please do not rely on using Google for all your references.)

  • use (double) quotation marks to define phrases (multiple words found together, rather than separately) - use "performance art" to find the exact phrase rather then performance art (which might find after he attended a performance he visted an art gallery ).
  • add site:org.au to restrict results to only Australian organisation websites.
  • or add site:gov.au to restrict results to only Australian government websites.

"performance art" site:gov.au

Try it in Google

 

You can also:

  • use site:vic.org.au to restrict to Victorian organisation web sites.
  • or use site:vic.gov.au to restrict to Victorian government web sites.
  • use a year range to look for years in the results, such as daterange:2012-2015
  • specify the filetype of results (such as only PDF documents).

"performance art" site:vic.org.au daterange:2014-2016 filetype:PDF

Try it:  

You can also use parentheses (round brackets) and OR for alternative terms (works best at the end of the search line):

"performance art" site:vic.gov.au daterange:2014-2016 filetype:PDF ("performance art" OR dance)

Try it:  

site:vic.gov.au daterange:2014-2016 filetype:PDF "performance art"

Try it:  

We can also exclude a search term from our results (similar to using NOT in a database) by putting a hyphen or minus sign in front of the word (or phrase in quotes). For example, to exclude results that include the word Melbourne, we can use -Melbourne

site:vic.gov.au daterange:2014-2016 filetype:PDF "performance art" -Melbourne

Try it:  

 

Warning: excluding results that have the word Melbourne will also exclude results that have Melbourne and rural details, or Melbourne and your area of interest.

This might not be what you want.

Click the Settings option (may be showing on its own but more likely to be under the three-line menu icon)

screenshot, Google Scholar, indicating Settings option

Click on the Library links option, and search for federation

screenshot indicating Library links option and search box (with federation already typed in)

Tick the checkbox for Federation University Australia, and (important!) click the Save button.

screenshot showing results of search for word federation and indicating Save button

If you are logged into a Google account (GMail, etc), this setting will be saved permanently.
Otherwise, you might have to redo this setup every time you restart your web browser to use Google Scholar.

Depending on your topic, this might make many more full-text resources available in your Google Scholar results, resources that the Library has paid for.

screenshot, Google Scholar results list, indicating full text access, both Library paid subscription links and open access links

Start in Google Scholar. Search for a topic. Here we have searched for:

("climate change" OR "global warming") AND coffee AND agricultural

Use the links on the left to limit results to the last 5 years.

 screenshot of Google Scholar, showing Boolean search, and indicating limit for last 5 years

  • The ANDs in the screenshot are not required (they are implied in Google and Google Scholar), but do not modify the search, and are included here for clarity.
  • The round brackets (parentheses) and OR are used to search for alternative terms for the same concept.
  • The quotation marks are used to search for phrases (a "lump of words always found together") rather than searching for each word separately.

When using Google Scholar, see the CRAAP test (below) to evaluate each article before relying it as a reference.

To read results from Google Scholar, look for either an open access link on the right-hand side, or (if you have added Federation University as instructed above) use the Find it @Federationlink to connect to material provided via the Library.

screenshot, Google Scholar, indicating full text links, both through Library paid subscriptions and open access

After clicking the buttons and reading the sections above, try searching Google Scholar yourself:

Google Scholar - journal articles and other material (as detailed above, you can link Google Scholar to the Library's paid full-text subscriptions)

 

Google Scholar has a citation feature, but always check the citation it supplies. It may be incorrect (no upper case letter to start a subtitle, for example) or incomplete (missing the DOI, for example).

Click the quotation mark icon to pop up a window (unless blocked by pop-up settings in your web browser) containing a reference list entry several referencing styles and links to export formats for bibliographic management software (e.g. EndNote).

screenshots from Google Scholar, indicating citation icon and showing the pop-up window

Underneath many articles in your Google Scholar results will be a Cited by link - this points to newer articles that have used the article in their reference list. Some of these (but not all) may be on the same topic, so it can be another way of finding newer relevant articles.

This can also be a rough guide to how much impact an article has had - articles with more impact tend to be cited more.

screenshot, Google Scholar, showing Cited by link underneath an article in the results list

Do your references pass the CRAAP test?

When was this source published?

How old are the references and data used?

Has this source, or its data, been updated?

Does this type of information get updated?

Is there likely to be more recent information available elsewhere?

Is this information relevant to your assignment? Is there likely to be better information?

Is this aimed at the correct audience?

Who wrote it? What are their qualifications?

Where do they work? Who do they work for?

Are they likely to have a good understanding of this field?

Is the information reliable?

Can you find the original source?

What is the quality of the presentation? Are there significant errors?

Do the conclusions match the data?

Have all sides been considered?

Why has the article been written?

Is there any obvious bias? Is the author or their employer likely to get a benefit out of the recommendations?

Is it recommending a particular course of action or therapy? Does the data support this? Are any alternatives considered?

Write Your Assignment

Referencing

FedCite is the one-stop shop for all your referencing needs. In Performing Arts you need to use Chicago Note 17th ed.

 

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