Welcome to our online
Performance Showcase
This online space celebrates the work of Performance students during the 2025–2026 academic year. Here, you can explore moments of creativity from all four years of the programme through photography, video, and creative writing.The site offers a window into the experimentation, imagination, and transformation that shape students’ creative practices and artistic journeys.
Creative Research Project (Level 10)
Creative Research Project is a dynamic, practice-led module undertaken across two terms. This year, the BA Performance cohort engaged in an intensive process of research, creative development, and production, culminating in a large-scale group performance project and two accompanying pieces of written work. Each group responded to a bespoke commission brief created by a professional mentor from the creative industries. These mentors played an active role in the creative journey, offering guidance and feedback at key points throughout the rehearsal process and attending the final performances.
This digital showcase offers a glimpse into the outcomes of this rich and collaborative process. While only two of the performances are highlighted in detail here, the full cohort produced a diverse and ambitious range of work that reflects the depth and variety of their creative responses.
Creative Festival (Level 9)
Creative Festival is a vibrant Level 9 module that offers BA Performance students the opportunity to create and present original work for a public audience as part of a performance festival at Ayr Campus. With support from the teaching team, students form self-directed companies and take on a range of creative, technical, and production roles to develop and deliver professional-standard performances.Creative Festival, allows students to move beyond prescriptive forms, consolidating their own artistic practice and exploring collaborative, student-led approaches to performance-making. Delivered through a combination of in-person workshops, mentoring, and self-directed rehearsals, Creative Festival celebrates autonomy, experimentation, and ensemble-based work. This digital showcase captures highlights from this year’s performances and offers a glimpse into the creative potential that will continue to develop in future cohorts.
Company Statement
We, the Thistle Belles, are five Scottish women who love that feeling of nostalgia. We are five women who have been heavy influenced by the impact of our mums and other brilliant women in our lives, either from their music, their style or personality. In our work we like to reflect these elements we have learnt from other women to create pieces that highlight girlhood and shoutout to nostalgia with our costume, music choices, and choice of dialect. We create pieces that are naturalistic and highlight female rage - this, with the added touch of nostalgia and Scottish based themes - you have a Thistle Belles curated piece of work.
Wee Lassies
"Wee Lassies" reimagines "Little Women" in a late '90s to early 2000s Glasgow, mirroring Greta Gerwig's adaptation. Set against the backdrop of 1999, the story unfolds into the new millennium, capturing the essence of Louisa May Alcott's classic through a contemporary Scottish lens. The piece explores the lives of the March sisters as they navigate the challenges of teenage life amidst the socio-economic struggles of Glasgow. The adaptation delves into themes of sisterhood, ambition, female rage, and societal expectations, resonating with a modern audience. It portrays the sisters' dreams and personal growth, staying true to the original's spirit while grounding the narrative in a vibrant, urban setting. "Wee Lassies" aims to capture the universal experience of love, loss, and self-discovery, appealing to both fans of the novel and those new to the story.
Company Statement
The Liminal Face company aims to use absurdism, post modernism, (at times) comedy as well as our specialty of storytelling and writing to create performances that give off a sense of verisimilitude or truth to ourselves and hopefully to the audience as well. Even though the piece that we’ll perform is focused on telling our own experiences to the audience, we also aim to explore the restrictions and the absurdity present within society. Coming from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, we don’t want to give off the impression that our experiences are the exact or definitive experience that everyone feels. We instead want to have our performances invite and encourage the audience to reflect on their own experiences as well as the world around them while also having a fun and enjoyable time along the way.
I am Real
Being true to yourself is difficult. It’s far easier to hide, to conform, to fit in with what is expected of us. In putting up these walls around ourselves, can we really call what we present ‘real’ or authentic? Choosing to present a truthful version of ourselves comes with risk, but without taking that risk, there’s no chance of meaningful connection. “I Am Real” is an introspective piece with a focus on how it feels to take that step. It presents a series of characters connected through shared experiences and pulls back the curtain for a glimpse of what is happening inside their heads as they navigate and attempt to take those steps towards being their ‘real’ selves. This production aims to prompt you to reflect with us on your own experience of how it feels.
Devising (Level 8)
Devising is a playful and collaborative Level 8 module that invites students to explore ensemble-based performance through physicality, storytelling, and improvisation. Working closely with peers, students engage in a wide range of approaches to making performance, with an emphasis on experimentation, curiosity, and collective creativity.
Throughout the module, students explore different modes of play, physical performance, and narrative-making to generate original material. The work created might be personal, political, poetic—or all three. It may reflect individual identities, shared experiences, or speak directly to an audience. The emphasis is on discovering what you want to say and how you want to say it through performance.
Delivered through in-person workshops and practical exploration, Devising supports students in developing their creative voice within an ensemble, laying a strong foundation for future collaborative and self-led work. This digital showcase features moments from this year's cohort and gives insight into the inventive spirit that drives the module each time it runs.
Performance Context: Creative Processes (Level 8)
Performance Context: Creative Processes combines both theoretical and practical approaches to understanding theatre and performance-making. Throughout the semester, students explored three key performance genres - Epic Theatre, Theatre of the Absurd, and Postmodern Theatre - alongside the creative practices and theatrical forms that evolved from them. Through workshops, devised performance tasks, and critical analysis, students engaged with influential playwrights, directors, and scripts associated with each genre, while examining the sociopolitical contexts that shaped their aesthetics. For the final assessment, students developed an original performance piece inspired by the practical and theoretical work explored throughout the semester, drawing influence from the plays, practitioners, and creative processes studied across the module.
Practice Text Based (Level 7)
This dynamic first-year module introduces students to the core principles of text-based performance, rooted in both historical and contemporary theatre practice. In Term 1, students explore Naturalism and the influence of Stanislavski - distinguishing his work from 'Method' acting - and engage with key texts and staging techniques. In Term 2, the focus shifts to Shakespeare, where students learn to connect classical material to their own lived experiences while developing skills in classical acting and examining how Shakespeare is reimagined in today's UK theatre landscape. Across both terms, students are assessed through three practical performance projects: a Stanislavskian scene study, a Shakespearean monologue, and a contemporary reworking of a Shakespeare scene.