Courses

Mmm Birmingham Birmingham Birmingham. What a solid sounding name =) The more I read about that school (and they put in a lot of effort for their publicity material...one prospectus and one Singapore Society publication) the nicer it sounds. The joint degrees they offer are particularly enticing. Imagine...European Studies and French - no need to specialise, you get to do everything from literature to economics to history and most intriguingly, sociology, and if I take a language with it, then I can focus on one country and get to study there for a year! Most delicious. When I was reading the prospectus it was like bling! How convenient =) Listen to this...

Culture, Society and Communication (Europe) with a Modern Language BA
At th start of the programmes you are introduced to key ideas and strategies of cultural inquiry. Central themes studied include the media; representations of peoples and their narratives; national and trans-national identities; the cultural industries; and the complex relationships between culture, society and language. Unusually, these programmes cover both Western and Eastern Europe.

French Studies BA
The first two years build upon your existing written, oral and aural skills in the French language, and give you the opportunity to study the literature, politics, media, culture and history of modern France. The third year is spent in France, normally following a programme of study at one of our many partner universities. A wide range of specialist options is available in the final year. Current choices include Autobiography, Film, Stylistics, Contemporary French Cinema, the Algerian War, and Historical Crises of the 20th Century.

Modern Languages and European Studies (Society, Culture and History) BA
The general European core and optional topics you study in this programme include European Integration, European Film, Contemporary and Historical Images of Europe, the European Novel, Women in Europe, European Drama and Theatre, Translation Theory and Practice, and European Romanticism. You also study the language and culture of one or more European countries in depth.

These are the highlights of a rather impressive range of options offered by Birmingham. I think these are more practical than the other ones I was considering...at least they seem to have more blatant links with the real world, although I haven't heard of anyone on PSC actually choosing to study strange things like these. I wonder if they'd even let me apply with these programmes. At any rate, I figure that I can always do modules involving Lit and Drama, or I could just continue reading, and acting in their Drama Club. Perused the English course pages, and they don't seem to be particularly intriguing...in fact, with their focus on critical analysis, it seems to be what we're doing now. The thing about these three courses is that they kind of allow you to look at Lit in its cultural and social context, which is something quite new to me.

Anyway, it's quite exciting to read these prospectuses. Even if the programmes aren't interesting, reading about the university life and the towns and cities they're situated in is fascinating...it reawakened my old love affair with SimCity =P Was reading the SingSoc publication from U of Birmingham, and I find it quite remarkable that the Singaporean tone of writing still persists even after years of exposure to the English of the English. Seems like our country-bunpkin accent is quite hard to eradicate =P I know that it's probably not as rosy a picture as all these prospectuses make it out to be, but it's enticing, to think of studying these subjects with such flexibility in such a liberal and mature setting, and at the doorstep of the cultural treasures of Europe. It's enough to send me daydreaming.

But of course the thing is to get there in the first place. For that, I'd need my As and Ss, and that elusive little scholarship. It's time to check up on other scholarships besides MOE and PSC...Jardine sounds good, for starters. And probably the banks also offer something, though those may not be applicable in my case. At any rate, better to have more options.

* * * * *

I'm a tad unsettled with Grace's DS. It's about one and a half weeks to the performance day, and she hasn't gotten the stageplay confirmed yet, and the actors haven't memorised their lines, and the sound and lights and props are still in limbo. Arh...it reminds me of the chaos that defined the week before Lysistrata's opening night last year. And I really hope that a Lysis-esque farce doesn't happen in TSD. That would be really disillusioning.

Was working on her stageplay with her today. Hmph...I still think that the script has disturbing elements of melodrama in it. A personal preference, to be sure, but I really don't find it easy to watch when the use of space is mediocre and the plot is predictable. Heck, even a bad script can be made interesting with innovative positioning, and her script really isn't half bad. It's just that the time is really running low, and lots of things are still left to be confirmed. I don't know if the needed amount of tension can be reached to pull off her script well by the time it needs to be staged. I sure as hell hope so, though. It would be really disappointing otherwise.

Anyway...once again I was interfering in her piece. Hmph. I guess by now I should know that it's not counted as interference if she asks for it, but I have to continue being careful that I don't take over her piece from her. I think this afternoon's session was the ideal...like neither of us was explicitly directing, just working out what would be the most artistic way of getting the message across...in other words, simultaneously refining the artistic purpose. It is refreshing to be able to experiment in real time. But my only wish is that it had happened sooner.

Heh, anyway, I maintain that there is such a thing as artistic professionalism. I guess I can do what I do on stage because I am onstage, and I can make a distinction between my character and my personality. So i's not me on the stage really, but my character using my body as a conduit for expression. Which, I guess, allows me to get away with things onstage that I would not permit myself to do offstage...But the stage is an experiment in real life sociology, I believe. And as long as it's approached as a self-contained entity in itself, the it's easier to let loose and do what is required to obtain the desired results. Yeah...I'd like to see it that way. Not to say that acting isn't enjoyable, of course. Why else do I keep coming back to the stage? =P But the thing is to remember that it is, at the end of the day, just acting.

pondered by phoenican @ 14.3.05