It has been a show-packed few months in the Drama & Theatre department at York St John University. We’ve had sold out performances, site-specific shows, new shows, odd plays, applied performances, stand-up comedy, physical theatre, dramatic monologues and even a “NED” Talk.
After so many wonderful shows and as we bid farewell to our third year students, we thought we would share a selection of images from the last few weeks of the semester! As always, our students continue to amaze us with their creativity, commitment and energy.
All Drama & Theatre students have the opportunity to 
First of all, I have become a coffee-drinking-Starbucks lover, something I never thought I’d say! The caramel Macchiato has become a vital part of my week, and I now have my own Starbucks reward card!! (I am actually sat in Starbucks, with a caramel macchiato as I write this) I have also become a vegetarian, however with Thanksgiving just round the corner, turkey and stuffing may be too much of a temptation.
University life in the US is very different to my UK student life. For starters drinking alcohol is highly illegal until 21, and seeing as some students become freshman at the age of 17, student parties are a police fest. All accommodation is also catered for, meaning that food is unlimited, whenever you want it. Which is actually really dangerous because the food is amazing!!
Culturally I immersed myself fully into American life. Having a roommate has been a major part of that, of which I have been incredibly lucky. I have climbed a local mountain, been to Walmart, attended a pumpkin festival and Halloween in Salem (as in witchy Salem), apple picking, tried pumpkin flavoured everything, visited an actual thrift store, had the chance 
The theatre director Avra Sidiropoulou* ran a 4hr workshop on Directing Basics with our BA Theatre Students on Tuesday 10th November. The workshop explored fundamental aspects that permeate the work of the stage director in relation to strategies of text analysis, directorial interpretation and point-of-view, as well as of conceiving, designing and orchestrating performance. The students devised work in response to Syrian Refugee Crisis. The workshop examined some of the reasons, means, processes and relationships that are involved in staging a play, especially 
in terms of concept, composition and focus.
expansion on their ideas in a wide range of case studies. Whether addressing the use of dead animals in performance, actor training, the legal implications of thinking phenomenologically about how we walk, or the intertwining of digital and analog perception, each chapter explores a world comprised of embodied action and thought. The established and emerging scholars contributing to the volume develop insights central to the phenomenological tradition while expanding on the work of contemporary theorists and performers. In asking why performance and phenomenology belong in conversation together, the book suggests how they can transform each other in the process and what is at stake in this transformation.
