Global Arc

From the spirits and banshees of oral legends to Bram Stoker's Dracula, from the classic works of Yeats, Synge and Beckett to Garth Ennis's Preacher comics and Anne Rice's Vampire novels, Irish culture has been haunted by the Otherworld. Why has the Irish Gothic had such a long ghostly afterlife on page and stage? Can we learn something about modernist works like those of Yeats and Beckett by seeing them through the perspective of popular fictions of the supernatural?

This course delves into a collaborative, ethnographic approach to making theater. We will read, watch and discuss the work of subculture theorists, theater-makers and other artists and thinkers, all of whom use staged conversations as the basis for characters, scenes and entire works. We will hash out ethics and responsibilities for those of us who engage communities outside our own.What does it mean to take responsibility for someone else's words, write them down, and give them back? What is it like to put the words of a stranger in your mouth? Finally, we will make theatrical material using this approach for an end of semester showing.

A continuation of work begun in Introductory Playwriting, in this class, students will complete either one full-length play or two long one-acts (40-60 pages) to the end of gaining a firmer understanding of characterization, dialogue, structure, and the playwriting process. In addition to questions of craft, an emphasis will be placed on the formation of healthy creative habits and the sharpening of critical and analytical skills through reading and responding to work of both fellow students and contemporary playwrights of note.

Devising Theater with Youth is a service learning course that will promote experiential learning for both Princeton University students and children from Community House, an on-campus afterschool program. This hands-on course will provide an opportunity for Princeton students to elicit the voices of children, interweave them into a theatrical play, and create a collaborative community event around the culminating performance. Students will learn and apply essential contemporary theories and foundational practices of community-based devising technique.

In 1963, Lionel Abel invented the term "metatheater" to discuss self-referential, anti-illusionist devices -- introduced, as he thought, by some Renaissance playwrights -- which had become ubiquitous in the theater of his day. "Very meta!" was soon used to describe almost every play ever written. But some plays are more "meta" than others and the methods and motives of their authors vary considerably. This seminar will spend six weeks focused on Greek, Renaissance, and Modern examples of the genre before turning to contemporary American playwrights who have found new and often jaw-dropping uses for metatheatrics.

Theatre and Society investigates the ways in which theater and performance speak into their cultural and historical moments. We'll look at self-avowed political drama or performance in various historical moments in American theatre; at plays or performances that caused controversy in various communities in which they were performed; at street performance within protest movements; and at community-based performance produced for specific reasons within its locale. We'll also discuss the role of the artist in society. What is the artist's responsibility to his or her nation? To his or her local community or identity groups?

Creation of an original theater piece in collaboration with a guest artist, leading to a public performance. Will include improvisations, exercises, study of dramatic texts, and scene study. Special attention will be given to the creation of character, both in dramatic texts and in improvisation. Prerequisite: 201.

In this Princeton Challenge course, students will participate in building a relationship between a historically significant Black theater company, Crossroads Theater in New Brunswick, and the university community. Co-taught by Sydne Mahone, Director of play development at Crossroads 1985-1997, students will research the theater through its people and its art, while making the role of women in Black art-making more visible. Students will learn oral history techniques, interview significant theater makers, and develop their own creative responses. Our collective work will culminate in creating roadmaps for continuing community relationship.

This workshop, open to playwrights, actors, directors, dramaturgs, designers, stage managers, or enthusiastic observers, aims to provide practical and theoretical techniques for collaboration on the development of new plays. Students will develop a toolbox of methods rooted in mutual respect and shared goals, as we focus on creating positive, fruitful working relationships via readings and hands-on exercises. The culmination of the course will be an evening of ten-minute plays written and developed by the class.

This course explores the many different ways in which the whole idea of a distinctively Irish theatre has been transformed every few decades, from Wilde and Shaw's subversions of England, to the search of Yeats and Synge for an authentic rural Ireland, to the often angry critiques of contemporary Ireland by Murphy, Friel and Carr. Plays of the Irish diaspora (O'Neill and McDonagh) are examined in this context. The course will also explore the ways in which ideas of physicality and performance, including the popular spectacle of Riverdance, have conflicted with and challenged Irish theatre's peculiar devotion to poetic language.