Global Arc

As a working laboratory with daily practice, we study the art of confidence and charisma, the anatomy of vocal production, how breath and articulation express action and emotion, how language and punctuation are a roadmap to communication, dispelling fears, and the strengths of vocal idiosyncrasies. This class provides necessary training for all artists: actors who must embody characters, movers who use text, writers and creators who speak about their work. With explorations in dialects, using microphones and filling large venues, we work toward performances which are clear, grounded, healthy, emotionally free and which draw attention.

This course develops basic acting technique which focuses on the pursuit of objectives, given circumstances, conflict, public solitude and living truthfully under imagined circumstances. Practical skills are established through scenes performed for classroom analysis. This is a working laboratory where we will approach an acting method of identifying conflicts, defining objectives and pursuing actions. Our goal is to leave the semester with confidence in our acting technique, stronger stage presence, firmer groundedness, and a means whereby to continue working and improving.

Most playwrights never intended to have readers. Their work was meant to be experienced in the theater. This course uses both live theatrical productions and online resources to discuss interpretive issues raised by the acting, directing, and design choices made in specific productions of classic plays as well as the larger question of what the proper object of critical inquiry is for those interested in drama. The word "drama" derives from the Greek word for "action". Do we "deactivate" drama with a phrase like "dramatic literature"? Does our usual conception of "performance" falsely rely on the pre-existence of a thing to "act"?

Theater relies on the physical and emotional vulnerability of live bodies to experience the pity and terror that plague, war, systemic injustice, and more ordinary forms of disease and death inflict. As we face the twin pandemics of our own time, what can "plague drama" (prompted by outbreaks of typhus, bubonic plague, cholera, AIDS, etc.) tell us about how writers use literal and metaphorical diseases to give shape to a given cultural moment? We'll look at a wide variety of mostly theatrical texts to explore how playwrights use the medium of the theater to literally embody and thus make visible physical, social, and metaphysical "dis-ease".

This course offers an intensive survey of ongoing efforts to revisit and revise the American theatrical canon and repertoire. Students will examine the economic, institutional and cultural forces shaping the landscape of new play production in the United States as they also read a broad selection of plays from the contemporary American theater. Working in partnership with McCarter Theatre's "Bard at the Gate" initiative, students will develop dramaturgical and other resources in response to this uniquely curated virtual platform for noteworthy but overlooked plays by BIPOC, female, LGBTQIA+, and disabled artists.

The Writers' Room will replicate the fast-paced environment of a Hollywood writers room. Students will be assigned to a writing team and will pen two complete scripts with their fellow writers. They will also be required to submit an original work for their final project that they have written solo. It can be a play, a short film, or a series pilot.

If no one will cast you, create a role for yourself. Maysoon Zayid's Page to Stage will teach you how to write your way into the spotlight. Students will be divided into three writers' rooms. Each room will pen a comedic one-act play that the writers themselves will star in. For their final, they will perform a full production of the three original vignettes in front of a live audience.

This course is an exploration of physical performance techniques that place the embodied actor at the center of the process of theatrical creation. In a progressive set of exercises, students investigate movement dynamics, and unlock creative pathways within their bodies, minds and imaginations. Preparatory techniques lay the foundation for improvisations which make use of theatrical masks as tools for deepening play. Through playfulness, students embark on a journey toward the core of their own bodies, in relationship to the movements of the life.

Messaging is an art and most people are bad at it. Maysoon is here to teach you how to effectively amplify your message using social media, written word, and public appearances as well as how to do damage control. Students will participate in panels, mock interviews, and will design their own podcast. They will develop a 7 minute talk on their message that will be performed in front of a live Princeton audience.

This course investigates the history of theatre and performance in the United States during the past two centuries. Through archival excavations, bibliographic exercises, and close examinations of theatre history methodologies, and through a deep engagement with human and archival resources local to Princeton, this course undertakes an intensive introduction to the use of primary documents within both performance scholarship and performance practice (playwriting, directing, design, devised performance, etceteras).