Global Arc

This is a workshop in the fundamentals of writing plays. Through writing prompts, exercises, study and reflection, students will be guided in the creation of original dramatic material. Attention will be given to character, structure, dramatic action, monologue, dialogue, language

Telling stories through performance is human nature, but how can we use technology to enhance, frame, or reveal new perspectives on stories told? Students will learn about tools and techniques from design professionals, and will engage directly and collaboratively with technology to design experiences focused around live performance. Areas covered may include projections and multimedia, lighting, interactivity, and programming for creative applications. This class hopes to bring together students with arts and STEM backgrounds, and does not require prior experience.

This course introduces students to set and costume design for performance, exploring theater as a visual medium. Students will develop their ability to think about the physical environment (including clothing) as key components of story-telling and our understanding of human experience. Students will expand their vocabulary for discussing the visual world and work on their collaborative skills. We'll spend half the semester focusing on costuming and half focusing of the scenic environment, both in a practical, on your feet studio class taught by professional theater practitioners. Absolutely no experience required.

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.