Global Arc

As an art form, theater operates in the shared space and time of the present moment while also manifesting imagined worlds untethered by the limits of "real" life. In this course, we undertake a critical, creative and historical survey of the ways contemporary theater-making in the United States - as both industry and creative practice - does (and does not) engage the most urgent concerns of contemporary American society.

From Cross Colours to boom boxes, the 1990s was loud and colorful. But alongside the fun, black people in the U.S. dealt with heightened criminalization and poverty codified through the War on Drugs, welfare reform, HIV/AIDS, and police brutality. We will study the various cultural productions of black performers and consumers as they navigated the social and political landscapes of the 1990s. We will examine works growing out of music, televisual media, fashion, and public policy, using theories from performance and cultural studies to understand the specificities of blackness, gender, class, and sexuality.

This course is designed to endow students with the conceptual and practical skills to design productions in the theater program, or to direct a production with design elements, and to support students in making technical decisions, as well as in collaborating with the rest of the creative team and the technical staff. The course will combine an exploration of visual storytelling and creative collaboration with a grounding in the practical and communicative skills necessary to create the physical world of a production. This course is also appropriate for directors and writers interested in working with design on a departmental production.

A practical course focusing on approaches to classical and contemporary acting styles. Primarily a scene lab investigating the actor/director relationship; performance as a collaborative experience: the exploration of a wide variety of techniques including movement, voice, comedy and musical theatre. Texts will come from a range of playwrights, classical and modern.

This junior seminar explores theories and practices in contemporary theater making in preparation for senior independent work. The seminar aims to create a collaborative cohort of committed theater students. The class will examine questions such as: what are the differences between process and product, what is collaboration, where does the audience fit in to the creative journey. The course will incorporate practical exercises, seminar discussions and visits to rehearsals and performances at Classic Stage Company in New York City.

Creative Intellect is a collaborative workshop course designed to bridge the critical and creative dimensions of performance research. Students will lead the development of performance research projects, compose a written report documenting the development of these projects, and devise and produce a public event that engages observers in the principles and methods guiding the work. This course cultivates a rigorous ethic of practice wherein the theater-maker participates fully and creatively in documenting their own performance work and in commenting critically on that work.

A workshop course designed to support advanced student theater and music theater writers in exploring possible performance of their writing. Students will investigate their writing with a focus on collaboration, performance and production. Individualized creative assignments will be suggested for each student. Students will be introduced to methodologies for producing new works and for theatrical collaboration, and will discuss the writer's point of view in the rehearsal room, physical staging, working with performers and character development, and exploring visual storytelling.

This course will explore, through theory and (especially) practice, the rewriting/revising of plays, screenplays and teleplays. Students will begin the semester with a written piece of dramatic material that they wish to develop further. Through discussion, writing exercises, group feedback, and the study of existing scripts, each student will devise a revision process that is appropriate for their material and emerge with a new draft.

Special directing assignments will be made for each student, whose work will be analyzed by the instructor and other members of the workshop. Students will be aided in their preparations by the instructor; they will also study the spectrum of responsibilities and forms of research involved in directing plays of different styles. Prerequisite: Introductory acting, writing or design class.

Why do some BIPOC dramatists (from the US and Canada) choose to adapt/revise/re-envision/deconstruct/rewrite/appropriate canonical texts from the Western theatrical tradition. While their choices might be accused of recentering and reinforcing "white" narratives that often marginalize and/or exoticize racial and ethnic others, we might also see this risky venture as a useful strategy to write oneself into a tradition that is itself constantly being revised and revaluated and to claim that tradition as one's own. What are the artistic, cultural, and economic "rewards" for deploying this method of playmaking? What are risks?