Courses

Students are introduced to StatueFest, a theatrical project inspired by discourse on monuments and the dearth of statues reflecting the lives of women. Exploring the notion “Who deserves a statue?” students research, write and produce monologues celebrating the contributions of statue-worthy women. Guest speakers include librarians, historians and artists from previous StatueFest productions. The course culminates with a public performance.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: WRI1110

Through hands-on experience, students explore roles and responsibilities related to Front of House (FOH) management for performing arts venues. Designed to prepare students to work FOH positions in the Conservatories, PAC and other venues, the course introduces students to FOH strategies and duties before, during and after a performance. Focus is on ensuring the safety and well-being of every patron.

Credits: 2

Students explore the creative process by envisioning and developing a visual or performing arts project. Participants build innovative and critical thinking skills while applying basic principles and practices of arts management including fund development and marketing needed to connect and sustain their ventures in today’s challenging marketplace. The course culminates with a public presentation of individual and team projects.

Credits: 3

How have myth, ritual, and performance functioned as ways to comprehend, organize, and even generate the world around us? What are the values and constraints of symbolic structures as they shape and influence bodies and environments? Students consider both structural and poststructural approaches to performance as a medium for exploring, but also transgressing, structures of everyday life.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ANT1500 Or THP2020 Or MSA1050 Or MSA1050

Was Shakespeare a rebel? Was he a reactionary? To address these complex questions, students explore Shakespeare’s varied depictions of characters rebelling against patriarchal gender norms, tyrannical leaders, and corrupt governments. In addition to reading plays including As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Richard II, 2 Henry VI, Coriolanus, and Macbeth, students analyze various modern adaptations of these and related works.

Credits: 4

How does embodiment reveal shifting notions of race, gender, sexuality, and ability? Students read performance theory and explore contemporary representations of bodies as sites of display, resistance, and re-construction in literature, performance, and everyday practices in transnational and intersectional contexts. Authors include Ntozake Shange, NourbeSe Philip, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Branden Jacob-Jenkins, and David Henry Hwang.

Credits: 4

An introduction to Western culture through the study of tragic drama, Plato’s dramatic dialogues, and philosophical reflections on tragedy. The focus is on the possibilities and limitations of human action. Topics include the relations of individual to city, mortal to divine, and male to female; and the roles of knowledge and desire in human conduct. Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, and Toni Morrison are included.

Credits: 4

Explores what the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas might have meant when he wrote that “all of philosophy may be found in the plays of Shakespeare.” The focus is on a close study of selected works, together with commentary by such thinkers as Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Derrida, Cavell, and Critchley. Plays include Hamlet, Richard II, Coriolanus, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, The Tempest, and King Lear.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP2205 Or PHI1515 Or PHI2110

What makes a play alive, provocative, and vital? Using classics of dramatic literature as well as plays that are new to the stage, students read and study the ideas and mechanics of the play. An examination of some key texts and theories, including Aristotle’s Poetics, Brecht’s Epic Theatre, Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed lead to a fresh look at the old and the new. Students attend plays on campus and in New York City, and meet some of today’s leading theatre artists.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW1000

Students will examine songs, scenes, and the stories behind musicals from Vaudeville, "Golden Age," megamusicals, "contemporary musical theatre," all the way into the ever-expanding, excitingly diverse peripherals and new perspectives of what musical theatre in the now, fostering inspiration and creating room for what the American Musical Theatre has yet to become.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW1000

Exploring techniques of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, this course uses the arsenal of Theatre of the Oppressed exercises as a process to further understand self, each other, and surrounding social systems. Individual project forms may vary (sculpture, writing, etc.). In addition, the class makes a forum theatre piece to be performed with the campus community.

Credits: 3

This theatrical translation workshop combines literary analysis and creative writing. Students read Latin American plays in Spanish, discuss them in English, and translate scenes, examining not only the words, but also gestural, visual and cultural meanings. For the final project, class collaboratively translates an entire play and stages a reading. Students should comprehend written Spanish. (Contact professor with questions.)

Credits: 4

Students work on basic acting skills, e.g., developing the ability to produce free, imaginative, and purposeful behavior in relation to environments, objects, and other persons; individual silent exercises; and group exercises. This work leads to in-class performances of selected scenes from a variety of American contemporary plays, with special focus on the sensory requirements in the text. No previous experience required.

Credits: 3

Explore improvisation and performance techniques through the practical study of theatre games as developed by Viola Spolin in her seminal book, "Improvization for the Theater." Students study this text and practice Spolin’s games and those in her lineage as an introduction to improvisation, leading to longer-form exercises which culminate in an improvised performance at the end of the semester.

Credits: 3

Students participate in an ensemble-based studio production of a single classical text. The course is equal parts textual analysis and skills development for actors (gesture as action, rhetoric, meter, speech, diction, clowning and stage combat). Includes a lab dedicated performing heightened text with freedom and spontaneity. All are welcome. There is no audition required, no previous acting experience is necessary.

Credits: 4

Students participate in an ensemble-based studio production of a single classical text. The course is equal parts textual analysis and skills development for actors (gesture as action, rhetoric, meter, speech, diction, clowning and stage combat). Includes a lab dedicated performing heightened text with freedom and spontaneity. All are welcome. There is no audition required, no previous acting experience is necessary.

Credits: 1

COREQ: THP2000

This class introduces students to the language, process, and best practices of intimacy direction and coordination for consent in the creation and realization of performance. Students engage in discussions of terms and theory, learning the fundamentals of approaching material that is intimate in nature, and creating artistic settings where best practices can be enacted and assessed.

Credits: 3

Students explore themes of gender and sexuality in Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays. Students learn to read, edit, and modernize Shakespeare's words, and discover how he promoted, ridiculed, and subverted the sexual norms of his time. The course engages with modern productions, many of which subvert the toxic elements of Shakespeare’s work in provocative ways. 

Credits: 3

Students explore how Shakespeare’s works contributed to the historical formation of various racial and ethnic identities and how the global tradition of Shakespearean performance intermittently perpetuates and refutes racial and ethnic stereotypes. Additionally, students study how non-White authors and performers have and continue to respond to racism within the Shakespeare tradition. Students learn to write critically about race in Shakespeare.

Credits: 4

Discover how to bring your stories to life using the latest artificial intelligence tools and interactive media. The course focuses on narrative design and methods to enhance live performances through various forms of interactive media. It offers an introduction to production with a 21st-Century toolset or audience immersion and interactivity, taking a design-based approach to content creation.

Credits: 4

Learning from west African dancers, musicians, religious practitioners, and theater performers, students will dance daily, explore traditional/ritual based movement/music of indigenous religions/customs, and create sketches of daily life to explore and reflect on the customs and traditions of Beninese culture. Service learning will extend civic engagement for the same purposes.

Credits: 4

Students explore worldbuilding techniques and tools, covering geography, history, culture, conflict, storytelling, mythology, and religion. This course is designed to provide students with the skills and knowledge needed to create realistic and believable fictional worlds. At the end of the course, students will be able to develop unique and compelling fictional worlds that engage and excite their audiences.

Credits: 4

Through practical experience working as a production dramaturg, students learn research methods that bring textual analysis, social context, and theoretical concepts into the creative process. This course functions as a workshop for students to develop dramaturgical materials that will expand and enrich the theatrical experience for both artists and audiences.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP2885 Or THP2890

Students create original stories from various sources of inspiration and gain the theatrical tools to tell them. The course focuses on ensemble creation and covers such areas as mime, heightened character, tréteaux, soundscapes, and object manipulation. Requirements include performing, directing, writing, and making props. Designed to help students get in touch with their creative side in a supportive group atmosphere. A background in performance/high school theatre is beneficial but not required.

Credits: 3

Offers film/television directors, actors and directors of photography the opportunity to develop their skills in communicating with each other in a workshop environment. Students rehearse short scenes, working alternately as actors and directors, learning to communicate, give and take direction, and integrate feedback. DP's will become competent in building, operating and troubleshooting industry standard HD camera packages and accessories.

Credits: 2

Focuses on characterization and motivation, with emphasis on interpretation, finding interesting choices for the actor, and the “truth of the moment.” Different contemporary plays and screenplays are used by students. Scenes are used to deepen the actor’s ability to execute honest and purposeful stage acting and communication.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: ACT1055 Or THP1055

Explores immersive design in both live and digital performance, combining practical experience with insight into emerging trends, including environmental, locative, and GPS related narratives and games. Through a mixture of lectures, collaborative design exercises, and guest speakers, the course provides a detailed overview of what it takes to produce projects that combine story and tech.

Credits: 4

Explores the genre of alternate reality or pervasive gaming currently used as an alternative to traditional performance by contemporary theatrical and visual artists, dancers, and musicians. The blurring distinctions between game and narrative are examined, opening new possibilities for performance. Students design and stage their own live alternate-reality game as a means of storytelling or extend an existing narrative through transmedia.

Credits: 4

Transmedia narrative can be described as storytelling across multiple forms of media, with each element making distinctive contributions to a user’s understanding of the story world. The course combines this with a study of immersive performance environments that wrap around viewers and production practices that blend video, photography, games, and music to extend the project’s meaning and theatricality.

Credits: 4

Satire uses humor and ridicule to address fundamental moral, social and political questions. Students will analyze satirical works and practice techniques of “creative criticism” by making satire of their own. We’ll investigate how laughter gets people to let their guard down in order to challenge closed minds, provoke discussion where there was none, and plant the seeds of social change.

Credits: 4

An introduction to the diversity of Asian American theatre and performance, from the late 19th century to the contemporary moment, with an emphasis on 21st century work and current issues. Through an exploration of archival collections, plays, multimedia performances and critical race theory, students analyze the intersections of Asian American histories, aesthetics, politics and identities.

Credits: 4

The use of multiple mediums and immersive narrative design principles is reinventing storytelling. Students explore the bridge between traditional narratives, the emerging demands of mixed reality, and the metaverse. We will also explore how Storytelling affects changes in society. The course will introduce the use of virtuality and augmented design alongside real-world immersive environments.

Credits: 4

Students explore narrative designs that endeavor to extend live immersive performance using interactive media. An introduction to a 21st century toolset for audience immersion and interactivity, the course will take a design-based approach developing a proficiency in developing methodologies of creation techniques. Students will reach audiences with performances that are designed as both live and digitally immersive.

Credits: 4

Without our ancestors, we wouldn’t be here. They deserve celebration. But sometimes they did things we’d rather avoid. Students will research one or several ancestors, to honor them, and also to hold them accountable. Students will engage with family and community to research their familial and cultural pasts and relate them with our present and future through creating plays.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP2020 And THP2885

Introduces Asian theatre within a global context and explores the social, religious, historical, aesthetic, and political circumstances of traditional performance genres, including ritual, masked/painted face and puppetry, and contemporary intercultural drama and theatre. Training, audience involvement, transformation, authenticity, and theory are highlighted. Field trips are taken when possible.

Credits: 4

Truth Commissions responding to genocides and other conflicts have often involved theatre, in formal collaboration, as in Peru’s Yuyachkani, or informally, as with Serbia’s DAH Teatret. Examining case studies, students write critical and artistic responses, culminating in the creation of an original theatrical piece that fosters truth and reconciliation for a contemporary conflict.

Credits: 4

This course considers 20th- and 21st-century performance work by women in dance, theatre, and the visual art world (performance art) from a historical and theoretical perspective. Critical and theoretical feminist essays and other writings are assigned. Students read original texts, view documentation, and analyze contemporary works by women writers, choreographers, performance artists, and theatre directors.

Credits: 4

Explores the neutral mask and commedia dell’arte, as informed by Lecoq technique. The neutral mask focuses on finding a bodily sense of calm and openness, helps build the actor’s presence on stage, and highlights physical habits that can hinder expression. Commedia dell’arte calls on the actor’s timing, ability to improvise, and humor, and requires big physical choices and delving into the idiosyncrasies of type.

Credits: 3

Students read Italian plays and prose works by Luigi Pirandello, Elsa Morante, Elena Ferrante, and Jhumpa Lahiri while also devising and acting in an original performance based on these stories and interviews with local residents. The final performance offers students a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform (in English and Italian) for the community in Pisciotta’s oldest medieval piazza.

Credits: 4

Using physical theatre techniques, students work in ensembles‹with each student functioning as actor, director, writer, and designer‹to develop performances that address issues relevant to contemporary society. Coursework includes readings in pertinent genres (e.g., tragedy, melodrama, and documentary theatre), research into dramatically resonant current events, and a culminating performance of ensemble-devised work.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: ACT1055 Or THP1055

Meeting at the Academy of Drama in Prague, students study and perform plays by Václav Havel, the dissident playwright imprisoned during the Communist era who became president of the Czech Republic. Students explore political and cultural contexts of theatrical performance, enhanced by meetings with theatre professionals and visits to sites relevant to the intersection of artistic creation and political revolution.

Credits: 6

Spend three weeks studying with Mayan artists and scholars to learn about the intersections of human rights and performing arts in Guatemala. Lectures and workshops cover ancient and modern Guatemalan history, Mayan cosmology, Mayan language, and local ecology. Artistic workshops focus on Mayan performance techniques. Create original works in collaboration with Mayan students, and present them in communities.

Credits: 3

Virginia Woolf captures sensory detail and internal thought like few other writers. This dramatization of perception makes her work ripe for adaptation. Students will read selections of Woolf's essays, short stories, and novels, and study theatrical adaptations of her work. Students will explore translating Woolf’s iconic vision into theatrical shape by creating immersive stage adaptations of her work

Credits: 4

This course aims to define a decolonized canon of Black American dramatic works. Plays are read as literature and considered in sociopolitical contexts, alongside study of significant creative movements and influential artists. Playwrights studied span the 20th and 21st centuries, including James Baldwin, Katori Hall, Lorraine Hansberry, Adrienne Kennedy, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Tyler Perry, among others.

Credits: 4

Students analyze film, television and stage performances that depict Black gay men. Students synthesize historical and political context, artistic perspectives, and the unique intersectional realities of Black and gay identity towards a deeper understanding of these artistic and cultural perspectives. Works studied include both mainstream hits that permeate the zeitgeist, and niche, yet culturally significant works that shift the narrative.

Credits: 4

This course investigates indigenous theatrical literature and performances from the 1970s to the present. This global course examines indigenous theatre from North and South America, the Pacific Rim, and the Middle East. Attention is given to patterns of colonialism and capitalism, along with designing plans of action to initiate racial, economic, and environmental justice in response to works examined.

Credits: 4

The historical importance of Michael Chekhov lay in bringing revised Stanislavsky acting methods to America, emphasizing responses to psychological impulses via movement in harmony with the character’s thoughts, emotions, and desires. Students infuse tangible actions of body and voice with intangible feelings, sensations, and images from the actor’s imagination, using techniques such as archetypal/psychological gestures and “centers” in character development.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: ACT1055 Or THP1055

Collaborate on creating site-specific work culminating in a performance. Students maintain journals of discoveries and observations and participate in writing exercises and structured improvisations. Readings, excursions, experiences, and individuals encountered in Benin will inform the performance. A goal is to discover how setting and surroundings can help shape and enrich expression and imagination.

Credits: 3

A team-taught introduction to collaboration between designers and directors with a focus on communication in realizing a given theatrical production. Students focus on the scenic designer and director collaboration with guest artists from other design and production areas. For directing and production concentrations in THP and anyone interested in learning skills of collaboration in the theatre.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP2895

An immersion in project-based study of projection design for theater and contemporary performance. Students will develop designs based on script analysis, visual interpretation and collaboration with other designers and directors. Alongside learning principles of video projection and techniques for image editing and visualization, students will be introduced to software applications used in professional theatre.

Credits: 3

Together we map a geography of tourist productions across the globe. Through readings, lectures, fieldwork and archival research, students explore concepts related to tourist conventions and the tourist gaze. Topics include display culture and performances of ethnicity and identity; experience economies and the politics of travel and leisure; globalization and the commodification of culture and place.

Credits: 4

Examine the social construction of dis/ability, primarily in the US, with a focus on the role of theatre and performance in shaping and challenging dis/ability narratives. Through interdisciplinary, intersectional and interpersonal analyses, students explore issues and identities (as well as solidarities) related to physical, sensory, intellectual and psychological differences and variabilities.

Credits: 4

An introduction to directing plays. Students stage scenes from a diverse array of contemporary plays and investigate methods for preparation, text analysis, research, and the rehearsal/ production process. Readings from Anne Bogart, Katie Mitchell and others introduce the basics of the director’s craft while also imagining how to discover and shape the impact, or the “why now?” of a production.

Credits: 4

Study the craft of directing through staging a classic experimental play in translation, creating theatrical responses that radically interrogate form and trace its legacy in contemporary performance. Students explore language, intention, time, space and multidisciplinary tools while also learning best practices in collaboration. Study of innovative productions that re-imagine/explode classical work complements this invention, inspiring students’ own developing directorial voice.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP3680

A study of revolutions in theatre, and theatre at the time of historic revolutions. Students study plays (Beaumarchais’s Marriage of Figaro, Buchner’s Danton’s Death, Peter Brook’s Marat/Sade), and movements (guerrilla street theatre, Chicano theatre, Bread and Puppet, Living Theatre), focusing on theatre as an active, participatory art and on drama as a literary form.

Credits: 4

Is there a childhood picture or storybook or graphic novel that you’ve always wanted to see onstage? This course studies the contexts and conventions related to page-to-stage adaptations of children’s literature. Through the interpretation of source materials, and the development of dramatic and sensory storytelling techniques, students will create multigenerational theatre designed to foster empathy, inclusion and imagination.

Credits: 4

For the ensemble director and actor/creator, a course in creating devised theatre. Using a range of source materials, including short stories, news articles, and interviews, students learn tools and strategies for company-created works. This is a rigorous immersion in building a collaborative vision through structured improvisation, space, character, narrative arc, and mise-en-scène.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP3680 Or THP3685

Examines major artists who work visually, experientially, and sonically across multiple performance platforms of theatre, opera, dance and installation, including William Kentridge, Ariane Mnouchkine, Simon McBurney, Bill T. Jones, Janet Cardiff, Kara Walker among others. Students create their own projects inspired by these artists’ experiments in order to explore new compositional approaches to theatrical form as directors and creators.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP3680

A collaborative research workshop in which students and faculty members investigate current topics and trends in theatre training and pedagogy. Relevant topics include institutional contexts for theatre curricula; diversity and inclusion; culturally-responsive learning environments; equitable assessment and evaluation; arts-based research methods; interdisciplinary creativity; distributed problem solving; (pre)professional ethics, and community engagement.

Credits: 3

Focuses on the relation between text and production in the theatre through play analysis, theoretical readings, research, student presentations, and discussion of campus productions. A substantial research paper and senior project proposal with annotated bibliography are required. Required for all junior theatre and performance majors, and normally open only to them.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: THP2020 And THP2205 And THP2885 And THP2890

Rather than focusing on the critically acclaimed plays that make up the canon of American drama, this course examines plays that were the most popular and commercially successful of their time. Combining historical research, textual analysis, and cultural theory, students discuss the long-running Broadway hit plays of the past 100 years from artistic, commercial, and ideological perspectives.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: (THP2600 Or LIT2600 ) Or THP2890

This course offers a workshop in creating performance/installation adapted and devised from these writings to celebrate how femme bodies (both human and from nature) rise and rebel against systematic abuse. Students study the ecofeminist movement, and performance that addresses climate change to guide their own investigations into creating original work about rising sea levels and female agency.

Credits: 4

A deep dive into the theatrical culture of the 1980s—from Broadway musicals (Dreamgirls, Sunday in the Park with George) and popular plays (Neil Simon, August Wilson) to experimental theatre (Caryl Churchill, María Irene Fornés)—in an era pulled between multiculturalism and conservatism. The dramatic arts are positioned within a broader cultural landscape including film, music, television, and visual art.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP2890

How do we as actors use our voices to convey story, character, opinion, emotion and information to the audience? Students work to build more dynamic, flexible, present and responsive physical instruments through the practice of tangible, reliable skills and techniques that integrate the breath, the body and the voice into text and performance.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: THP3050 Or THP3315

Theatre and Performance

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Theatre and Performance

Courses

AMG 3305: StatueFest at Purchase

AMG 3415: Front of House Practicum

AMG 4120: Creative Producing Practicum

ANT 3350: Myth, Ritual, and Performance

JOU 3780: Criticism/Reviewing Workshop

LIT 3224: Shakespeare and Rebellion

LIT 3532: Body, Race, Performance

PHI 1720: Tragedy and Philosophy

PHI 3205: Shakespeare and Philosophy

PSW 1250: Plays and Playgoing

PSW 3155: The Art of Rewriting: Killing Our Darlings

PSW 3305: History of the American Musical

PSW 3310: Book Writing: Story Structure in Musical Theatre

PSW 4150: Making New Plays

SCP 3356: Theatre of the Oppressed: Process to Action

SPA 3715: Translating Modern Latin American Theatre

TDT 1020: Sound Fundamentals

THP 1055: Fundamentals of Acting

THP 1100: Theatre Games

THP 2000: Acting the Classics

THP 2001: Acting the Classics Lab

THP 2020: Introduction to Theatre and Performance Studies

THP 2050: Introduction to Theatre for Social Change, Community, and Education

THP 2200: Theatre and Performance Production

THP 2210: Consent in Performance

THP 2215: Gender, Sex, and Shakespeare

THP 2220: Race, Ethnicity, and Shakespeare

THP 2225: Foundations of Black Performance

THP 2230: AI-Enhanced Performance and Interactive Media

THP 2350: A Live Art Investigation of Benin and West African Culture

THP 2380: Performing Oral History and Poetry

THP 2500: Movement for Performers I

THP 2520: Unarmed Stage Combat and Intimacy

THP 2600: American Drama: 1916-1964

THP 2610: Worldbuilding for Fiction

THP 2770: Movement: The Physical Instrument

THP 2800: Managing the Production

THP 2885: Theatre Histories I

THP 2890: Theatre Histories II

THP 2895: Production Practicum

THP 3000: Dramaturgy

THP 3004: Creative Expression

THP 3040: Creative Collaboration I for Actors and Directors

THP 3041: Creative Collaboration II for Actors, Directors & Directors of Photography

THP 3050: Voice and Speech Essentials

THP 3070: Acting Scene Study

THP 3110: Commedia and Pantomime

THP 3115: Immersive Storyworlds

THP 3120: Gameplay and Performance

THP 3125: Performing Black Theatre

THP 3130: Transmedia and Performance

THP 3140: Medieval and Renaissance English Drama

THP 3150: Introduction to Lecoq and Physical Performance

THP 3180: Revolutionary Laughter: Satire and Social Dialogue

THP 3190: Asian American Theatre and Performance

THP 3210: Future Stories

THP 3230: Live Performance and Interactive Media

THP 3245: Ancestral Theatre

THP 3250: Theories of Drama and Performance

THP 3260: Theatre and Asia

THP 3270: Theatre, Truth, and Reconciliation

THP 3300: Women in Performance

THP 3310: Masks and Movement

THP 3320: Concepts in Costuming

THP 3330: Advanced Movement for Performers

THP 3340: The Great Broadway Songwriters

THP 3350: Speaking Shakespeare

THP 3370: Staging Italian Stories: Devising Theatre for a Community

THP 3375: Devising the Now: Current Events in Performance

THP 3400: Theatre in Prague

THP 3405: Indigenous Rights and Performing Arts in Guatemala

THP 3410: Adapting Virginia Woolf

THP 3450: Stage Management

THP 3495: Black American Drama

THP 3500: Documentary Theatre: Performing Real Life

THP 3510: Solo Performance

THP 3525: LGBTQ Drama

THP 3530: Black and Gay in Performance