Theatre and Performance

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

An introduction to styles of criticism and a practical course in writing short, critical essays (reviews) on the performing and visual arts. On-campus plays and films are assigned; students write about theatre, film, music, dance, painting, and other art forms.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: JOU2915

Critics agree that the world of the concentration camps and ghettoes is impossible to duplicate on stage. Despite serious aesthetic and practical constraints, playwrights in Europe, Israel, and America have, for the last five decades, created a diverse group of plays dealing with this unprecedented 20th-century event. Works examined in class include documentary dramas, realistic reenactments, absurdist plays, a comedy, and a standup routine.

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

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

An exploration of revision techniques and strategies in a workshop environment. In the first half of the semester, students write a one-act through generative exercises. In the second half, they revise the same one-act through examinations of character, dialogue, and structure; text analysis; and other tools. First drafts and production drafts of contemporary American plays are also studied and discussed.

Credits: 4

Examines the history and craft of storytelling in musical theatre. Students consider song topic and placement to structure a short original musical. The ability to read and write music is not required.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW1000 And PSW1010

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

In this examination of the modern theatre of Spain and Latin America, students read and analyze plays from Spanish-speaking countries in their aesthetic and cultural contexts. When possible, students perform scenes from some of the plays.

Credits: 4

Studies the relationship of dramatic texts and performance from the Greeks through Shakespeare to the present, using readings and performances on or near the campus, as well as film and video.

Credits: 3

Integrates discussions, readings, presentations, viewings, and exercises to teach students an appreciation of the elements of both classical and contemporary theatre and performing arts. The acting techniques of Stanislavsky and Uta Hagen, among others, are used to analyze and understand classic modern drama. Students develop dramatic tools for creating new realities via acting and directing in both solo and group performances. Readings include works by Chekhov, Ibsen, Lorca, and Havel.

Credits: 4

An introduction to dramatic literature and theory and to seeing, writing about, and participating in theatre and performance.

Credits: 3

Students work in a variety of capacities in productions within the theatre and performance program. Graded on a pass/fail basis.

Credits: 1

Selected plays spanning Shakespeare’s entire career. In addition to close reading and textual interpretation, students address questions and problems of performing, directing, lighting, costuming, and set designing Shakespeare’s plays. The course examines past and current trends in Shakespearean criticism, as well as the social and theatrical contexts in which the plays were first produced.

Credits: 3

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 learn to transform poetry and personal stories into short plays and performance pieces. Poetry and movement are used to create choreopoems. Students also develop interview theatre pieces. Readings and/or video viewings include works by Ntozake Shange, Eve Ensler, and Anna Deavere Smith.

Credits: 4

An introduction to dramatic movement for the stage. Technique, improvisation, repertoire, and composition are explored, using physical language. Students work on solos, duets, and in groups with text, objects, and music. Assignments include classroom presentations, readings, and papers. Videotapes are reviewed and discussed.

Credits: 2

American drama considered primarily as a critique of American society, values, and life. Covers the period from 1916 to 1964, including plays by Susan Glaspell, Eugene O’Neill, Clifford Odets, Lillian Hellman, Gertrude Stein, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Lorraine Hansberry, Adrienne Kennedy, and Edward Albee.

Credits: 4

An introduction to stage management, production, and company management. Students who successfully complete this course may be allowed to take TDT 2600.

Credits: 3

Western and world theatre from ancient Greece to 1642, when the theatres of Shakespeare’s time were finally closed. What would now be called actors, playwrights, producers, directors, designers, and theatre architects are all considered.

Credits: 3

Western and world theatre from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Playwrights, actors, directors, producers, and designers; neoclassicism, romanticism, realism, naturalism, expressionism. This course begins where THP 2885 leaves off, but either can be taken independently.

Credits: 3

Students receive training in lighting (hanging, focusing, and maintaining), the use of power tools, and basic set construction. Elements of lighting and set design are also discussed. Requirements include work on a minimum of two productions in the Humanities Theatre as crew and board operators.

Credits: 4

Focuses on the relationships among text, social context, production history, and directorial concept in staging a production. Includes play analysis, theoretical readings, research, student presentations, and analysis and discussion of campus productions. Research, writing, and oral presentations required.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP2885 Or THP2890

Offers film and television directors and actors 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, and learn to communicate, give and take direction, and integrate feedback.

Credits: 1

Explores the fundamental connection between voice and text, based on Linklater technique. Using technical and imagistic exercises, students find a free connection to breath, develop resonance and range, release jaw, tongue, and throat tensions, and build vocal strength.

Credits: 3

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 SOA1750 Or TAC1055

An introduction to the history and contemporary practice of physical theatre and to the traditions of commedia and pantomime. Includes lectures, mask making, scenario creation, and instruction in and physical practice of the form.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: AOA1400 Or SOA1750 Or ACT1055 Or ACT%

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

A study of the mystery plays, morality plays, interludes, masques, and entertainments of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. Analysis of texts is combined with consideration of theatrical production in light of the ideological, religious, and historical contexts of the plays.

Credits: 4

An introduction to the Lecoq method of performance, focusing on physical approach to character, the notion of actor as creator, and the importance of mask work.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: SOA1750 Or AOA1400 Or ACT1055 Or TAC1055

Examines the means by which leading, contemporary American playwrights have tackled many burning social issues, including racial discrimination, gender bias, corporate abuse, and violence against gays and lesbians. Kushner’s Angels in America is used as a model for discussion of several important writers whose dramas have had an impact on American culture and effected change.

Credits: 4

Examines works, practice, theories, and training methods of influential theatre artists who found inspiration outside their inherited theatrical cultures, subsequently enriching theatrical practice worldwide. Students gain awareness of possibilities for intercultural exploration and cultural exchange and investigate and debate how and why intercultural experiments are sites of intense creativity while simultaneously subject to misunderstandings and accusations of appropriation.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP2020

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

Theories of African diaspora are analyzed and applied to plays and performance traditions from the Caribbean and Africa. Students study Black Nationalist and pan-Africanist movements in different locations, as well as more contemporary theories of African diaspora like Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic. Students also conduct research projects on a play, playwright, or performance tradition within a theoretical framework studied in class.

Credits: 4

The performance traditions of Africa, specifically South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana, are examined through the lens of the impact of colonialism on African performance traditions and on major playwrights from the region. Students read dramatic texts and learn about ritual performance, contemporary film, music, and dance.

Credits: 4

Explores 20th-century world drama from an end-of-the-millennium perspective. Plays are chosen from North America, Africa, Asia, and Europe for cross-cultural thematic investigations. Close reading of the plays, along with class discussions, encourages students to theorize on the inter- and intra-textual nuances dramatized in the plays. The emphasis is on students’ response to the works, although they are expected to become familiar with various postmodernist theories, including feminist and postcolonial studies.

Credits: 4

Focuses on postmodern theory and performance. Historical and cross-cultural study of how theatre artists and critical thinkers have addressed issues of aesthetics, representation, style, space, and time.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP2020 And (THP2885 Or THP2890 )

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

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

An introduction to the fundamentals of designing costumes for theatre and dance productions. As they examine the design process, students explore how and why a designer makes certain choices. Emphasis is placed on how ideas are generated and communicated within the flux of the production process.

Credits: 3

Continued sensory-actualization technique to increase the physical awareness needed to create authentic theatre and characters. Classes include warm-up, technical exercises, improvisations, and monologues.

Credits: 2

PREREQ: THP2760

Come taste the finest sampling of the great Broadway songwriters. Each class examines a particular songwriter (Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim), idea (the subversives: Weill and Bernstein), or era (contemporary voices on Broadway). Students savor recordings, investigate the dramatic qualities of the songs, and analyze lyrics, melody, and song form.

Credits: 4

Designed to assist the actor in interpreting William Shakespeare’s stage directions and in reading clues within his verse in order to make informed performance choices. Classroom exercises assist in developing techniques of Shakespearean performance and enhanced understanding of Shakespeare’s sometimes daunting speeches.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: THP2205 And THP3315

Examines contemporary activist performance and documentary film in the Middle East, from the Arab Spring to the ongoing strife in Syria.

Credits: 4

An introduction to adaptation and ensemble creation, using texts by major authors of Italian literature (Pirandello, Fo, and Calvino.) Students explore non-naturalistic acting, mask, and puppet work as they devise a culminating performance in a medieval piazza. This course also introduces the genre of street theatre, including Bread and Puppet Theatre–style pageants, placing performance in the context of community and public space.

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 TAC1055

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: 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

An in-depth exploration of fundamental stage-management skills in each phase of the production process: preproduction, first rehearsal, rehearsal period, preparing for the tech, technical rehearsals, previews, opening, running of the show, and closing.

Credits: 3

In 1956, a play called Look Back in Anger began a revolution in British drama. The class focuses primarily on the plays of the last 50 years, studying how British playwrights expressed the concerns of their changing society. Dramatists considered include Osborne, Pinter, Orton, Bond, Churchill, and Kane.

Credits: 4

Examines the history of 20th-century black American theatre. Major representative plays are read as literature; playwrights include Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Alice Childress, Adrienne Kennedy, August Wilson, Robert O’Hara, Suzan-Lori Parks, Lynn Nottage, Kia Corthron, and Lorraine Hansberry.

Credits: 4

Students collect, assemble, and perform scripts based on “lore” (oral history, personal narratives). History is seen as a performative way to construct identity. Includes readings by documentary playwrights like Brecht, Emily Mann, and Caryl Churchill.

Credits: 4

Considers the history of performance art and offers a creative process for developing solo and group performances from memory, personal material, and issues in contemporary society. Requirements include both academic and creative projects.

Credits: 4

Explores how LGBTQ identities and issues are represented in diverse dramatic forms, performance styles, and cultural venues. Through discussions, presentations, and writing assignments, students analyze queer theatre in relation to production history, theories of sexuality, and cultural and political contexts (both past and present).

Credits: 4

Continued sensory-actualization technique to increase the physical awareness needed to create authentic theatre and characters. Classes include warm-up, technical exercises, improvisations, and monologues.

Credits: 2

PREREQ: THP2500 Or THP2760

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

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

Explores female characters in plays by Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, and contemporary women playwrights (Mann, Fornes, Churchill, Shange). Theories of gender, language, and performance are addressed.

Credits: 4

Students study, attend, and create contemporary performance works.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP2020

Shakespeare goes to celluloid, Hollywood, Japan, TV, and elsewhere. On the one hand, this is a Shakespeare seminar, with emphasis on discussions of the plays themselves. On the other, it becomes a film course, focusing on analyses of screen adaptations.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP2205 Or LIT2205

Contemporary theatre encompasses a wide range of approaches, from the collective experiments in the 1960s (e.g., Living Theatre, Open Theatre) to Robert Wilson’s “operas” and the mixed-media performances of Ping Chong, Meredith Monk, Richard Foreman, and the Wooster Group. Students study the works of several contemporary theatre artists, attend performances, and meet selected artists working with new forms in New York theatre.

Credits: 4

An introduction to scenic, costume, and lighting design aimed at stage directors and stage managers. Students review the basics of designing for the stage and learn how directors and designers communicate fruitfully in realizing a given theatrical production.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP2895

Engaging with a wide variety of plays and performances, students explore U.S. Latino theatre as a site of personal, cultural, and political intervention. Readings reflect the aesthetics, narratives, historical contexts, and systems of theatrical production pertinent to Latino culture in the U.S.

Credits: 4

Introduction to staging. After a brief overview of directing history, students are introduced to elements of directing (including the Viewpoints) and strategies for working with actors, staging short scenes, and using a minimum of technical elements in a final scene. Required for students with a directing concentration; open to other majors with junior standing.

Credits: 4

Theory and practice of directing, with lectures and practical focus on exercises. Required for theatre and performance majors who are considering production senior projects.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP3680

In this introduction to strategies of collective creation, students are engaged in a process that culminates in an end-of-semester performance.

Credits: 3

American theatre and society during the last 50 years. Plays by Jones (Baraka), Mamet, Shepard, Hwang, Kushner, Fornes, Marsha Norman, Sarah Ruhl, and August Wilson. Some knowledge of the American drama of O’Neill, Williams, and Miller is required.

Credits: 4

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

By scripting and performing oral traditions, short stories, and 19th- and 20th-century novels, students explore how narratives establish gender, ethnicity, region, and nation as indexes of identity. Solo and group work.

Credits: 4

A writing workshop on how to develop performance scripts from poetry, prose fiction, and nonfiction. Requires a background in literature, interest in theatrical form, and commitment to the scripting process.

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: 3

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

Malaise, futility, despair, and, sometimes, hope in the plays of Pirandello, Brecht, Giraudoux, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Osborne, Pinter, Churchill, and others, from World War I to somewhere short of tomorrow.

Credits: 4

Study and dramatic interpretation of 20th-century lyric poetry, including Eliot, Roethke, Sexton, Plath, Olds, Ginsberg, Rich, Stafford, and Giovanni. Workshop atmosphere; solo and group techniques of performance and script making; written analyses.

Credits: 4

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

Students rehearse and perform a role or work on the production of a main-stage show directed by a faculty member or other professional director. Students may enroll only after they have been cast or assigned to the production.

Credits: 3

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

Examines and develops skills in theatrical production including stage management, fundraising, marketing, and artistic producing. Studies production models in the recent history of the field and applies acquired knowledge and skills to the production of the cohort's individual senior projects.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: THP3890

An advanced course focused on accessing, articulating, and deepening one’s voice as a director. Using works by Anton Chekhov, students investigate all aspects of the director’s craft, including research, translations, and collaboration in the rehearsal and design process. Designers are paired with directors to develop production approaches.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: THP3680 And (THP3681 Or THP3730 )

Examines multiple modes of queer performance beyond traditional drama and theatre, including performance art, dance, drag shows, stand-up comedy, poetry slams, political protests, and live music. Using queer theory and performance methodologies to support aesthetic analyses, students explore the ways in which queer performance engages with current struggles surrounding issues of queer identity, community, and representation.

Credits: 4

Explores the variety of ways in which readers, critics, actors, and directors have interpreted, and can interpret, Shakespeare's plays and poetry. While written work and some research are required, there are also opportunities for oral presentations and performance.

Credits: 4

An advanced course that deepens the performer’s work with voice and introduces Fitzmaurice Voicework, along with the work of other leaders in the field. Students continue building on previous vocal work to achieve expanded release, vocal range, resonance, and strength in their voices and bodies.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: THP3050 Or THP3315