Acting Music Theatre

Explores the process of acting in music theatre while introducing the history of this popular art form. Designed to develop the actor’s skills through intensive study of a wide range of music theatre material. Students consider operetta, golden age musicals, and contemporary works. Develops the range of skills needed for music theatre material, including acting the song, vocal performance, and choreography. Offers hands on experience performing in songs, scenes, and ensemble numbers.

Theatre and Ideas

What is theatre and why study it? How is it connected to performance and how is it different? How is theatre made? How has it been shaped by the world and where is it headed next? This course will broaden your understanding of what theatre is by focusing on key ideas and debates that establish theatre as a social and political creative practice. Rooted in the concept that theatre is a unique form of communication that expresses itself differently. This course will introduce you to the different ways theatre expresses ideas through a study of the means it has at its disposal to do this (space, performance, liveness, time, content, and movement).

Theatre and Social Justice

An exploration of plays and playwrights focusing on contemporary ideas around race, sexuality, gender, and disability to explore foundational skills for performance practice. Through advanced work in analysis, interpretation, and research this course engages challenges faced by women, LGBTQ people, disabled people, and people of the global majority in mainstream theatre spaces and presents possibilities for inclusive interventions in the field.

Dramaturgy

Explores the craft of dramaturgy through the critical examination of theatrical texts. With advanced work in script analysis, research, text adaptation, new play development, devising, and even physical dramaturgy, students learn to identify relevant questions and gain experience suggesting ways to support these questions in production. Looks at one dramatic work in depth (when possible an actual production) through the preparation of a complete dramaturgical casebook. For those interested in directing, dramaturgy, and related fields and those who wish to serve as a production dramaturge.

Introduction to Directing

Introduces the mechanics and ethos of directing, including basic principles of staging, script analysis, and planning the rehearsal process, as well as leading a room, working with actors, and developing the director’s voice and vision. Focuses on the role of directing in the context of our current social, political, and environmental context. Considers how theatre as an industry needs to change and how theater-makers can transform their rehearsal spaces and institutions. Asks what role directors might play in creating new, more sustainable futures. Does this in part through a social justice lens, using lessons drawn from Adrienne Maree Brown's book, Emergent Strategy. The various exercises culminate in the direction of a work for public performance.

Advanced Directing

Advanced work in direction under faculty supervision, with emphasis on preparing for a fully realized production. Includes advanced analysis, coaching actors, communication with designers, and complex staging problems. Considers the role of theatre in contemporary society, the responsibility of the director in that context, and possible interventions to shape the future.

Feminism and Theatre

Detailed study of theatrical works written by women within the context of feminist theory. Examines how feminism has shaped theatre and investigates connections to the past and present. Explores key issues such as lost theatrical traditions of women, problems of representation, the complex definitions of various types of feminisms, challenges posed by organized queer feminists and feminists of color, lessons of intersectionality, and making theatre that responds to the moment. Students consider Angelina Weld Grimké and Susan Glaspell, then read selections from some of the following theorists: Lacan, Cixous, Kristeva, Irigaray, Butler, hooks, Crenshaw, and Ahmed. Plays might include those by Carol Churchill, Adrienne Kennedy, Maria Irene Fornes, Holly Hughes, Paula Vogel, Lynn Nottage, Martyna Majok, and Jocelyn Bioh. By means of advanced work in analysis, interpretation, and research, this course engages challenges faced by women in mainstream theatre and presents possibilities for dismantling patriarchal institutions and misogyny through feminist interventions in the field.

Theatre Lab

Provides students an additional guided opportunity in the production season where they can experiment with theatrical form. Offers practical, hands-on experience working as part of a collective, challenging assumptions about what’s possible in theatre practice. Takes a ‘Practice as Research’ approach, highlighting artistic process and the ‘intellectual adventure’ of theatre-making. Students develop a research question, gather sources to investigate, and develop a rehearsal plan that allows them to test their hunches as a community. In rehearsal, students experiment with space and the nature of the event itself. They try out new rehearsal methods and physical theatre choreography techniques. They write original music and incorporate technology. The toppled hierarchy format gives students agency over decision making and allows them to see the research potential connected to creativity. Culminates in the performance of work for a public audience.