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Course Criteria
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4.00 Credits
This course examines theatre in Africa beginning from the anticolonial independence movements of the 1950s and continuing to the present. It does not purport to offer a comprehensive view of Africa's diverse theatrical traditions but examines several regions, heritages, and time periods attentive to both commonalities and differences. Particular attention will be given to theatre's function as an agent of social and political change. Theoretical concerns are likely to include theatre and nationalism, negritude and its critics, the relationship between theatre and ritual, the role of women, and the interaction of indigenous African performance practices with western theatre. Meets general academic requirement H or D (and W which applies to 231 only).
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4.00 Credits
The American theatrical scene of the nineteenth century gave birth to myriad popular forms: minstrelsy, melodrama, burlesque, and vaudeville. In addition, several important arttheatre forms grew up alongside, and in reaction to, these mainstream entertainments. This course engages students with the historical evidence and recent scholarship on American theatre in the 1800s. The class will examine the development of multiple systems of theatre in the United States during this time period. Reading texts addressing the entire range of theatrical material (performance, marketing, architecture, stage illusions, and scripts), students will trace the rise of nationalism on the stage and in the audiences of the popular theatres. Meets general academic requirement H (and W which applies to 233 only).
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6.00 Credits
The beginning class in the acting sequence, this class lays the foundations for the ultimate goal of the acting program: to create actors who know how to work on a role within the context of the play and who have flexibility in their craft. The focus of the class will be on acting process, including relaxation work how to critique commitment to language, sound, emotional connection, and movement the active choice and actor's text analysis. Actors will be judged on their individual growth and also on their ability to work as an ensemble member within the class. This course is the building block leading into scene work and a requirement of the class will be a fully staged scene. Possible readings from Stanislavsky, Peter Brook, Chekhov, Williams, Shephard, and other writers. Films may be shown as an example of craft. Class meets for six hours a week. Prerequisite: THR 100 Theatre & Society: An Historical Introduction
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4.00 Credits
Building on the foundations taught in Acting I, this class moves the student actor into scene work. Primary focus in the class is on American realistic text with the possibility of moving into increasingly difficult texts from the modern canon. Class will explore the tools of the actor, including text analysis, critique, commitment to action, linking choices to the larger structure of the play, theatricality, language, impulse work, and style. Actors will be judged on their individual growth and also on their ability to work as an ensemble member within the class. Playwrights may include Hellman, Kushner, O'Neill, Churchill, Fornes, among other writers. Films may be shown as an example of technique. Class will meet for four hours per week. Prerequisite: THR 250 Acting I: Process
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4.00 Credits
An exploration of the relationship between the play and its physical setting. Students will explore how the cultural/literary context of specific theatrical works can be expressed through the designer's process. A major focus will be on production conceptualization and the aesthetics of the theatre. Class members will be introduced to the basics of model building, color rendering practice, and the various media available to the modern designer. Crew work will be required. Offered in alternate years. Prerequisite: THR 161 Design for the Theatre or permission of the instructor Meets general academic requirement A.
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4.00 Credits
An exploration of the properties of light and their relation to the stage play in production. Areas to be covered include electrical theory, color theory, stage lighting design theory, and control systems. Students will develop an understanding of the potentials of the lighting instruments available to the designer and the uses of computer memory control. Crew work will be required. Offered in alternate years. Prerequisite: THR 161 Design for the Theatre or permission of the instructor Meets general academic requirement A.
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4.00 Credits
A survey of costume design and history with training in basic construction techniques. The application of basic design concepts and their relation to clothes, costume, and the human figure will be discussed and related to script analysis exercises. Students will work on designing, patterning, and planning costumes for specific plays. Figure drawing and rendering technique will be covered, and crew work will be required. Prerequisite: THR 161 Design for the Theatre or permission of the instructor Meets general academic requirement A.
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4.00 Credits
This course introduces students to the intellectual viewpoints, critiques, and new questions (and the new objects of study to match the new questions) that have arisen in the late twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries feminist theories of the theatre. In order to move through the theoretical models employed by feminist critics in the theatre, we will begin with those key essays in film theory, semiotics, and materialist analysis that contributed to the current body of theoretical feminist material. Reading theories of reception and representation, of race and whiteness, and of unmaking mimesis, students will become familiar with analyses articulated by contemporary scholars. As objects of study upon which to practice these theoretical approaches, the class will read contemporary plays of feminist writers. In addition, as part of our rereading of canonical works, students will look at texts such as Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusage (Ladies Day). Reading theoretical essays as well as scripts, we will explore the complex embodiments of gender as performance. Ultimately, we will apply the materialist theories which integrate psychoanalytic approaches with Foucaultian analysis to reveal, through their reframing, complex processes of making and experiencing theatrical representation. These critical languages will give us the tools to understand the implications of how plays construct our ideas about gender, race, sexuality, class, and national identity. Prerequisite: THR 100 Theatre & Society: An Historical Introduction or permission of instructor Meets general academic requirement W when offered as 302.
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4.00 Credits
This course will involve students in intensive semesterlong research projects focused on the social, political, literary, and cultural conditions that informed the composition, structure, and production of one or two plays of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. As such, it will require students to perform handson research on subjects ranging from the status of women in Elizabethan England established and evolving views on marriage legal statutes and judicial practices crime and punishment the licensing and censorship of plays attitudes toward homosexual practices social mobility the legal and social standing of citizens, apprentices, foreigners, and masterless men etc. The plays we will focus on will be topically or historically oriented, either drawn from the annals of English history, e.g. Marlowe's Edward II, from the news of the day, or from pronounced social anxieties of the time, such as the fear of witches. The course will require students to develop a broad range of interpretive skills and encourage them to bring their enriched understanding of the plays into the present in the form of research papers, study guides, production histories, blackbox performances, setdesigns, and video projects. Prerequisite: THR 100 Theatre & Society: An Historical Introduction or ENG 275 or permission of instructor.
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4.00 Credits
This advanced acting class investigates methods for approaching, rehearsing, and performing premodern lyric texts, such as those by William Shakespeare and his contemporaries. With a focus on the practical demands of heightened language, the course addresses technical, stylistic, historical, and interpretive considerations as they relate to the feat of performance. Special attention is paid to linguistic structure as well as to its relationship to the individual experience of the actor/character. A directed emphasis on voice and speech development complements study by providing physical conditioning aimed at enhancing the student's production of poetic language. Topics of study also include verse structure, metrical variation, rhythm, languageasaction, forward movement, prose, phonetic word fabric, and imagery. The course acknowledges the modern actor's psychological approach to text (regardless of period) while at the same time recognizing that classical plays require actors to make distinct shifts in both actingstyle and psychology. Graded performance projects involve advanced scene work from Shakespeare's oeuvre. Class will meet for four hours per week. Prerequisite: THR 251 Acting II: Scene Study
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