Performing Human: Attention, Action, and Presence

This course extends foundational acting tools into everyday social and institutional life through embodied practice. In a cultural moment shaped by AI and automated systems, the course emphasizes embodied interaction, relational attention, and live responsiveness as core human practices rather than replaceable skills. Drawing on actor-training practices associated with Konstantin Stanislavski, Sanford Meisner, Michael Chekhov, and Anne Bogart, students will treat performance as a repeatable, trainable practice for working under observation and pressure. Students deepen skills in presence, listening, imagination, and action while examining how incentives, constraints, and uncertainty shape behavior. Through physical training, improvisation, rehearsal, and structured performance scenarios, students practice navigating collaboration, negotiation, evaluation, and leadership. We will learn how the body’s alignment, tension, breath, and impulse shape attention, decision-making and verbal clarity. The course develops skills valued in competitive academic and professional contexts including analytical communication, composure under scrutiny, ethical judgment, and collaborative problem-solving. No prior experience is required, though previous coursework in TAPS 101 or 102 is suggested.