Autumn

This course is designed to introduce students to foundational concepts and critical skills relevant to the study of theater and performance. In addition to wide-ranging readings and discussions, students will attend a variety of performances and screenings representing a cross-section of genres, interpretive styles, and institutional settings. Although the course will be directed by Prof. Trent, it will be divided into discrete units, each led by a different instructor from the TAPS teaching staff. Thus, students will gain exposure to a variety of teaching styles, areas of expertise, and approaches to the field. The course is open to all undergraduate students as an elective; it also serves as a required course for all TAPS majors and minors.

This course traces the creative, political, and scholarly legacies of Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), exploring the immeasurable impact of her career as a dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, activist, and creator of the Dunham Technique. Students will merge embodied practice with in-class discussions of theoretical texts, questioning the role of Black dance traditions of the 20th century in helping shape transnational and Black diaspora studies. In keeping with the geographic scope of Dunham’s practice and research, we will engage Black dance and social movements of the Caribbean, Latin America, the United States, and beyond. Central concepts of performance ethnography, Caribbean studies, and Black feminisms will anchor an investigation of dance as an intellectual process and as social action. We will contemplate the methods of artist-activists and artist-scholars in traversing disciplines and foregrounding new fields of thought. This course will balance training with a certified practitioner in Dunham Technique with field studies, archival research, and short choreographic experiments while taking advantage of concurrent city-wide events celebrating Dunham’s legacy. No previous dance experience is required, and students should be prepared to engage through the body as well as intellectually in each class.

In this course, we’ll examine what happens to the American Family Drama on stage when the ‘family’ is queer. We will move beyond describing surface representations into an exploration of how queering the family implicates narrative, plot, character, formal conventions, aesthetics and production conditions (e.g. casting, venues, audiences, marketing and critical reception). Our texts will include theatrical plays, live and recorded productions, queer performance theory, and – where it’s useful to our exploration – select examples from film and television. This course will be a combined seminar and studio, inviting students to investigate through readings, discussion, staging experiments, and a choice of either a final paper or artistic project. A background in theater is not required.

This course is designed to introduce students to the theatrical art of scenic painting for the stage and film. A scenic artist is the hand of the theatrical designer, translating the small scale of the designer's rendering into full size theatrical environments. In this course, students will explore the unique tools and techniques used by scenic artists to create scenery. The end result of this class will be a basic mastery of painting "faux" surfaces and an understanding of how a scenic artist transforms the designer's ideas into realized pieces of theatrical art.

This course is a practical introduction to the art and craft of songwriting for musical theater. Students will analyze and practice song form, storytelling through music, and the writing of lyrics and melody for character and tone. In addition to presenting and workshopping new song material weekly, students will learn about orchestration, arrangement, and the structure of the theatrical score by discussing standout examples of the genre. As individuals or in teams of two, students will develop a catalog of character- and story-driven songs to be performed in cabaret at the end of the quarter. A basic ability to read music is expected; experience in songwriting is not required.

This studio course introduces students to a wide range of methods for creating choreography, while considering the complex relationship between bodies, form, aesthetics, cultural contexts, technology platforms, and performance objectives. Grounded by interdisciplinary inquiry and ethical collaboration practices, the course will provide students with a robust toolkit for experimentation and play within dance and movement-based work, including compositional structures, improvised scoring, and choreographic prompts that are inspired by students’ unique thematic interests. The course also invites students to consider how choreographic methods can be activated as a problem-solving tool across disciplines. Supplementary readings and viewings will highlight contemporary choreographic practices from around the globe, driving discussion and analysis while giving students a broad understanding of how choreography engages current social and political issues.

This two-quarter sequence is open only to fourth-year students who are majoring and/or minoring in theater and performance studies.

This course will introduce students to the burgeoning field of immersive puzzle design. Students will develop, implement, and playtest puzzles that are suited for a range of experiences: from the tabletop to the immersive, from online puzzle hunts to broad-scoped alternate reality games (ARG). Students in this course will work directly with master puzzler Sandor Weisz, the commissioner of The Mystery League.

This workshop will explore the underlying mechanics that have made plays tick for the last 2,500-odd years, from Euripides to Shakespeare to Büchner to Caryl Churchill, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Annie Baker, etc. Students will be asked to shamelessly steal those playwrights' tricks and techniques (if they're found useful), and employ them in the creation of their own pieces. Designed for playwrights at any level (beginning or advanced), the workshop's primary goals will be to develop a personal sense of what "works" on stage within the context of what's worked in the past, and to generate a one-act play, start to finish.

This course adapts curriculum originally designed for the various schools of modern improvisation (including the iO, the Annoyance and The Second City) and brings it into today’s Zoom world. Listening skills, the ability to work well with others as a team, and building scene work organically are highlighted. You will leave this class a better communicator, with interpersonal tools that support other facets of your life.