Autumn

Approaching theatrical design as a visual art, we will achieve a basic understanding of the theory, methodology and artistic expression fundamental to each area of design for the stage—scenic, costume, lighting and sound. We will learn how each discipline approaches and executes visual (aural in the case of sound) communication involved in the design process. Students will learn the professional design process, from contracting through production. Projects for this course will be completed using a combination of mediums and materials. If students are away from campus, there will be discussions of what materials may suit each student best based on available resources. Creativity in execution of visual communication will be of great importance. Students will learn to show collaborators ideas instead of talking about them.

This course offers an introduction to a number of significant dramatic works and seminal figures in the theorization of theater and performance. But the course's aspirations go much further: we will be concentrating upon the intersection of interpretation and enactment, asking how these pieces appear on stage and why. This will not be merely descriptive work, but crucially it will be interpretive and physical work. Students will prepare and present applied interpretations-that is, interpretations that enable conceptual insights to take artistic form. Throughout, we will be searching for that elusive combination of philological rigor, theoretical sophistication, and creative inspiration-probing the theoretical stakes of creativity and testing the creative implications of analytic insights.

This course introduces fundamental concepts of performance in the theater with emphasis on the development of creative faculties and techniques of observation, as well as vocal and physical interpretation. Concepts are introduced through directed reading, improvisation, and scene study.

This course introduces students to a range of theatrical concepts and techniques, including script analysis and its application to staging, design and acting. Throughout, we investigate how theater – as a collaborative art form – tells stories. Students will act, direct, and design. In doing so, they will gain an understanding of a variety of processes by which scripts are realized in the theater, with an emphasis on the text’s role in production rather than as literature.

This course introduces students to the works of early modern female playwrights from England--including Elizabeth Cary, Aphra Behn, and Margaret Cavendish--and from Continental Europe (in translation)--including the French Marguerite de Navarre (Comedy of Mont-de-Marsan), the Italian Margherita Costa (The Buffoons), the Spanish Ana Caro (The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs) and the Mexican Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (Narcissus), among others. In this course, we will read and think through the complex plays and lives of those brilliant authors through various critical lenses such as intersectional feminism, transnationalism, and premodern critical race studies.

This is a reading and research course for independent study.

Arguably the most debated political theorist of all time due to The Prince, Machiavelli genuinely aspired to be remembered for his creative prowess. He explored various literary genres, such as short stories, dialogues, satirical poetry, letter writing, and, notably, theater, where he demonstrated mastery with The Mandrake, an exemplary Renaissance comedy. This course aims to reintegrate these two aspects of Machiavelli: the serious politician and the facetious performer, a Janus-faced figure who serves as a precursor of both Hobbes and Montaigne. We will revive the image of this “Renaissance man,” and, through him, shed light on his era and fellow humanists by restoring their intellectual unity of prescription and laughter. Indeed, we will discover that Machiavelli encourages us not to take things, including him and ourselves, too seriously!

Games are one of the most prominent and influential media of our time. This experimental course explores the emerging genre of "alternate reality" or "transmedia" gaming. Throughout the quarter, we will approach new media theory through the history, aesthetics, and design of transmedia games. These games build on the narrative strategies of novels, the performative role-playing of theater, the branching techniques of electronic literature, the procedural qualities of video games, and the team dynamics of sports. Beyond the subject matter, students will design modules of an Alternate Reality Game in small groups. Students need not have a background in media or technology, but a wide-ranging imagination, interest in new media culture, or arts practice will make for a more exciting quarter.
PQ: Third- or fourth-year standing. Instructor consent required. To apply, submit writing through online form: https://forms.gle/QvRCKN6MjBtcteWy5; see course description. Once given consent, attendance on the first day is mandatory. Questions: mb31@uchicago.edu

Italian culture has been continuously enriched by oral artistic practices that transcend the written page through the bodies and voices of performers. The content of this course will analyze various oral traditions from the Italian context, ranging from courtly lyric poetry of the Middle Ages to the vibrant contemporary performance poetry scene. Additionally, the course will examine the interplay between oral traditions and marginalized communities, with a particular focus on the exploration of female voices—from Renaissance mystical performances to feminist oral history practices in the 1970s—while also considering the polyvocal influence of immigration and the use of regional dialects. The course will integrate artistic content with theoretical material on the topic of voice (Agamben, Bologna, Cavarero, Frasca), as well as insights from media studies, feminist and queer studies, critical race studies, and performance theory. By the conclusion of this course, students will be able to deconstruct the traditional dichotomy between written text
and oral practices by recognizing the mutual exchange between the two and incorporate Italian
oral traditions into the traditional literary canon.

Reading knowledge of Italian required. Class will be conducted in English with a separate
discussion section available for students seeking credit for the Italian major/minor. Readings will
be in Italian and in English.

This team-taught course explores the challenges of staging Richard Wagner’s sprawling 19th-century tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung in the 21st century. The course will offer an introduction to The Ring, including its complicated place in history (including its reception and production history), and how it has been thought about in recent musicology and critical theory. But first and foremost, we will be exploring how the piece is being staged today. To that end, we will explore four productions of the tetralogy that are currently being prepared at leading opera houses around the world – in Munich, London, Berlin, and Oslo – speaking, via Zoom, with artistic directors and the production teams about their ideas and ambitions. What are the interpretive challenges and opportunities in staging this mammoth work? How do these productions seek to engage the tetralogy’s exceedingly complicated aesthetic ambitions, political baggage, and production history? And how do specific geographical, cultural, and historical conditions affect the artistic project of each production? Our discussions will encompass a range of fields, approaches, and topics. Among the themes we plan to examine are the aspiration to aesthetic totalization, the politics of community, the relationship between canonicity and critique, the notion of distress or emergency (the German term is Not), and some astonishingly lurid fantasies of family life—mostly of family dissolution. Moreover, we will approach the question of the relevance of The Ring and of opera (including Wagner’s ambitions to create “the artwork of the future”) in our time. Insofar as Friedrich Nietzsche and Theodor Adorno stand at the origins of critical Wagner studies, their work will inform ours. But we will also consider more recent work, including writings by Carolyn Abbate, Alain Badiou, Nicholas Ridout, and Slavoj Zizek. Suitable for advanced undergraduates and beginning MA & PhD students. A knowledge of German and/or music history is welcome but not required. An active interest in – and a willingness to think critically and creatively about – the practices of interpretation on stage is essential.