Autumn

This course explores the interplays between romance, attractions, and distractions through in-class discussions of theoretical works and the possibilities of practical creative application. The paradox of instant gratification and prolonged desire will be considered as well as the values of shock, suspense, and subtlety. Texts will include classic and contemporary drama, vampire cult fiction, fairy tales, films, and theoretic source material. Working 4-dimensionally, we will examine how theorized stagings can evoke and undermine sentimentality. This course will constantly question how analysis itself can be a performative practice and how performance can serve as a critical endeavor.The course will culminate in a series of original scenes to be shown at the end of the quarter. Experience in dramatic analysis or performance not required.

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 aims to introduce students to various musical and performance traditions in South Asia and their evolution within regimes of institutional, legal and media censorship. The course aims to understand how media environments and cultures of censorship are in some ways fundamental to shaping performance cultures in South Asia in the twentieth century. How do traditions of musical performance entrenched in the politics of caste, communalism, religion, sexuality and gender interact with regimes of censorship and new media? How do the latter remake and unmake said traditions? Be it the mid-century ban on film music by All India Radio to reflect the aspirations of a newly-emerging nation or the appropriation and urbanization of 'folk' musical practices within the recording studios in Nepal by upper-caste, upper-class male performers- censorship and media infrastructures have been integral to the current ontologies of diverse musical genres in South Asia. Through the analysis of a variety of primary and secondary texts on performance and musical aesthetics, media and music ethnographies, reception and production histories as well as critical listening/viewing exercises, this course seeks to complicate mainstream Euro-American narratives that tend to posit media-modernities as global and uniform. We will seek to understand how South Asian musical cultures and sound practices enter into a creative interplay with musical discourses and media-materialities emerging in the West.

This experimental course explores the emerging genre of "immersive performance," "alternate reality," and "transmedia" gaming. For all of their novelty, 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 videogames, and the team dynamics of sports. Throughout the quarter, we will approach new media theory through the history, aesthetics, and design of immersive games, while working in labs with three Chicago-area companies including The House Theater, Mystery League, and Humans vs. Zombies.

In this course, we will delve into the world of contemporary Francophone theater, focusing on the genre of solo performances, or "seules en scène''. We will examine the lineage, history, and practice of this genre, with a special emphasis on feminist playwrights and performers, such as Typhaine D, Jalila Baccar, Fanny Cabon, and Florence Foresti.

We will study the underlying components of solo performances and learn how to integrate them into different modes, including storytelling, one-woman or one-man shows, and standup. The selected plays will illustrate how the art of the solo voice can empower under-represented communities and minorities to share powerful narratives and create a new space for visibility and listening.

The class will combine history, practice, and creative writing, and will afford students the opportunity to apply this knowledge in a series of live performances that will allow them to creatively connect to the issues raised in the readings and draw from their own experiences, inspirations, and questions.

Students will develop creative and critical tools to fully explore the solo voice as a form of artistic expression, honing their talents in writing, devising, composing, producing, and creating work. Performance recordings will be obtained and shared with the class to further enhance the learning experience. One of the unique opportunities of this course is the opportunity to work with texts obtained directly from the playwrights.

Class will be conducted in English with a separate discussion section available for students seeking credit for the major/minor. Readings will be in French and in English.

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

What is performance? How has it been used in Latin America and the Caribbean? This course is an introduction to theatre and performance in Latin America and the Caribbean that will examine the intersection of performance and social life. While we will place particular emphasis on performance art, we will examine some theatrical works. We ask: how have embodied practice, theatre and visual art been used to negotiate ideologies of race, gender and sexuality? What is the role of performance in relation to systems of power? How has it negotiated dictatorship, military rule, and social memory? Ultimately, the aim of this course is to give students an overview of Latin American performance including blackface performance, indigenous performance, as well as performance and activism.

Molière crafted a new form of satirical comedy that revolutionized European theater, though it encountered strong opposition from powerful institutions. We will read the plays in the context of the literary and dramatic traditions that Molière reworked (farce, commedia dell'arte, Latin comedy, Spanish Golden Age theater, satiric poetry, the novel), while considering the relationship of laughter to social norms, as well as the performance practices and life of theater in Molière's day. Taught in French.