Winter

Interested in peaking behind the curtain of a professional theater company? Follow along with the conceptual questions and artistic decisions for two productions, one at Court Theatre and one at Steppenwolf. Activities will include visiting rehearsals, meeting with artists, and providing dramaturgical research and discussion for upcoming productions of Miss Julie and Catch As Catch Can. We will also experiment with active dramaturgy methods ourselves. This course is aimed at students who want to put theories of performance into practice in real time, alongside a professional production process. 

The course examines how blackness has been both constructed and reimagined across Latin America and the Caribbean through an exploration of the performance and cultural practices of Afro-Latin communities. We treat popular and performance traditions as a crucial terrain for discerning how Black people across the region navigate discourses of racial democracy, mestizaje, multiculturalism, and racial fraternity even as they faced the realities of racism in individual nations. The course examines imaginations of blackness in hip hop, reggaetón, rumba, folklore, carnivals, and visual art in varied sites such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil. Grounded in Black and Diaspora Studies, the writings of Frantz Fanon, W.E.B. Dubois, Paul Gilroy and others will serve as theoretical touchstones for placing these forms and lived realities in diasporic context. We will also engage the work of noted and upcoming Black artists from the region.

Undergraduates must be in their 3rd or 4th year.

While the course will be taught in English, please note that many of the performances studied will be in Spanish.

This studio-based course with a seminar component offers an overview of the formal practices and contemporary trends that shape dance as an art form. The class is designed for students who seek to gain a working knowledge of dance and deepen their physical skills. A range of contemporary dance forms and practices will be covered. Topics may include modern dance, hip hop, partnering techniques, social dance forms, improvisation, somatic practices, dance composition, and more. Lectures, viewings, and discussion will support experiential practice components. No previous experience with dance or performance is required. This course meets the general education requirement in the arts.

This acting course will introduce students to the fundamentals of performing early modern drama. Working with plays by Shakespeare, John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, Margaret Cavendish and other playwrights of the period, we will draw on performance techniques developed by Shakespeare & Company, which focus on the voice, physical gesture, collaboration, and play. Required readings and viewing assignments will supplement our class work by providing context, inspiration, and an introduction to a variety of artists. The course will culminate in a performance of scenes and monologues.

The performance score is a visual/textual work unto itself. Scores also provide performers and audiences with a language to understand the work. In this way, scores are documents of performative world-building while at the same time offering pathways into those worlds. This is a course about producing writing, drawing, and trace-making for the purpose of some other action – the performance of some unknown. Students will consider, in particular, how diasporic artists and writers have used writing, drawing, and mark-making as tools for inhabiting and re-enlivening performances of the past, theoretical performances, and those performances difficult to transcribe or translate. Students will have several opportunities over the course of the term to create and perform scores including their own in various media.

This course will cover the rich representation of university life in non-professional Renaissance drama (including student-written plays, hazing plays, moralities, and satirical pamphlets, as well as intriguing fragments from lost plays), and the tantalizing glimpses this subject that the public stage offer. Plays include Love's Labour's Lost, The Parnassus Plays, Michaelmas Term, The Marriage of Wit & Science, and several neo-Latin plays in English translation. It will also provide a deep dive into the student scrapbooks of the late 16th / early 17th centuries; students will assemble their own album amicorum based on this curious and compelling form of self-documentation. Half of the course meetings will be taking place in the Regenstein Library's Special Collections.

This course investigates what we mean by "performance practice as research", as well as the related formulations practice as research, arts-based research, arts-led research, performance as research, etc. It will primarily, though not entirely, take the form of a seminar, with the expectation that studio work will follow in companion components of the TAPS PhD program and/or other venues. This course is intended for doctoral students seeking to understand and develop the relationship (and non-relationship) between arts practice and academic research without insisting on a particular approach or outcome. Through readings, case studies, discussions, and small artistic experiments, students will puzzle through their own idiosyncratic constellations of methods and interests, and so gain clarity about expansive and not always obviously intersecting bodies of work. While the course is designed for TAPS PhD students, other graduate students who find this mode of performance-based inquiry relevant to their work are welcome to apply. Please contact the instructor for further information.

Audio storytelling insinuates itself into the day-to-day unlike other narrative forms. People listen to podcasts while they do the dishes, drive to work, or walk the dog. In this hands-on course, we will learn to produce a podcast from idea to final sound mix, and explore the unique opportunities that the podcast form affords the storyteller. Students will complete several short audio exercises, and one larger podcast project. The class will be held remotely, with an emphasis on remote recording techniques and what it means to document this moment using tools of non-fiction, fiction, and oral history.

Explore how physical model making can be a tool for artists to envision, test, and manifest built environments. Students will create scale models using industry-standard scenic design tools, materials, and hands-on techniques as well as experiment with more environmentally responsible alternatives. Projects will be designed and built in response to theatrical texts and to changes we would like to see in our own homes and communities. Conversations and readings will highlight the role of artists in climate change discourse, which includes storytelling to inspire awareness, optimism, and change, and conceiving an ecologically conscious reality that can sustain future generations. The course will culminate in students presenting a complete physical scale model of an imagined space followed by peer critique.

Production in Chicago Theater offers an in-depth exploration of the many departments that collaborate to create a theatrical production. Combining hands-on experience with theoretical study, students will gain a comprehensive understanding of the creative, technical, and organizational processes involved in live performance. Through practical assignments and expert-led discussions, students will engage with key areas such as set design, lighting, sound, costumes, props, stage management, and production management. We will examine the history, theories, and practices behind each department while providing opportunities for real-world production experience, fostering collaboration, problem-solving, and project management. By the end of the course, students will have a well-rounded perspective on the complexities of theatrical production and an appreciation for the collective effort required to bring a performance to life.