Winter

This course explores the relationship between dancing bodies and gender identity in locations such as the stage, nightclubs, on social media, in film, and on the streets. Anchored in intersectional perspectives, the course examines dance as a site of personal and cultural history, resistance, and protest, while also considering its connections to nation and race. The aim of this course is to explore how ideas about gender and sexuality have shaped formal and aesthetic approaches to dance, even as dance serves as a space for contesting normative ideologies. This discussion-based seminar includes film screenings, guest artist sessions, and a final creative project. No previous dance experience required.

This studio course delves into the principles and practice of contemporary modern dance. Students will learn a series of movement sequences that progress from floor work to standing combinations and traveling phrases, building the skills to move with efficiency, gravity, and dynamics within the body and in space. Explorations of modern dance lineages will also include somatic techniques, improvisation, and the cultivation of an individual movement voice. Readings, viewings, and journal responses will supplement a bi-weekly studio practice, connecting student’s embodied experiences to the historical and cultural contexts that gave rise to modern and contemporary dance practices. Prior dance or movement experience is encouraged for this course.

This course explores "immersive performance," "alternate reality," and "transmedia" gaming, culminating in student projects for a Spring 2026 immersive event at The Regenstein Library, co-hosted by the Fourcast Lab at The University of Chicago. Through the history of interactive performances from Tudor-era spectacles to tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons and Nordic LARPS students will develop skills in scriptwriting, character creation, improvisation, digital platforms, and experience design.

We will examine Live Action Role-Playing (LARP) and Alternate Reality Games (ARG), analyzing how these formats blur the lines between reality and performance while fostering audience engagement. By dissecting their mechanics, students will learn to craft interactive narratives that build community and invite participation.

Collaboration with library staff will be essential, allowing students to utilize the library’s resources and spaces for creative storytelling. The course embraces the idea of libraries as hubs of cultural innovation, positioning them as both venue and partner in immersive storytelling. Guest lecturers, including Patrick Jagoda, Ashlyn Sparrow, Sandy Weisz, and David Feiner, will provide insights into immersive storytelling, game design, and audience interaction, offering professional perspectives on participatory experiences.

This class explores the new play development process from first to second draft and will culminate in a staged reading at the end of the quarter. All the roles of a traditional production process will be a part of this class, with students serving as: playwrights, directors, actors, and dramaturgs. What happens once the playwright is ready to invite in collaborators to develop a script? How does each person bring their unique point of view to the play? How can this process serve both the play and the artists involved? The class is studying the art, theory and process of development as well as working on our feet to try our hands at what we are discovering. We will work to develop student plays in which a first draft is already written.

Students interested in taking on these designated roles of a production team (actors, directors, dramaturgs) should select either TAPS 20450 New Play Development: Playwrights and Dramaturgs OR TAPS 20451 New Play Development: Directors and Actors. Once enrolled, course instructors will assign tasks taking into consideration student interest. For further information on the course or how to enroll, please contact ddemayo@uchicago.edu.

Playwrights with a complete, first draft of a play are encouraged to submit their work for the companion course TAPS 24050 and will be selected the quarter before this course is offered. To apply, please send your script and note of introduction to ddemayo@uchicago.edu.

This class explores the new play development process from first to second draft and will culminate in a staged reading at the end of the quarter. All the roles of a traditional production process will be a part of this class, with students serving as: playwrights, directors, actors, and dramaturgs. What happens once the playwright is ready to invite in collaborators to develop a script? How does each person bring their unique point of view to the play? How can this process serve both the play and the artists involved? The class is studying the art, theory and process of development as well as working on our feet to try our hands at what we are discovering. We will work to develop student plays in which a first draft is already written.

Playwrights with a complete, first draft of a play are encouraged to submit their work for this course and will be selected the quarter before this course is offered. To apply, please send your script and note of introduction to ddemayo@uchicago.edu.

Students interested in taking on any of the other designated roles of a production team (actors, directors, dramaturgs) should select either TAPS 20450 New Play Development: Playwrights and Dramaturgs OR TAPS 20451 New Play Development: Directors and Actors. Once enrolled, course instructors will assign tasks taking into consideration student interest. For further information on the course or how to enroll, please contact ddemayo@uchicago.edu.

Students will write short plays or one longer play that experiment(s) with queer form. We will consider linear and non-linear structures, disrupting expectations, subverting conventions, and shifting between the fictional world of the play and the real-time presence of the audience. We will focus on how form is integral to queer content. Students are welcome to bring in projects in progress or the germ of an idea, including original stories, adaptations or autobiographical material. Designers interested in ‘writing’ from a designer perspective are also welcome. Our work will be in dialogue with the new musical Out Here at Court Theatre, for which instructor Leslie Buxbaum is the book writer & co-lyricist. Students will meet production collaborators and be invited to production activities that fall within winter quarter.

"What is storytelling? It can be said that it is the oldest form of observing, synthesizing, and communicating feelings thoughts and information."—Temujin the Storyteller. Every day we use stories to communicate. This course provides students with an overview of the art and practice of storytelling. Chicago is a storytelling town from the Moth to Second Story and from Story Slams to traditional storytelling; performance artists give voice to a wide range of expression. Throughout this learning experience, students will be encouraged to explore the world of storytelling and to nurture their creative voices. Students will create and adapt tales focusing on personal experience, folklore, history, and ethnography. We will learn through participation and observation. The creative experiences in this course will enable students to further their skills in: oral presentation, story construction, performance, artistic critique, and analysis. Students will develop and perform stories from at least three distinct areas of experience. The course provides a creative space for learning and exploration.

Though we often imagine a divide between the physical practice of dance training and the intellectual practice of dance history and theorization, in reality they overlap: movement training is embodied research and a form of intellectual labor, while dance theorization and scholarship is deeply connected to the physicality of thought. This course offers an introduction to dance with an integrated approach to thinking and doing. Students will explore a range of embodied research methodologies that draw from improvisational forms, codified techniques, and social and cultural dance practices. No prior dance experience is required for this hybrid seminar/ studio course.

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.