Undergraduate

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 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 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 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 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 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 Gray Center Fellowship course considers the social poetics of skateboard culture, with special attention to style, motion, and physical space. Co-taught by Kyle Beachy, Tina Post, and Alexis Sablone, the course will feature film screenings and panels on embodied style, narrative, time, and the built environment, along with skateboarding's anti-scarcity and communal structures that both subvert and reframe capitalist competition. Students will produce a short performance work as the culminating project of the class.

In this combined studio and seminar course, we explore a selection of musicals (tentatively including Fun Home, Falsettos, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, A Strange Loop, and Indecent) considering their dramatic structure, character construction, performance norms, and musical conventions. In what sense(s) are these works "queer"? Students will investigate course materials through readings, discussions, staging experiments, and a choice of either a final paper or an artistic project. Open to advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Previous experience in theater, music, and/or film analysis or production is preferred but not required; an interest in detailed textual analysis, rigorous discussion, and focused creative engagement is essential. Team-taught by Leslie Buxbaum (Professor of Practice in TAPS), Erin McKeown (Visiting Gray Center Fellow and composer of the musical "Miss You Like Hell"), and David Levin (Professor in TAPS, CMS, Germanics, and Sr Advisor to the Provost for Arts) as part of their collaborative Gray Center fellowship "An Un-dosical" which seeks to explore the norms of the American musical.