Undergraduate

This course creates the first stage in a site-specific devised work process by engaging with a topic and texts and using the ensemble itself to generate work that is then considered critically. As a theme for the quarter, we will explore the interplay between horror, terror, and pleasure through in-class discussions of theoretical works and the possibilities of practical creative application. The paradox of the attraction to repulsion will be considered as well as the values of shock, suspense, and subtlety. Texts will include classic and contemporary drama, cult fiction, ghost stories, games, films, and theoretic source material. As a part of this foundation, we will question the intricacies of staging through in-class discussions of theoretical works (Aristotle, Brecht, Artaud, Stanislavski, and Bogart) and the possibilities of practical creative application. Working 4-dimensionally in outdoor on-campus locations, we will examine how theorized stagings can evoke suspense. This course will constantly question how analysis itself can be a performative practice and how performance can serve as a critical endeavor.

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 is a hands-on introduction to Neo-Futurism: a method of transforming your own thoughts, feelings, and experiences into creative, task-oriented, audience-participatory, non-illusory, unique theatrical events. Students are encouraged to find their own voice as fully rounded theater artists by writing, directing, and performing their own short performances using their own lives as source material. By pursuing the goal of absolute truth on stage, we focus on an alternative to narrative Realism by embracing such elements as deconstruction, found-text, collage, abstraction, sythesis, and chaos. Classes consist of original group exercises as well as presentations of weekly performance assignments.

This interdisciplinary course examines key topics, trajectories and analytical methods in the study of gender and sexuality, approaching them in the Global South context of modern and contemporary Indian society. As a postcolonial nation that recently decriminalized homosexuality (in 2018), yet where caste- and communally-motivated sexual violence is on the rise, the contemporary Indian context pushes us to reflect on how questions of gender and sexuality are animated, constituted and represented, especially within non-Euro/American frameworks. What theoretical concepts have universal purchase, and what is only ever legible in a local register? How do the forces of global capital and imperial power intervene in these processes? We will address these questions through the lens of performance, drawing on ethnographic, textual, visual and filmic sources from various Indian regions, communities and languages (in translation). We will journey through a range of sites and scenes, including courtesan cultures, queer nightlife, drag performances, classical arts, dramatic texts, political protests, and more. Through our eclectic readings and creative assignments, we will collectively question and expand our received notions of gendered and sexualized identities and difference. This is an introductory course, and no prior knowledge of Indian/South Asian cultures and languages is required.

This hybrid studio/seminar course offers an overview of the formal techniques, cultural contexts, and social trends that shape current Black social and vernacular dance practices. Modules will be built around Black social culture by looking at key histories and theories around Black dance, music and other cultural aesthetics from hip hop to house. As part of our exploration, we will cover themes such as: the Great Migration, the range of Black social dance forms from blues, jazz, disco, and dancehall that have influenced the evolution of hip hop and house on global scale; and the spectrum of social spaces from clubs to lounges and public events that have been critical to preserving Black cultural heritage and creating safe spaces for belonging and flourishing. Selected readings and viewings will supplement movement practice to give historical, cultural, and political context. 

This course will explore the structural dynamics of protests through a close examination of giant puppets. We will engage with both practices and theories of protest puppetry. You will learn how to craft insurgent objects out papier maché and other found materials. We will think through this practice alongside theories of the public sphere and ethnographies of protests, uprisings and social movements (on the left and the right) from the 1960s to the present day. Rather than maintain the division between theory and practice, we will investigate the ways in which social movements mobilize theory as liberatory practice and how the practice of "puppetganda" generates theories of publicity from the mechanical and technical demands it makes on its puppeteers, participants and spectators. We will study specific protest events, from pioneers of the artform like Bread and Puppet in the 1960s to the height of protest puppetry during the environmental and global justice movements in the 1980s-2000s. We will ask why protest puppets were especially popular during the rise of neoliberalism and ultimately examine their usefulness in today's political climate in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement and Black uprising as well as the alt-right "rally."

This course is designed to introduce students to foundational concepts and critical skills relevant to the study of theater and performance. In addition to wide-ranging readings and discussions, students will attend a variety of performances and screenings representing a cross-section of genres, interpretive styles, and institutional settings. Although the course will be directed by Prof. Trent, it will be divided into discrete units, each led by a different instructor from the TAPS teaching staff. Thus, students will gain exposure to a variety of teaching styles, areas of expertise, and approaches to the field. The course is open to all undergraduate students as an elective; it also serves as a required course for all TAPS majors.

In this course students will analyze, critique, and produce dramatic work fueled by the question: What makes theatre Black and how can drama be utilized to affirm, celebrate, and amplify the specific and heterogeneous experiences of Black folks? Though our inquiry will be guided by our dramaturgical work on Court Theatre's summer 2021 production of Othello, we will also rigorously study and analyze other texts, productions, and companies--both contemporary and historic. Our course aim is to hone our ability not just to make our own creative work but also to think critically about the work of others.