TAPS

This course introduces students to the art of book writing for musical theater both on stage and in the current, digital landscape of live performance. Students will examine dramatic structure across a variety of genres and musicals, and will apply its lessons to their own original outlines and scenes to be workshopped and performed online. They will learn about adaptation by finding the story, character, and song moments in source materials ranging from poems and movies to historical and current events, and they will study character development by examining iconic musical theater roles and generating character descriptions and arcs of their own. Students will also practice working with existing music by writing from found albums or bodies of songs, and each will use the online spaces and tools of the professional theater world to present the rough draft of an original ten-minute libretto as well as a treatment and excerpt of a new, full-length work of musical theater.

Devised theater is created from a multitude of sources but, importantly, not a preexisting script. Rather the ‘script’ (whether or not it eventually takes written form) is developed in rehearsal. This studio course engages students in methods of generating and crafting devised material, including but not limited to physical action, moment work, and verbatim text. Additionally we will focus on the generative power of ‘problems’ as a motor of creation, which draws from core principles of clowning. Through solo and collaborative projects, students will explore how devised theater wrestles with conventionally discrete roles in theater-making (writer, director, performer, dramaturg, and designer). Other considerations will include strategies for making disparate material cohere and more broadly, what constitutes a story. Select readings and case studies of artists working in devised theater will supplement the practice-based focus of the course.

This course replaces Directing Study with an expanded quarterly lab for students working on theater and performance projects. Each quarter, the lab will be customized to serve directors, designers and dramaturgs who are working on current productions, preparing proposals for future productions, and/or in some way engaged in project development. The cohort will meet weekly to develop project ideas, build skills, experiment with methods of collaboration, receive and give feedback to each other, and receive individual mentorship from the course instructor. Instructor consent required. Interested students should complete the online application for the course (https://forms.gle/FWzL6FRjUNFmc6j77) and are encouraged to reach out the instructor with questions and ideas. Priority will be given to TAPS majors and minors.

Looking at the writings of Charles Ludlum and his Ridiculous Manifesto, we will explore the role of camp, homage, collage and The Ridiculous. Students will stage existing works and be asked to create their own original scenes that use camp, collage and the ridiculous to explore current politics and ideas.

This course adapts curriculum originally designed for the various schools of modern improvisation (including the iO, the Annoyance and The Second City) and brings it into today’s Zoom world. Listening skills, the ability to work well with others as a team, and building scene work organically are highlighted. You will leave this class a better communicator, with interpersonal tools that support other facets of your life.

This workshop will explore the underlying mechanics that have made plays tick for the last 2,500-odd years, from Euripides to Shakespeare to Büchner to Caryl Churchill, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Annie Baker, etc. Students will be asked to shamelessly steal those playwrights' tricks and techniques (if they're found useful), and employ them in the creation of their own pieces. Designed for playwrights at any level (beginning or advanced), the workshop's primary goals will be to develop a personal sense of what "works" on stage within the context of what's worked in the past, and to generate a one-act play, start to finish.

This course will introduce students to the burgeoning field of immersive puzzle design. Students will develop, implement, and playtest puzzles that are suited for a range of experiences: from the tabletop to the immersive, from online puzzle hunts to broad-scoped alternate reality games (ARG). Students in this course will work directly with master puzzler Sandor Weisz, the commissioner of The Mystery League.

This course explores contemporary works by American playwrights of color, with a focus on how to thoughtfully lead and/or participate in conversations around race and theatre both in- and outside of the rehearsal room. Students will read and discuss how playwrights such as Adrienne Kennedy (1960s), Suzan-Lori Parks (1990s-2000s), Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and Young Jean Lee (2018) employ imagery, archetypes, and stereotypes, and taught and true history to expand and morph not just the American canon but the American story to include rather than exclude people of color.

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.

Augusto Boal argues that theatre is “rehearsal for the revolution.” Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed provides key strategies for collaboratively crafting dramatic narrative. These strategies challenge the conventional Aristotelian structure that privileges a single protagonist and subordinates other stories. Instead, Boal structures a poetics in which the “spect-actor” contributes their voice. Students will engage in devising and embodiment exercises in Image Theatre, Newspaper Theatre, Forum Theatre, and more, by interpreting texts (e.g., religious texts, constitutional documents, or political manifestos), interrogating current events, exploring public narratives, and valuing diverse learning styles. Students will contextualize destinations for the course material according to the aesthetic and academic questions that they bring into the classroom. To consider ethical concerns surrounding participatory theatre, we will examine arts groups past and present that employ the techniques of the Theatre of the Oppressed. Readings include Boal, Freire, Jan Cohen-Cruz, Michael Rohd, bell hooks, and Knight and Schwarzman.