Courses

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 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 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 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.

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.

This hybrid seminar focuses on American contemporary playwrights who have made a significant and commercial impact with regard to dramatic form in the past 20 years. Playwrights will include, Tracy Letts, Annie Baker, Lynn Nottage, Quiara Alegria Hudes, Ayad Akhtar, and Amy Herzog. Textual analysis is consistently oriented towards staging, design, and cultural relevancies. Work for the course will include research papers, presentations, and scene work.

During AY26-27, this course can satisfy the English Drama requirement.

The camera catches everything—especially when you’re trying too hard. In this class, you’ll learn how to strip away overacting and build performances that feel real, grounded, and watchable on screen. We’ll break down what casting directors and cameras actually look for, while helping you build confidence, authenticity, and presence on screen. Through self-tapes, scene work, and honest feedback, you’ll develop the skills to trust yourself and show up truthfully in front of the camera. Expect to be challenged, supported, and surprised by what you’re capable of.

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 performances and screenings representing a cross-section of genres, interpretive styles, and institutional settings. TAPS faculty and staff will visit to share 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.

This course employs a practice in the fundamental theory of play direction and the role of the director in collaboration with the development of textual analysis. By examining five diversely different texts using three different approaches to play analysis (Aristotle, Stanislavski, Ball) students begin developing a method of directing for the stage in support of the written text. In alternating weeks, students implement textual analysis in building an understanding of directorial concept, theme, imagery and staging through rehearsal and in-class presentations of three-minute excerpts from the play analysis the previous week. The culmination is a final five-minute scene combining the tools of direction with a method of analysis devised over the entire 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 course is designed to help the emerging writer focus their creativity into a viable feature film project and screenplay. This includes structure, format, exposition, characterization, dialogue, voice-over, and other aspects of visual storytelling for the screen. Weekly meetings include a brief lecture period, screenings of scenes from selected films, extended discussion, assorted readings and writing assignments. Because this is primarily a writing class, students should expect to deliver four to five pages of written material—including story development materials or screenplay pages—each week.

This course spans three quarters of attendance and is open to all students from all areas of the University. Dance technique classes meet weekly for 90 minutes. For each quarter you may choose one of three technique tracks: classical dance (primarily ballet), modern/contemporary, or Afro-diasporic forms (hip-hop, jazz, West African). Classes are taught by some of Chicago’s most recognized dance professionals and are open to all levels of experience.

To earn 100 units for your engagement in dance technique classes, you must earn a grade of ‘P’ in each of three courses. Ordinarily, dance technique courses are taken in consecutive quarters and you must attend eight of the ten class sessions offered during any given quarter to earn the subsequent grade of ‘P.’ Any interruptions to enrolling in consecutive quarters (e.g., summer session and/or travel abroad) would need to be approved by the Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Dance in Theater and Performance Studies. There is no option to enroll for a quality grade. For more information and for consent to enroll, please contact Julia Rhoads, Director of Dance: jrhoads1@uchicago.edu.

In this course, students will develop an understanding of the basic methods and techniques involved in garment construction, including hand sewn stitches and fasteners, proper use and operation of sewing machinery, the practical use of fabrics and textiles, the manipulation of commercial patterns, and approaches to garment finishing. In addition, they will research and analyze clothing from particular historical periods in relation to theater, performance, and fashion. Students will develop a sewing technique portfolio that will allow for practicing the skills needed to produce finished garments, and as a final project, construct a completed garment using industry methodologies and construction standards.

This course introduces the creative and technical processes of designing and building scenery for theatrical performance. Students learn how to translate a script or performance concept into a visual environment through research, sketching, drafting, model-making, and paint elevations.. Students gain hands-on experience with stage mechanics, materials, and tools in the scene shop while learning how to interpret a text through design. For interested students, the scenic design and technology process can extend to other performance forms including dance, installation and site-specific work. No prior design or technical experience is required.

This course traces Shakespeare’s poetic invention and theatrical intelligence from his earliest, highly popular efforts at tragedy (Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet) to his later-career highlights (Othello, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra). Having developed a working knowledge of Shakespeare’s tragic dramaturgy, we will turn our attention to some examples of Romance (The Winter's Tale and The Tempest), a curious genre that complicates and subverts tragedy's mood and form. Throughout, we will treat the plays as literary compositions, embodied expressions, and witnesses to the tumultuous time in which Shakespeare lived. Section attendance is required.

In Fall quarter of fourth year, TAPS majors are required to enroll in TAPS 29801 BA Colloquium I (000 credits), the first part of a two-quarter sequence devoted to the preparation of the TAPS BA project. The colloquium is a weekly forum in which students develop their projects with close mentorship from course instructors and other TAPS faculty and professional staff, with feedback and participation from their peers in a close-knit cohort, and in accordance with a carefully designed set of deadlines. During Spring Quarter of the fourth year, students will publicly present BA projects in the TAPS BA ‘new works festival’. TAPS minors are invited to participate in TAPS 29801 without credit.

This class explores and replicates the professional theatrical process of new musical development, beginning with the concept for a show and ending with its premiere performance as an invited staged reading. Students will serve as book writers, lyricists, composers (Writing Team), and/or directors, music directors, actors, singers, and dramaturgs (Artistic Team) as they work together to craft and polish a new and viable work of musical theater. This class studies the art and theory behind theatrical storytelling, songwriting, directing, and originating new roles as actors, and students will work on their feet each week to bring their unique perspectives and skills to the creation of a new musical script, score, and performance.

This course offers an intensive laboratory setting in which to imagine and create movement-based performance from an interdisciplinary perspective. Weekly sessions include guided prompts to generate a range of material—writing, choreography, physical theater, song, visual design, improvisational scores, and more—that will serve individual and collaborative projects. An ensemble-based approach and ongoing mentorship from the instructor will support students to develop and refine their performance objectives. The process-based course will culminate with an informal performance of final projects. No prior experience in devised performance is required, but students should come with a willingness to experiment and play across a range of vocabularies.

This course explores the intersection of religion and performance/theatre through the lenses of performance studies that highlight religious practices, investigate worship practices that incorporate theatrical modes, and examine representations of religion and faith practices in and through secular performances. We will study disparate performances of religion (such as prayer, dances, stage plays, music, and art) that involve major religions of the world and some minor ones. Performance activities allow the experimentation and embodied expressions that can authorize normativity as well as enable transgressions. What this homology of religion and performance ultimately shows is a recognition of their mutual expressive force, infinite creative potential, and the power of human imagination. Students will learn practices of meaning that play on all the chords of the sensorium from where cognition and experience emerge or co-arise.

Students who are participating in the TAPS autumn quarter Pro Show as either performers or design/production assistants may opt in for course credit after securing approval from the Director of Performance and completing additional assignments.

This course introduces students to a range of dance and performance practices from the region of South Asia and its related diaspora. Throughout, we will explore critical examinations of South Asian dance and performing arts to consider history, identity, politics, and creativity. This course combines both theoretical study and movement practice and will investigate a range of research approaches and movement styles. No prior dance or performance experience is required.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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 the classroom. 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 course approaches dance and dancing bodies as active sites of meaning-making—places where history, identity, politics, and imagination are negotiated through movement. Drawing on dance studies, dance history, performance studies, and ethnographic approaches, students will develop tools for observing, analyzing, and interpreting dance both as an art form and as a social practice that circulates onstage, in everyday life, and across media. Alongside reading scholarly texts and viewing live and recorded performances, students will engage in guided movement practices that treat the body as a mode of inquiry rather than simply an object of study. Through these embodied experiments, students will explore how knowledge is produced through sensation, repetition, gesture, and kinesthetic awareness. The course examines how dance participates in broader conversations around race, gender, sexuality, class, and power, and how specific dance forms emerge from distinct cultural and historical conditions. No prior dance training is required, but students should expect to move regularly and to reflect critically on their own embodied experiences. The course culminates in a final movement-based project that integrates analytical and creative work.

This course is designed to introduce students to the theatrical art of scenic painting for the stage and film. A scenic artist is the hand of the theatrical designer, translating the small scale of the designer's rendering into full size theatrical environments. In this course, students will explore the unique tools and techniques used by scenic artists to create scenery. The end result of this class will be a basic mastery of painting "faux" surfaces and an understanding of how a scenic artist transforms the designer's ideas into realized pieces of theatrical art

This course places equal emphasis on the theory and practice of modern stage lighting. Applying real world observations and research with practical applications students will learn the mechanical properties of lighting equipment; how to create, read, and execute a lighting plot; the functions of lighting in a theatrical context; color and design theory; and how to read a text as a lighting designer. Diverse perspectives in designing with light include rigorous practicum requirements in group projects and exposure to various designers and philosophies.

In Winter quarter of fourth year, TAPS majors and minors are required to enroll in TAPS 29802 BA Colloquium II (100 credits), the second part of a two-quarter sequence devoted to the preparation of the TAPS BA project. The colloquium is a weekly forum in which students develop their projects with close mentorship from course instructors and other TAPS faculty and professional staff, with feedback and participation from their peers in a close-knit cohort, and in accordance with a carefully designed set of deadlines. During Spring Quarter of the fourth year, majors and minors will publicly present BA projects in the TAPS BA ‘new works festival’.

There are roughly 500 complete playscripts from England’s theatrical golden age— the period that begins with the establishment of the first public theatre in 1576 to the closure of the playhouses in 1642. Scholars estimate that five times that amount have disappeared, most without a trace. However, there are some tantalizing remainders. In this seminar-studio workshop, we will work collaboratively to piece them back together, and in the process, gain new fluency in the theatrical idioms and practices that defined Shakespeare’s age. Participants should anticipate taking on many roles in this pursuit. As dramaturgs, they will familiarize themselves with the works of the major and minor dramatists of Shakespeare’s age, as well as its chief dramatic sources. As theatrical detectives, they will track down and assemble examples of the gestures, props, costumes, and representational conventions that might have shaped a given work. As author-poets, they will script selected scenarios in the form and fashion of the time. And as actors, they will search out and perform the theatrical business appropriate to each scene. Coursework will take the form of weekly assignments blending historical theatre practice and research. The course will culminate in a presentation of scenes. In addition to Cardenio, Shakespeare’s missing dramatization of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, we will choose 3 or 4 more plays to partially reconstitute.

This course is a practical introduction to the art and craft of songwriting for musical theater. Students will analyze and practice song form, storytelling through music, and the writing of lyrics and melody for character and tone. In addition to presenting and workshopping new song material weekly, students will learn about orchestration, arrangement, and the structure of the theatrical score by discussing standout examples of the genre. As individuals or in teams of two, students will develop a catalog of character- and story-driven songs to be performed in cabaret at the end of the quarter. A basic ability to read music is expected; experience in songwriting is not required.

This course will explore the role of the teaching artist with a focus on school and community-based arts education, arts integration, teaching practice and curriculum design. Students will research the field of teaching artistry, explore models for arts education, and develop and implement plans for teaching a specific art form in a community setting. The course will carefully consider cultural competence, collaborative learning, and approaches to teaching practice.

Directors in the contemporary theater and other creative spaces are responsible for leading teams and individuals through complex production processes. A director must inspire, give space to, manage, and guide production teams, designers, technical staff and actors to create collaboratively. This course will focus on how directors LEAD. We will explore leadership strategies in the theater and in other managerial fields such as sports, business, non-profits, and other creative disciplines. We will dig deep into the director's work as a coach for actors with a focus on creating space for emotional vulnerability, risk-taking, and empowerment in and outside the rehearsal room. Directors in the class will guide others in complex, emotional, dramatic texts to uncover strategies for handling interpersonal challenges. This class requires no previous experience but students must be willing to lead the room and receive feedback on how they do it.

This course has a strong component of movement practice and is open to students of any experience level who are willing to move with creativity and generosity. The course takes a broad look at dance improvisation, exploring in equal parts key theoretical readings, historic and contemporary performance examples, and movement practices in the classroom. On its surface, improvisation is often understood to be based on total freedom or openness, where any movement choice can be made. Here, the notion of freedom in improvisation is reconsidered through the sociopolitical realities of how dancers’ bodies move through society, and across the studio or stage.

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.

This course offers a critical introduction to theories of performance and performativity across a transnational scope. We will read theories of performance that explore the relationship between text, body and audience alongside the history of performative theory and its afterlives in queer and affect theory. Drawing on comparative literary method, this course presents texts both within and beyond the Euro-American canon, across languages, and across disciplines to consider how empire and post-coloniality, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality shape performances and the publics that they address. We will think about the relationship between performance and politics and how performance as both an aesthetic genre and theoretical concept shapes the relationship between text, language, and embodied experience and explore the role of the spectator and their participatory function in the making of performances.

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 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 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 spring-term TAPS Arts Core course explores performance practice in dialogue with theoretical frameworks from gender and sexuality studies. How is gender produced and contested through performance? What is at stake in performing a gendered self or character? How can embodiment—including gesture, voice, movement, costume, and repetition—naturalize, exaggerate, or disrupt gender norms? How do gender studies frameworks complicate narrative, character, and dramatic structure? The course mixes seminar and studio practice, including playwriting, acting, dance, improvisation, choreography, solo performance, and/or ensemble creation. Students who have completed the Gender and Sexuality Civilizations sequence or other coursework in Gender and Sexuality Studies will have priority registration for this course; remaining seats will be open to other students. No background in performance required. For more information on the performance practice focus of a particular section, please consult the course notes in the registration system.

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 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.

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.

This course addresses techniques and modes of observation and their application to scene study. Observation study is used to strengthen acting choices, build the physical world of the play, and create original, vital characterizations. It also serves to deepen awareness of group dynamics; integrate symbolic, psychological, and physical meaning in a character's behavior; and guide the process of breaking down a scene. Students will perform observation exercises and apply their discoveries to scene work.

This course extends foundational acting tools into everyday social and institutional life through embodied practice. In a cultural moment shaped by AI and automated systems, the course emphasizes embodied interaction, relational attention, and live responsiveness as core human practices rather than replaceable skills. Drawing on actor-training practices associated with Konstantin Stanislavski, Sanford Meisner, Michael Chekhov, and Anne Bogart, students will treat performance as a repeatable, trainable practice for working under observation and pressure. Students deepen skills in presence, listening, imagination, and action while examining how incentives, constraints, and uncertainty shape behavior. Through physical training, improvisation, rehearsal, and structured performance scenarios, students practice navigating collaboration, negotiation, evaluation, and leadership. We will learn how the body’s alignment, tension, breath, and impulse shape attention, decision-making and verbal clarity. The course develops skills valued in competitive academic and professional contexts including analytical communication, composure under scrutiny, ethical judgment, and collaborative problem-solving. No prior experience is required, though previous coursework in TAPS 101 or 102 is suggested.

This course examines how Broadway musicals have participated in shaping what America imagines itself to be. From West Side Story, to Rent, to Hamilton, students will study landmark productions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to analyze how song, narrative, performance, and spectacle have reframed cultural debates, proposed new social possibilities, and challenged dominant narratives even while operating within the commercial pressures of mass market industries. Through discussion of musical scripts and scores, live and recorded productions, and selected dramaturgical and cultural theory, students will investigate Broadway’s distinctive aesthetic and ideological “effects,” including its role in constructing ideas of race, gender, nationhood, and belonging. The course culminates in a choice between a critical research paper or an original artistic project.

The creation of a TV Pilot is a unique, exciting, and demanding task for a writer. In addition to the responsibility of telling a compelling story, writers are also charged with setting up a “world” and establishing characters and plotlines that will sustain the show over multiple episodes and seasons. In this class, we will delve into the processes required to succeed in this challenging endeavor. This includes creation of pitch materials, plot and character development, outlining, creation of a show bible, and ultimately, writing the pilot episode of an original TV series.

The classroom will function as part development workshop and part informal TV writer’s room. Through weekly reading and writing assignments we will dissect successful entries into the TV space and tap into our artistic inspirations to evolve our show concepts. From there, we would collaborate as a class by actively brainstorming and workshopping our scripts and series. By the end of the quarter, each student will complete a draft of an original pilot script, as well as a short “Series Bible” detailing the broader scope of the show.

This course explores how theater as a form interrogates the theatricality, character, story and community of sports. It will also investigate the theater of sporting events. We will read plays about sports, attend plays and sporting events, and definitely get on our feet and play. We will ask the questions: How can theater convincingly embody the world of sports? How do sports use theatricality to connect with their audience?

This course explores projected imagery as a medium to paint ephemeral ideas in the real world through installation and theatrical design. Utilizing visual iconography, architectural forms, objects, and cinema, this course will explore the practical and theoretical applications of video on unorthodox objects and spaces. Using software as an instrument, students will investigate the visceral extents of images both historical and generative to create living light. The course will culminate in student presentations that illustrate and illuminate the ideas and techniques presented throughout the course.

This course explores how sound shapes storytelling in theater, dance, and performance. Students investigate how sound–from the simplest cue to complex layered compositions–creates a sense of time, place, atmosphere, and emotional context. Through script analysis, critical listening, and collaborative exercises, students examine the relationships among plot, dialogue, music, sound, and theme. The course introduces design aesthetics,, dramaturgy, and professional collaboration while providing hands-on experience with sound and music technologies. Topics include acoustics, aural imaging in large spaces, digital audio production, sound system design, and production organization. Students learn to plan, create, and deliver sound for live performance, culminating in original audio design projects.

Never in the history of western theater has brevity gotten so much attention. Festivals around the world are devoted to plays five minutes in length or less; perhaps the most revered playwright of the 20th century, Samuel Beckett, guided his career towards the writing of smaller and smaller works; Chicago’s Neofuturists have profitably run their show of “thirty plays in sixty minutes” for over thirty years; Twitter accounts disseminate multiple two to three line scripts daily; and sketch comedy continues to evolve and thrive.

This course will give an overview of the development of the very short play over the last one hundred and twenty years, but will primarily focus on the writing and development of same, asking students to complete — through workshop prompts — 20 to 30 scripts by end of quarter. A particular effort will be made to bring “traditional” elements of standard-length plays — character, arc, anagnorisis, pathos, backstory, etc — to these miniatures, to test and expand their assumed limitations.

This course gives students the opportunity to learn repertory and new works by professional guest choreographers and faculty, culminating in a weekend of performances at Logan Center for the Arts. Within an immersive quarter-long production schedule, students will be exposed to a wide array of movement vocabularies, choreographic methods and performance aesthetics, while also gaining practical skills within the many facets of professional production work. Readings, viewings, and weekly journals will supplement studio and production work, connecting each student’s experience to broader conversations within dance and performance studies. With a range of performance and production opportunities, this course will accommodate and challenge both trained dancers and movement-curious beginners.

With the publication of Dancing on the Third Coast: Chicago Dance Histories as text (University of Illinois Press, eds. Susan Manning and Lizzie Leopold), this course takes students out of the classroom to experience, historicize, and critically engage with dance across the city. Students will ask how social and theatrical dancing has shaped the city, and how the city in turn has shaped dancing bodies—in nightclubs and in settlement houses, at world’s fairs and in theaters, on film and in the street. With the new historical perspective and critical view, students will produce a dance event as a final project.

This course traces the creative, political, and scholarly legacies of Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), exploring the immeasurable impact of her career as a dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, activist, and creator of the Dunham Technique. Students will merge embodied practice with in-class discussions of theoretical texts, questioning the role of Black dance traditions of the 20th century in helping shape transnational and Black diaspora studies. In keeping with the geographic scope of Dunham’s practice and research, we will engage Black dance and social movements of the Caribbean, Latin America, the United States, and beyond. Central concepts of performance ethnography, Caribbean studies, and Black feminisms will anchor an investigation of dance as an intellectual process and as social action. We will contemplate the methods of artist-activists and artist-scholars in traversing disciplines and foregrounding new fields of thought. This course will balance training in Dunham Technique with field studies, archival research, and short choreographic experiments while taking advantage of concurrent city-wide events celebrating Dunham’s legacy. No previous dance experience is required, and students should be prepared to engage through the body as well as intellectually in each class.

This class explores the potential of the podcast as a form of ethical artistic and social practice. Through the lens of oral history and its associated values—including prioritizing voices that are not often heard, reciprocity, complicating narratives, and the archive—we will explore ways to tell stories of people and communities in sound. Students will develop a grounding in oral history practices and ethics, as well as the skills to produce compelling oral narratives, including audio editing, recording scenes and ambient sound, and using music. During the quarter, students will have several opportunities to practice interviewing and will design their own oral history project. This class is appropriate for students with no audio experience, as well as students who have taken TAPS 28320 The Mind as Stage: Podcasting.