Theatre

This course will examine the job of the theatre director as both artist and artistic collaborator. Dramatic script analysis, rehearsal preparation and process, actor/director and writer/director relationships, and the director’s artistic expression will be covered in both class discussions and exercises. Students will be exposed to a variety of directing styles and techniques through trips to New York City theatrical productions/venues and through additional field trips. Some of the plays visited will be analyzed in detail as part of the class work. A solid interest in the exploration of theatre directing is strongly recommended for students enrolling in this class. There will be weekly conferences at least for the first semester.

This course explores 2,500 years of Western drama and how dramaturgical ideas can be traced from their origins in fifth-century Greece to 20th-century Nigeria, with many stops in between. We will try to understand how a play is constructed rather than simply written and how each succeeding epoch has both embraced and rejected previous ideas of what a drama really is. We will study the major genres of Western drama, including the idea of a classically structured play, Elizabethan drama, neoclassicism, realism, naturalism, expressionism, comedy, musical theatre, theatre of cruelty, and existentialism. And we will look at the social, cultural, architectural, and biographical context for the plays in question to better understand how and why they were written as they were. Classroom discussion will focus on a new play each week, while conference work with be devoted mostly to the students’ writing about them. In this FYS course, students will meet with the instructor every week up through October Study Days and every other week thereafter through the end of the year. Students will also have the option of either writing a conventional conference paper in the spring term or an original play. Students who choose to write a play will be required to enroll in the Playwriting Techniques component in the fall term and my Playwrights Workshop component in the spring, where their plays will be regularly read and discussed in class. Our FYS conferences in the spring will explore the play’s possibilities in further depth.

Students on the London Theatre Tour will attend a wide range and array of plays, and meet daily in seminar with Theatre Program faculty as part of a 12-day immersive theatre/classroom experience. The London Theatre Tour offers a unique opportunity and course of study. Students will experience first-hand and up close the distinct history and current expression of what makes London a world theatre center. Students will attend up to 10 plays, take tours of theatre and arts districts, and meet with theatre professionals, in a dynamic, comprehensive program. The London Theatre Tour offers ample free time, between seminars, plays and tours, for students to explore London on their own or in small groups. Students will attend daily classes and make presentations on chosen topics as part of a distinct curriculum built upon the plays, playwrights, styles and forms, history and expression of British Theatre, as seen through a collection of contemporary plays, adaptations, and interactive works of theatre. The London Theatre Tour runs within the first two weeks of January, 2025. Preliminary information about the program can be discussed in registration interviews. Specific information on application deadlines, logistics and cost of the program, including academic credits, show tickets and housing in London, will be discussed in an in-person introductory meeting early in the fall semester.

Those actors rooted in the tradition of playing Shakespeare find themselves equipped with a skill set that enables them to successfully work on a wide range of texts and within an array of performance modalities. The objectives of this class are to learn to identify, personalize, and embody the structural elements of Shakespeare’s language as the primary means of bringing his characters to life. Students will study a representative arc of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as the sonnets.

Solo Performance is nothing new. This has been happening since the dawn of man, and it will continue to happen.... —Nilaja Sun

Discover the story you have to tell and own your voice, boldly enough to tell it. Unlock your creativity not only for solo performance but also for every other aspect of your creative self! This playwriting-into-performance class will first focus on the actor finding a subject matter that motivates and sustains him/her. We will discuss the actor’s strengths and weaknesses throughout the process, finding the actor’s unique voice through self-observance and self-discipline. The goal of this class is to catapult students from summary to interpretation, from regurgitation to analysis, from the simple act of seeing to the complex and bold endeavor of examination. Students are expected to actively measure relevant theoretical knowledge with critical issues pertaining to social justice and social change. Solo performance emerges out of a desire to heal. Students are invited to create their own performance piece of theatre by developing and rehearsing a script within the spring term and to have an intensive self-discovery and process. They will begin with reading and examining one-character plays. We will read the works of Spalding Grey, Anna Deavere Smith, Lemon Andersen, and many more. Then, as a class, we will discuss techniques, autobiographical subject matter, and themes. Students will create first drafts, next re-writes, and then rehearsals, culminating with a final reading and/or performance of their own work.

This is an immersive course, designed for actors, performers, directors, designers, and writers who seek to push the boundaries of theatre and embrace the bold world of post-Internet aesthetics—where theatre and performance meet cutting-edge digital and networked methods. You'll investigate innovative approaches to contemporary theatre, exploring new ways of storytelling that embrace technology’s boundless possibilities. Through engaging exercises, thought-provoking readings, and inspiring discussions, you’ll explore the fusion of theatre with immersive multimedia elements, AI, video mapping, motion capture, 3D scanning/rendering, game engine, and networked liveness.

This open-level acting course is made up of exercises, monologues, and scene work intended to teach actors how to use acting techniques, like Stanislavsky and Hagen, in the craft of acting. Students will learn how to craft a set of given circumstances and to make playable choices and objectives based on the analysis of their chosen performance text in order to create a truthful performance. The goal of the class is to give each student his/her own understanding of the importance of developing technique, rigor, and artistic practice in the craft of acting and how to unlock the layers and complexities of any character that they play. In addition to these tools, students will learn boundary practice and intimacy choreography skills intended to make them capable of exercising these tools in their own practice.

In this class, students will begin developing their own artistic practice for performance—supported by workshops on major acting methods such as Brecht, Stanislavski, and Hagen, as well as workshops on physical theatre and performance in the context of devised work. Through learning the historical and artistic context of different techniques, students will be encouraged to determine which practices are useful to them in their own work. These include vocal and physical warm-ups, relaxation, concentration, sensory awareness, listening, communication, and collaboration. Students will complete presentations that will spring from these workshops, as well as monologues and scene study. Students will work toward an awareness of their own process so that they might be confident in their ability to develop characters outside of the context of a classroom. Students will be asked to honestly evaluate their own work, along with feedback from the professor. This class is intended for first- and second-year Theatre Thirds, as well as others who have not taken many (or any) acting courses.

This course will explore a variety of puppetry techniques, including bunraku-style, marionette, shadow puppetry, and toy theatre. We will begin with a detailed look at these forms through individual and group research projects. Students will then have the opportunity to develop their puppet manipulation skills, as well as to gain an understanding of how to prepare the puppeteer’s body for performance. We will further our exploration with hands-on learning in various techniques of construction. The class will culminate with the creation and presentation of puppetry pieces of their own making.

This comprehensive, step-by-step course focuses on developing the skills and tools that young actors need in order to work in the fast-paced world of film and television while also learning how to write, direct, edit, and produce their own work for the screen. The first semester will focus on screen acting and on-camera auditions (in person and taped). Through intense scene study and script analysis, we will expand each performer’s range of emotional, intellectual, physical, and vocal expressiveness for the camera. Focus will also be put on the technical skills needed for the actor to give the strongest performance “within the frame,” while also maintaining a high level of spontaneity and authenticity. Students will act in assigned and self-chosen scenes from film and television scripts. Toward the end of the semester, the focus will switch to on-camera auditions, where students will learn the do’s and don’ts of the in-person and the self-taped camera audition. During the second semester, students will learn the basics of filmmaking, allowing them to create their own work without the restraints of a large budget and crew. The basic fundamentals of screenwriting, cinematography, directing, and editing will be covered, along with weekly writing, reading, viewing, and filming assignments. Students will finish class with edited footage of their work and clear next steps. For this course, students must have their own, or access to, a camera (iPhone, iPad, or other camera) and a computer with editing software (e.g., iMovie, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, etc.).

Drawing from various puppetry techniques, alongside the practices of Jacques Lecoq, this studio explores and experiments with puppetry and performance. Throughout the course, we will work in collaborative groups to create puppetry performance, including building the puppets and devising works that utilize puppets and objects. We will explore large-scale, processional-style puppets; puppets as objects and materials; puppeteering the performance space; and the role/relationship of the puppeteer/performer to puppet. 

This course is a dynamic, script-based, acting/scene study class that springs from the works and goals of The Kilroys: “A gang of playwrights...who came together to stop talking about gender parity in theatre and start taking action.” Students in Kilroys will perform in plays written in a variety of styles by female and queer writers, with an emphasis on how characters, in all plays, craft identity and persona as a way to survive and thrive. Kilroys is open to serious actors of any and all identities.

A scene-study acting class built upon a deep dive into a character’s past, their behavior, and the tactics they use to get what they need, Character Study is a dynamic, on-your-feet approach to the text that leads to vital and compelling characters. Students will play a variety of roles from contemporary plays and adaptations. The course is open to serious students who have taken an Actor’s Workshop class or other acting training.

This class is a laboratory for the actor. It is designed for performers who are ready to search for the steps to a fully involved performance. In the first semester, we will explore characters and monologues that motivate each actor’s imagination. After analysis of the text, defining the imagery, and exploring the emotional choices of the actor, we will work on self-taping our work for auditions. Second semester will be devoted to scene work: the techniques used to develop a heightened connection with your scene partner, the importance of listening, and finding your impulses as you work on your feet in the rehearsal room. We will observe the work and read the theories of Declan Donnellan’s The Actor and the Target and Stephen Wangh’s An Acrobat of the Heart.

Theatre is the art of looking at ourselves. —Augusto Boal

The unknown is where we go to find new things, and intuition is how we find them. —Viola Spolin.

In this course, we will begin with improvisations from Augusto Boals’ Theatre of the Oppressed. These exercises are developed to create empathy and connection within the participants. The goal of this work will be to experience games that a theatre artist might use to develop community and theatre material with nonactors. Once we strengthen the community of the class, we will begin to work on Improvisations for film and theatre. Through techniques developed by filmmakers and theatre directors, our work will focus on developing an actor’s freedom and emotional truth.

This class will begin with an exploration of the classic structures of stand-up comedy. The concepts of set-up and punch, acting out, and heightened wordplay will be employed. Techniques for creating and becoming comic characters will use your past, the news, and the current social environment to craft a comic routine. Discovering what is recognizably funny to an audience is the labor of the comic artist. The athletics of the creative comedic mind and your own individual perspective on the world that surrounds you is the primary objective of the first semester. We will also study theories of comedy through the writings of Henri Bergson (philosopher), John Wright (director), and Christopher Fry (playwright). The second semester will be designed for collaboration through improvisational techniques, long-form improvisational games (Harold), and performance techniques for comic sketch writing and group work, along with exercises to develop the artist’s freedom and confidence in a collaborative group setting. The ensemble will learn to trust the spontaneous response and their own comic madness, as they write, perform, and create scenarios together. At the end of the second semester, there will be a formal presentation of the comedy that will be devised during the year.

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. —Oscar Wilde

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance. —George Bernard Shaw

This course is in the spirit of the Harvard Lampoon, with a twist from Sadieloo—the use of humor, irony, and exaggeration to lampoon the solipsism of ourselves, our culture, artists, and institutions. Create a comic character. Write a political sketch. Write a satire of college life, sports, or a celebrity using the events of the day. This class will begin with improvisation, move to creating material, and end with a performance of sketch and characters—all done for the sake of laughter and a better understanding of the absurdity of life.

This class is an introduction to the craft and technique of voice-over acting in various forms. It is open to performers with an interest in gaining the necessary skills to perform in the fields of animation, video games, audio books, commercials, and more. Actors will learn to differentiate between genres and how to adapt their performance approach to each. We will cover basic skills, such as warm-ups, common terminology, home-studio setup, and audition and performance techniques. We will then build on those skills by learning to break down text, apply breath, perform copy, develop specific characters, and receive feedback and direction. Actors will have the opportunity to dive deeply into a genre of their choice, find and write their own copy, and practice recording and editing takes with the goal of creating a demo reel.

Students will learn how to look at the world with fresh eyes and how to use imagination to create a theatrical world on stage. The class covers the fundamental ideas of scenic design and basic design technique, such as research, drawing, and scale-model making. We will start from small exercise projects and complete a final design project at the end. This class designs the program semester projects. Students will present most of the projects to the class, followed by questions and comments from fellow students. Presentation and critique skills are important in this course. Students with no experience but interested in other aspects of theatre making, as well as in visual arts or architecture, will be able to learn from the basics.

Lighting Lab will introduce students to the basic elements of stage lighting, including tools and equipment, color theory, reading scripts for design elements, operation of lighting consoles and construction of lighting cues, and basic elements of lighting drawings and schedules. Students will be offered hands-on experience in hanging and focusing lighting instruments and will be invited to attend technical rehearsals. They will have opportunities to design productions and to assist other designers as a way of developing a greater understanding of the design process. The class designs the program semester projects.

This course, which serves as an introduction to theatrical video design, explores the use of moving images in live performance, basic design principles, editing and playback software, content creation, and basic system design. The course examines the function and execution of video and integrated media in theatre, dance, and interdisciplinary environments. Exercises in videography, nonlinear editing, and designing sequences in performance software will provide students with the basic tools needed to execute projection and video design in a live-performance setting.

This course serves as an introduction to theatrical sound design. Students will learn about basic design principles, editing and playback software, content creation, basic system design, and sound theory. The course examines the function and execution of sound in theatre, dance, and interdisciplinary environments. Exercises in recording, editing, and designing sequences in performance software will provide students with the basic tools needed to execute sound designs in performance.

This course is an introduction to the basics of designing costumes and will cover various concepts and ideas, such as: the language of clothes, script analysis, the elements of design, color theory, fashion history, and figure drawing. We will work on various theoretical design projects while exploring how to develop a design concept. This course also covers various design-room sewing techniques, as well as the basics of wardrobe technician duties; and students become familiar with all the various tools and equipment in the costume shop and wardrobe areas. Students will also have the opportunity to assist a Costume Design ll student on a departmental production to further their understanding of the design process when creating costumes. No previous experience is necessary. Actors, directors, choreographers, dancers, and theatre makers of all kinds are welcome.

This course is an introduction to the basics of designing costumes and will cover various concepts and ideas, such as: the language of clothes, script analysis, the elements of design, color theory, fashion history, and figure drawing. We will work on various theoretical design projects while exploring how to develop a design concept. This course also covers various design-room sewing techniques, as well as the basics of wardrobe technician duties; and students become familiar with all the various tools and equipment in the costume shop and wardrobe areas. Students will also have the opportunity to assist a Costume Design ll student on a departmental production to further their understanding of the design process when creating costumes. No previous experience is necessary. Actors, directors, choreographers, dancers, and theatre makers of all kinds are welcome.

This course expands upon the ideas and concepts set forth in Costume Design l in order to hone and advance the student's existing skill sets. Students will further develop their design and construction abilities, as they research and realize design concepts for a variety of theoretical design projects and develop their communication skills through class discussions and presentations. Students will also have the likely opportunity to design costumes for a departmental production, assisted by a Costume Design l student. This design opportunity allows for a unique learning experience, as the student collaborates with a director and creative team to produce a fully realized theatrical production.

This course is designed for students who have completed Costume Design l and Costume Design ll and would like to further explore any aspect of designing costumes by researching and realizing a special costume design project of their own choosing.

In this directing course, we will focus on directing modern and contemporary plays. Through hands-on exercises and in-class and out-of-class work, students will explore directorial strategies and will develop their ability to take a play from page to stage. Students will learn strategies around script selection and then how to break down their chosen performance text. Students will learn how to analyze a text, how to prepare for the rehearsal process, and how to craft a directorial concept and work with designers. Directors will learn casting strategies and consent-based practices for designing audition and callback processes. Moving into the rehearsal stage, directors will learn rehearsal planning strategies, rehearsal techniques, and the mechanics of directing actors. Directors will also learn consent-based and trauma-informed directing practices, as well as basic intimacy choreography, to create ethical rehearsal spaces. In the first semester, the class will work together on breaking down and analyzing one play, with students choosing one scene from the play to direct. In the second semester, directors will choose a 10- to 20-minute play to direct, which will culminate in a showing at the end of the semester.

This course includes a weekly group conference and individual rehearsal meetings for students who will be directing readings, workshops, and productions in the theatre program and in independent companies in the fall semester. Students will meet once a week as a full group and in individual one-on-one conferences with the teacher, scheduled around their own individual rehearsals. Students will read and discuss the texts of all selected plays in the full-class meeting in a shared, hands-on approach to production. Students will analyze form and style and context and discuss all aspects of their upcoming productions. The teacher will observe rehearsals for individual director’s projects as the basis of their one-on-one meetings. Students with an interest in directing but are not directing in the fall term are welcome to join Directing Conference.

We will explore the actor’s performance with songs in various styles of popular music, music for theatre, cabaret, and original work, emphasizing communication with the audience and material selection. Dynamics of vocal interpretation and style will also be examined. Students perform new or returning material each week in class and have outside class time scheduled with the musical director to arrange and rehearse their material. Students enrolled in the course also have priority placement for voice lessons with faculty in the music program and enrollment in Alexander Technique classes or other movement courses of their choosing.

As performers and storytellers, it is our work to transmit information or data to our audiences. In this course, we will explore how the body, as our instrument, can be a powerful tool used to amplify our ability to communicate point of view and meaning in art marking. Supplementing the Suzuki Method of Actors Training, we will also draw on trainings such as (but not limited to) Viewpoints, Michael Chekov Technique, and Miller Voice Method. Through these vocal and physical techniques, we will develop an increased sense of bodily awareness and practice and how to use this awareness to inform expressive choice making. We will learn how to honor and navigate our habitual psychological and physical mannerisms as we approach character and/or generative work. We will do all this while we unpack a collection of common aesthetics to help us approach any work environment in a “front-footed” manner.

This course will explore methods of creating original theatre through a choreographic lens as a way of assembling the various building blocks from which theatre is made (sound, image, movement, language, design, etc.), as well as through the influence and manipulation of time. The semester will begin with structured prompts and assignments largely completed in class, eventually moving into self-generated collaborative projects with some work to be completed outside of class. One of the main focuses of this course is the attempt to articulate, through open discussions, one’s creative process and choices therein. Through analysis of said exercises, students will come to more clearly know one another’s work and methods. Students will be asked to create movement sequences, collaborative projects, and other studies as a way of encountering the use of assembly, juxtaposition, unison, framing, interruption, deconstruction, and other time-based art practices. Readings will include manifestos and selections from an array of artists, essays and excerpts of various theatre practices from around the world, as well as watching examples on video. As students will be working within various levels of physicality, wearing loose, comfortable clothing is encouraged. No dance or movement experience is necessary; one only needs curiosity and a willingness to jump in to find value in this course.

Students learn the basics of armed and unarmed stage fighting, with an emphasis on safety. Actors are taught to create effective stage violence, from hair pulling and choking to sword fighting, with a minimum of risk. Basic techniques are incorporated into short scenes to give students experience performing fights in both classic and modern contexts. Each semester culminates in a skills proficiency test aimed at certification in one of eight weapon forms.

Students learn the basics of armed and unarmed stage fighting, with an emphasis on safety. Actors are taught to create effective stage violence, from hair pulling and choking to sword fighting, with a minimum of risk. Basic techniques are incorporated into short scenes to give students experience performing fights in classic and modern contexts. Each semester culminates in a skills proficiency test aimed at certification in one of eight weapon forms.

As a continuation of Stage Combat, this course deals with more complex weapon styles. The “double-fence” or two-handed forms (rapier and dagger, sword and shield) are taught. Students are asked to go more deeply into choreography and aspects of the industry. Critical thinking is encouraged, and students will be asked to create their own short video showing an understanding of basic principles (use of distance, point of view, storytelling). The function of the stunt coordinator, essential in a growing film industry, will also be explored.

If you’re new to playwrighting and looking for a safe, warm classroom to experiment with your burgeoning love of the craft, this is the place for you. We’ll make our own plays—but we’ll do it informed by the diversity that is on our stages right here, right now. Playwrights like David Henry Hwang, Sarah Ruhl, Dominique Morisseau, Nilaja Sun, C. Julian Jimenez, and many others will be the voices that we elevate as we find our own. A combination of analysis and (primarily) creative workshop, Act One, Scene One is a great place to start your first (or second, or third, or fourth) play.

You will investigate the mystery of how to release your creative process while also discovering the fundamentals of dramatic structure that will help you tell the story of your play. In the first term, you will write a short scene every week taken from The Playwright’s Guidebook, which we will use as a basic text. At the end of the first term, you will write a short but complete play based on one of these short assignments. In the second term, you’ll go on to adapt a short story of your choice and then write a play based on a historical character, event, or period. The focus in all instances is on the writer’s deepest connection to the material—where the drama lies. Work will be read aloud and discussed in class each week. Students will also read and discuss plays that mirror the challenges presented by their own assignments.

If you’re a playwright searching for a safe place to create and/or engage trans and non-binary work, perhaps inventing your own along the way, then this is a class for you. We’ll look to myriad texts—from Alok’s Instagram posts, to C. Julian Jimenez’s plays, to She-Ra, to Joseph Campbell (critically), to K. Woodzick’s Non-Binary Monologues Project, to Disclosure, to Vivek Shraya, to much, much more—in order to synthesize what already informs some trans and non-binary work with our own creative desires. As long as you feel invested in trans and non-binary work and a classroom of respect, you’re welcome here. Before I came out as non-binary, survey classes about trans and non-binary work showed me the breadth of the umbrella. I hope to do the same here.

Who are you as a writer? What do you write about, and why? Are you writing the play that you want to write or that you need to write? Where is the nexus between the amorphous, subconscious wellspring of the material and the rigorous demands of a form that will play in real time before a live audience? This course is designed for playwriting students who have a solid knowledge of dramatic structure and an understanding of their own creative process—and who are ready to create a complete dramatic work of any length. (As Edward Albee observed, “All plays are full-length plays.”) Students will be free to work on themes, subjects, and styles of their choice. Work will be read aloud and discussed in class each week. The course requires that students enter, at minimum, with an idea of the play on which they plan to work; ideally, they will bring in a partial draft or even a completed draft that they wish to revise. We will read some existent texts, time allowing. Finally, your interest in the workshop indicates a high level of seriousness about playwriting; and all serious playwrights should take History and Histrionics. We read great plays and analyze them dramaturgically. It’s indispensable for the playwright.

Theatrical producers are responsible for understanding both the creative and the administrative aspects of theatre. A good producer is tasked with upholding the artistic goals of the creative team, as well as the logistic and budgetary needs of a project, and balancing all of these to create and maintain a successful and financially viable production. With an emphasis on practicum work, students will study tiers of producing—including nonprofit and commercial models—and will work to develop and implement projects integrating the rich and diverse production groups both on campus and in the wider campus community. Using the foundation of existing models and programming, students will develop partnerships between the SLC theatre program, DownStage, independent student groups, other academic programs on campus, as well as campus civic-engagement and advocacy groups. Students will work as liaisons between these entities, curating programming that amplifies and connects the groups and creating distinct, cohesive production experiences for the theatre program and campus community. The course will include a trip to New York City to a general management/production firm, as well as a possible trip to see a production in New York City outside of course hours.

Production managers bridge the gap between artistic and logistic elements of production. They must be problem solvers, big-picture thinkers, and well-versed in all aspects of theatre—blending technical, artistic, and managerial skills. This course is a study of theatre management with an emphasis on real-world applications to production-management concepts. Students will develop an understanding of the relationships among the creative, administrative, and production departments of a theatre company and how these funtion collectively to achieve common organizational and artistic goals. Through project-based activities, production-management students will develop a working knowledge of the artistic and managerial elements of a theatre company and how these function together to deliver a cohesive season. They will dialogue with innovators in the field and analyze real-world applications of production-management concepts. A theatre management practicum is embedded in the course curriculum; all students will be assigned as a student production manager for an SLC theatre production.

Stage management is a practice grounded in supporting communication across all departments. A stage manager acts as a liaison between all members of the company—the cast, director, designers, producers, and technical crew. Stage managers also support the director and company by helping to set the tone of the room. They establish clear and specific expectations, develop and implement systems to help move the process forward, and manage all technical elements throughout the process. Good stage managers are flexible and exhibit transparency and empathy, as they hold space for everyone and curate a culture of trust and professionalism through their work. This course will explore the basic techniques and skills of stage management via the five stages of production: preproduction, rehearsals, tech, performance, and close/strike. Students will practice script analysis and develop systems for rehearsal/performance organization and the maintenance and running of a production. A theatre-management practicum is embedded in the course curriculum; all students will be assigned as a stage manager or assistant stage manager for an SLC theatre production.

This is a stagehand course that focuses on the nuts and bolts of light and soundboard operation and projection technology, as well as the use of basic stage carpentry. This is not a design class but, rather, a class about reading, drafting, light plots, assembly and troubleshooting, and basic electrical repair. Students who take this course will be eligible for additional paid work as technical assistants in the theatre department.

DownStage is an intensive, hands-on conference in theatrical production. DownStage student producers administrate and run their own theatre company. They are responsible for all aspects of production, including determining the budget and marketing an entire season of events and productions. Student producers are expected to fill a variety of positions, both technical and artistic, and to sit as members of the board of directors of a functioning theatre organization. In addition to their obligations to class and designated productions, DownStage producers are expected to hold regular office hours. Prior producing experience is not required.

This course is for undergraduate theatre artists interested in learning and sharing theatre skills in the community. Using the vocabulary of theatre, we will investigate methods and techniques, styles, and forms to create and develop theatre projects designed for specific community work. The course develops individual collaboration, experimentation, and understanding of specific community needs. Students will explore the essentials of constructing a creative practice for community engagement. In addition, students will learn to extend their personal theatre skills by developing detailed interdisciplinary lesson plans for specific workshops. Each community project is unique. Lesson plans may include a combination of theatre games, acting, music, story making, movement, and drawing. Participants are encouraged to teach what they already know, step outside their comfort zone, and learn more as they become aware of their placement’s educational and psychological needs. The course focuses on teaching methods, making mistakes, and becoming aware of individual and personal processes. This ideal combination explores education and community problems for those considering a career in early-childhood, middle-school, and high-school education and beyond. Course topics will explore community self-care, lesson planning, curriculum development, and approaches to learning. In this course, students will experience crucial connections between theory and practice through a weekly community placement. Students will learn by doing, gaining hands-on experience by collaborating as a team member at an area school, senior home, museum, or the long-running Saturday SLC Lunchbox Theatre Program, which is open to the Sarah Lawrence and Yonkers communities. In addition, students will gain valuable experience as prospective teachers and teaching artists by taking this course and developing lesson plans that will be useful and valuable beyond the Sarah Lawrence College experience. Students will better understand how civic-engagement practices encourage essential dialogues that deepen community connections and may lead to change. Many former students of this course are teaching and running educational programs at schools, theatres, and museums across the globe. Course readings will include the work of Paolo Freire, Augusto Boal, Viola Spolin, MC Richards, Vivian Gussin Paley, Pablo Helguera, and others. Budget-depending placements may offer an hourly stipend.

Curriculum Lab is a required weekly course for students who are sharing their theatre and creative skills in the Saturday Lunchbox Theatre Program. The Curriculum Lab will explore the creation and development of an interdisciplinary teaching curriculum for children ages 6–18. Through this weekly lab, directly connected to Lunchbox Theatre, students will gain insight into child-development principles, lesson-planning skills, and classroom-management strategies. Through inquiry and reflection, students will expand their critical thinking processes while utilizing practical teaching methods and techniques suitable for multiple learning types and levels.

Students in this course will develop valuable creative resources while investigating the intersection of theatre and community. The course is open to graduate and upper-level undergraduate students interested in sharing theatre skills in the community. We will explore interdisciplinary creative processes, social-justice issues, and curriculum development focusing on the individual. We will analyze the crossovers between various teaching theories, pedagogies, and philosophies. In addition, students will explore creating theatre in the community that investigates the connection of art practices in education while respecting the emotional aspects of learning. Students will analyze, explore, and investigate social-justice pedagogies and philosophies and explore various practices and creative techniques to deepen awareness and critical thinking. We will look at strategies for classroom management and teaching methods suitable for different ways of learning. Students will actively create, develop, and share collaborative theatre lessons while building community with artists, teachers, and community organizations. Active class work will explore ideas for projects that will support lesson planning and the growth of curriculum concepts. In addition, students will hold yearlong placements at schools, community centers, area colleges, museums, LGBTQIA youth centers, and the long-running SLC Saturday Lunchbox Theatre Program that combines the SLC and Yonkers communities. As a result of this course, students will have a portfolio of designed lesson plans and educational ideas that will serve as a creative template for current and future projects. We will explore the work of Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal, Suzanne Lacy, Ana Mendieta, bell hooks, and others. Placements may offer an hourly stipend.

Weekly class meetings in which productions are analyzed and discussed will be supplemented by regular visits to many of the theatrical productions of the current season. The class will travel within the tristate area, attending theatre in as many diverse venues, forms, and styles as possible. Published plays will be studied in advance of attending performances; new or unscripted works will be preceded by examinations of previous work by the author or the company. Students will be given access to all available group and student discounts in purchasing tickets.

Once upon a time, a playwright said in a rehearsal, “I just think that this is the most Cubist moment of this play.” Everyone in the room fell silent and grew uncomfortable—because, what in the heck did she mean by that? And aren’t we already supposed to know? This interactive lecture course surveys the aesthetic movements throughout history and teaches you to track their impact on your work. Ideas behind each movement are examined in relation to the historical moment of their occurrence and in their formal manifestations across visual art, musical, architectural, and performance disciplines. Each student then places his/her own work within a wider context of formal aesthetic discourse—locating hidden influence and making conscious and purposeful the political resonance that is subsequently uncovered. Students are encouraged to find ways of acknowledging the responsibility that one carries for one’s work’s impact on the world and to start using terms like “Post-Modernism” and “Futurist” with confidence.

In this lecture, we will focus on theatre and performance in the African diasporas. This class will discuss some of the different experiences of what it means to be of an African diaspora and to create for performance. How do you express yourself when, structurally, your environment is inhospitable to such a self? We understand that the most commonly expressed histories tend to favor Western perspectives. How then, do we understand and trust what we learn of the history of Black performance? How do we understand and trust what we hear/read about contemporary Black theatre and performance? What IS theatre, and how does that word relate to non-Western traditions of performance? This class is interested in the connection between ritual and performance, mythology and truth, house and home. It holds space for oral traditions and modes of performance not necessarily called theatre while also maintaining a weekly practice of reading and discussing published plays, theory, and criticism.

Theatre is a tool for social change. This one-semester course looks at a dynamic collection of contemporary plays written as a means of protest and activism. The course will culminate in an open-class performance project that students will devise and create over the course of the semester. The class includes a range of vital plays and films, from HAIR, written in response to the Vietnam War, to compelling new works by Antoinette Nwandu and Dominique Morisseau that resonate in the Black Lives Matter Movement, to plays that address concerns of the LGBTQ+ communities, among others. Protest Plays is open to actors, directors, playwrights, and those with a particular interest in theatre as a means of activism and change.

How does a chronic illness affect a person’s orientation to the everyday? What are the social and political forces that underpin life in a homeless shelter? What is the experiential world of a blind person, a musician, a refugee, or a child at play? In an effort to answer these and like-minded questions, anthropologists have become increasingly interested in developing phenomenological accounts of particular lived realities in order to understand—and convey to others—the nuances and underpinnings of such realities in terms that more general social or symbolic analyses cannot achieve. In this context, phenomenology offers an analytic method that works to understand and describe in words phenomena as they appear to the consciousnesses of certain peoples. The phenomena most often in question for anthropologists include the workings of time, perception, selfhood, language, bodies, suffering, and morality as they take form in particular lives within the context of any number of social, linguistic, and political forces. In this course, we will explore phenomenological approaches in anthropology by reading and discussing some of the most significant efforts along these lines. Each student will also try their hand at developing a phenomenological account of a specific social or subjective reality through a combination of ethnographic research, participant observation, and ethnographic writing.

These classes will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher's technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change at either the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

Students will be introduced to the traditional Chinese practices of Tai Chi and Qi Gong. These practices engage with slow, deliberate movements, focusing on the breath, meditative practice, and posture to restore and balance energy—called chi or Qi. The postures flow together, creating graceful dances of continuous motion. Sometimes referred to as one of the soft or internal martial arts, Tai Chi and Qi Gong are foundational practices within a lifelong, holistic self-cultivation in traditional Chinese culture.

The Alexander Technique is a system of neuromuscular re-education that enables the student to identify and change poor and inefficient habits that may be causing stress and fatigue. With gentle, hands-on guidance and verbal instruction, the student learns to replace faulty habits with improved coordination by locating and releasing undue muscular tensions. This includes easing of the breath, introducing greater freedom and optimizing performance in all activities. It is a technique that has proven to be profoundly useful for dancers, musicians, and actors and has been widely acclaimed by leading figures in the performing arts, education, and medicine.

This course will use physical embodiment as a mode of learning about and understanding various West African cultures. In addition to physical practice, supplementary study materials will be used to explore the breadth, diversity, history, and technique of dances found in West Africa. Traditional and social/contemporary dances from countries such as Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast will be explored. Participation in end-of-semester or year-end showings will provide students with the opportunity to apply studies in a performative context.

In this course, teaching and facilitating the practice of hip-hop/urban dance technique and performance, the class will examine the theory, technique, and vocabulary of hip-hop dance. The course will facilitate the student’s development and ability to execute and perform hip-hop/urban dance steps.

In Composition, each student will be charged with creating a short choreography using their classmates as a cast. We will think of choreographing or composing these dances as “the action of combining” or “a putting together, connecting, and arranging.” The course will treat “set” choreography and improvisation as a continuum. We will be dealing with both but will focus on the former, treating improvisation as one of many means of developing choreography as well as potentially using highly scored improvisation in performance as compositional choice-making in real time. The course aims to develop tools that can be of use in this endeavor and to develop skills of analysis and articulation in relationship to our artistic work. Throughout the semester, students will be asked to think and work critically and analytically about the act of composition and the act of perception. A key component will be discussions about what we experience in the work of our colleagues, as well as what our intentions are within our own choice-making. Classes will be structured around in-class choreographic/improvisational exercises, analysis, and discussion in response to choreographic assignments. There will be some homework in creating short choreographic sketches, short readings and viewing of works of art on video and online, and critique and discussion in relation to those works. The class strongly embraces interdisciplinary practices. The goal of the class is to offer a forum through which students can deeply engage with creation, develop their own artistic voices, and investigate new ways of thinking about form through the lens of choreographic inquiry.

This course is an experimental laboratory that aims to expose students to a diverse set of current voices and approaches to contemporary dance making. Each guest artist will lead a module of three-to-seven class sessions. These mini-workshops will introduce students to that artist and his/her creative process. Guests will present both emergent and established voices and a wide range of approaches to contemporary artistic practice.

In this class, graduate and upperclass undergraduate students with a special interest and experience in the creation of time-based artworks that include live performance will design and direct individual projects. Students and faculty will meet weekly to view works-in-progress and discuss relevant artistic and practical problems, both in class on Tuesday evenings and in conferences taking place on Thursday afternoons. Attributes of the work across multiple disciplines of artistic endeavor will be discussed as integral and interdependent elements in the work. Participation in mentored, critical-response feedback sessions with your peers is a key aspect of the course. The engagement with the medium of time in live performance, the constraints of presentation of the works both in works-in-progress and in a shared program of events, and the need to respect the classroom and presentation space of the dance studio will be the constraints imposed on the students’ artistic proposals. Students working within any number of live-performance traditions are as welcome in this course as those seeking to transgress orthodox conventions. While all of the works will engage in some way with embodied action, student proposals need not fall neatly into a traditional notion of what constitutes dance. The cultivation of open discourse across traditional disciplinary artistic boundaries, both in the process of developing the works and in the context of presentation to the public, is a central goal of the course. The faculty members leading this course have roots in dance practice but also have practiced expansive definitions of dance within their own creative work. The course will culminate in performances of the works toward the end of the semester in a shared program with all enrolled students and within the context of winter and spring time-based art events. Performances of the works will take place in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Theatre or elsewhere on campus in the case of site-specific work.

Performance Project is a component in which a visiting artist or company is invited to create a work with students or to set an existing piece of choreography. The works are performed for the College community at the end of the semester.

Throughout the year, we will use movement as a powerful vehicle for experiencing, in detail, our profoundly adaptable musculoskeletal anatomy. In the fall semester, students will learn sections of Irene Dowd’s Spirals, a comprehensive warm-up/cool-down for dancing that coordinates all joints and muscles through their fullest range of motion, facilitating study of the musculoskeletal system. In addition to movement practice, drawings are made as part of each week’s lecture (drawing materials provided); problem-solving activities are incorporated throughout the semester. Several short readings and responses will provide opportunities for students to engage primary texts in the field of functional anatomy. In the spring semester, a weekly lecture with definitions, palpation of bony landmarks, and accompanying movement-based activities will support an in-depth understanding of each anatomical component. Development and refinement of technical training, as well as addressing injury prevention and rehabilitation, are central to this semester’s work. Students will be expected to show critical-thinking skills around the concepts presented in class through discussion and written reflection. New perspectives and skills developed in this course will benefit technical development for dancers and movers, as well as provide inspiration in the process of movement invention and composition.

This is an opportunity for students who have completed a full year of anatomy study in the SLC dance program to pursue functional anatomy studies in greater depth. In open consultation with the instructor during class meetings, each student engages in independent research, developing one or more lines of inquiry that utilize functional anatomy perspectives and texts as an organizing framework. Research topics in recent years have included investigation of micropolitics in established dance training techniques, examining connections between movement and emotion, exploring implications of movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, motor and experiential learning, development of a unique warm-up sequence to address specific individual technical issues, inquiry into kinetic experience and its linguistic expression, detailed study of knee-joint anatomy, and study of kinematics and rehabilitation in knee injury. The class meets biweekly to discuss progress, questions, and methods for reporting, writing, and presenting research—alternating with weekly studio/practice sessions for individual and/or group research consultations.

This course will examine the fundamentals of design and how to both think compositionally and work collaboratively as an artist. The medium of light will be used to explore the relationship of art, technology, and movement. Discussion and experimentation will reveal how light defines and shapes an environment. Students will learn a vocabulary to speak about light and to express their artistic ideas. Through hands-on experience, students will practice installing, programming, and operating lighting fixtures and consoles. The artistic and technical skills that they build will then be demonstrated together by creating original lighting designs for the works developed in the Live Time-Based Art course.

Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

Why is the topic of laughter so often siloed or scorned in discussions of high art, literature, and the sciences? Why don’t we take laughter seriously as a society? How many professors does it take to teach a course on laughter? (Two more than usual!) In this lecture-seminar, students will develop a highly interdisciplinary understanding of laughter as a human behavior, cultural practice, and wide-ranging tool for creative expression. Based on the expertise of the three professors, lectures will primarily investigate laughter through the lens of psychology, film history, and visual arts. The goal of the course is to think and play across many disciplines. For class assignments, students may be asked to conduct scientific studies of audience laughter patterns, create works of art with punchlines, or write close analyses of classic cinematic gags. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the building blocks of laughter; classic devices of modern comedy; and laughter as a force of resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Topics to be discussed include the evolutionary roots of laughter as a behavior; the psychological substrates of laughter as a mode of emotional and self-regulation; humor in Dada, surrealism, performance art, and stand-up comedy; jokes and the unconscious; comic entanglements of modern bodies and machines; hysterical audiences of early cinema; and how to read funny faces, word play, spit takes, toilet humor, and sound gags.

In this course, students will develop animation and micro storytelling skills by focusing on the process of creating frame-by -frame digital drawings and keyframe movement for animation. This course is essentially an introduction to both the professional digital software, Harmony by Toon Boom, and the process of digital drawing and rotoscoping. Instruction will be based in the software, Toon Boom Harmony Premium, and will include line style, visualization, character development, continuity, timing, and compositing. All of the production steps required to develop simple 2D digital animations will be demonstrated and applied through exercises aimed at the production of a single animated scene. Participants will develop and refine their personal style through exercises in digital animation and assignments directed at increasing visual understanding. Digitally-drawn images (with the option to include live action and photographs) will be assembled in sync to sound. Compositing exercises will cover a wide range of motion graphics, including green screen, keyframing, timeline effects, 2D and 3D space, layering, and pose-by-pose movement. This one-semester class will provide students with a working knowledge of the emerging and highly efficient software Harmony, recently adopted by the film and TV animation industry. Conference projects involve each student’s production of a single, refined animated scene. Students interested in then continuing in 2D digital animation in the spring semester will be encouraged to take the subsequent Intermediate/Advanced 2D Animation course.

Film has become one of the most dominant forms of visual media and creative expression. In this seminar/workshop for the budding director, we will first focus on the filmmaking fundamentals that every filmmaker needs to know in order to tell an effective story on screen: basic filmmaking terms, crew positions, camera operation, shot angles and composition, camera movement, basic lighting, sound recording, and editing. Students will also learn to how to create shot lists, floor plans, and other important tools necessary for a successful shoot. Initially, solo shooting assignments will be given, allowing students to begin to develop their own cinematic voice. Because collaboration is key in filmmaking, students will also be divided into small groups for several weekly assignments, giving them the opportunity to serve in various roles on the crew. The idea is for students to acquire the skills needed for creating compelling cinematic work on their own and with others.

Film has become one of the most dominant forms of visual media and creative expression. In this seminar/workshop for the budding director, we will first focus on the filmmaking fundamentals that every filmmaker needs to know in order to tell an effective story on screen: basic filmmaking terms, crew positions, camera operation, shot angles and composition, camera movement, basic lighting, sound recording, and editing. Students will also learn to how to create shot lists, floor plans, and other important tools necessary for a successful shoot. Initially, solo shooting assignments will be given, allowing students to begin to develop their own cinematic voice. Because collaboration is key in filmmaking, students will also be divided into small groups for several weekly assignments, giving them the opportunity to serve in various roles on the crew. The idea is for students to acquire the skills needed for creating compelling cinematic work both on their own and with others.

The screenplay is the starting point for nearly every film, television, or web series. The majority of our favorite films and television shows begin with a writer and an idea. Aimed at the beginning screenwriter, this course will focus on the fundamentals of visual storytelling—story, structure, style, character development, dialogue, outlining, and formatting. Weekly writing prompts will be given, focusing on the highlighted fundamentals of the previous week. Assignments will then be read and discussed in class, using a structured feedback paradigm. In addition, students will be given weekly viewing and reading assignments as a way to strengthen their script-analysis skills. For conference, students will work on an independent, short screenplay that they will outline, write, and revise throughout the semester.

Qualified students will attend the twice-weekly group conferences for Intermediate Greek (see course description) and complete all assignments required for those conferences.

Qualified students will attend the twice-weekly seminar meetings for What Should I Do? Democracy, Justice, and Humanity in Ancient Greek Tragedy (see course description under Literature) and complete the reading assignments for that course. Students will also meet in group conference twice a week to read (in Greek) and discuss one ancient Greek tragedy selected by the group. 

Close your eyes and listen. The human experience is highly sonic. Along with touch, hearing is among the most personal of our bodily senses. Now, you may hear the sound of passing cars, a lawnmower outside, or the murmur of voices from the hallway. But does race have a sound? What does Jim Crow sound like? Are there sonic dimensions to Black Power? Can popular music propel social movements, or can we hear social change? This lecture guides students through a survey of color and sound. We will explore historical case studies where concepts of race and recorded music collide. Through a careful analysis of a variety of cultural texts—including memoirs from specific artists and critical reviews of albums—and a consideration of contextual historical events and phenomena, students will consider how popular culture and music have shaped concepts of race and ethnicity over the 20th century.

This course aims at improving and perfecting the students’ speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills, as well as their knowledge of Italy’s contemporary culture and literature. In order to acquire the necessary knowledge of Italian grammar, idiomatic expressions, and vocabulary, a review of all grammar will be carried out throughout the year. As an introduction to modern Italian culture and literature, students will be introduced to a selection of short stories, poems, and passages from novels, as well as specific newspaper articles, music, and films in the original language. Some of the literary works will include selections from Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg, Gianni Rodari, Marcello D’Orta, Clara Sereni, Dino Buzzati, Stefano Benni, Antonio Tabucchi, Alberto Moravia, Achille Campanile, and Elena Ferrante. In order to address the students’ writing skills, written compositions will be required as an integral part of the course. All material is accessible on MySLC. Conferences are held on a biweekly basis; topics might include the study of a particular author, literary text, film, or any other aspect of Italian society and culture that might be of interest to the student. Conversation classes (in small groups) will be held twice a week with the language assistant, during which students will have the opportunity to reinforce what they have learned in class and hone their ability to communicate in Italian. When appropriate, students will be directed to specific internship opportunities in the New York City area, centered on Italian language and culture.

This course will examine literature written by late 19th- and 20th-century Italian women writers. In the newly unified Italy, middle-class women began in great numbers to access and contribute to literature as both readers and writers. The increasing presence of women writers caused great upheaval, as the male literary establishment viewed the potential for a disruption to the canon. The anxiety caused by their presence is visible in the manner in which they were dismissed as imitating male literary models, accused of excessive sentimentality and self-disclosure, or dubbed by critics il pericolo roseo, “the pink danger” (L. Zuccoli, Corriere della sera, March 24, 1911). Yet, many of these women writers reveal sophistication in their ability to experiment with genres and styles and engage with some of Italy’s literary movements (e.g., verismo, futurism, magic realism, neorealism) and intellectuals, as well as crucial historical events such as fascism and World War II. As we will see, they often question or reverse traditional depictions of femininity. They show an awareness of the social roles and expectations demanded of them and often interrogate such roles and some of the tropes present in the works of the time (e.g., the femme fatale, the self-sacrificing wife and mother). Many of them assert their own defiant voice and their own perspective as women writers, (re)claiming a place in the canon of Italian literature. In this course, we will explore how their works address social issues related to family, marriage, and women’s changing roles, as well as the place of women’s writing in the Italian literary canon. Our readings will include works by Marchesa Colombi (M. A. Torriani), Sibilla Aleramo, Grazia Deledda, Ada Negri, Rosa Rosà, Paola Masino, Renata Viganò, Joyce Lussu, Anna Banti, Anna Maria Ortese, Alba de Céspedes, Elsa Morante, Natalia Ginzburg, and Dacia Maraini. These works will be examined in dialogue with the literary production and ideas of male or canonical authors. Primary sources will range from fiction (novels, short stories, and fictional diaries) to autobiographical texts, poems, plays, and newspaper articles; these sources will be supplemented by secondary readings on women’s literature and history and on occasion by films. No previous knowledge of Italian is required. Students proficient in Italian may opt to read sources in the original. Conference topics may include the study of a particular author, literary text, or topic relevant to the course and that is of interest to the student. As an FYS course, students will meet individually in conference with the instructor/don every week until October Study Days and every two weeks after that.

Athens, London, Paris, Berlin, New York...the history of Western theatre has always been associated with cities, their politics, their customs, their geography, their audiences. This course will track the story of theatre as it originates in the Athens of the fifth-century BCE and evolves into its different expressions and practices in cities of later periods, all of them seen as “capitals” of civilization. Does theatre civilize, or is it merely a reflection of any given civilization whose cultural assumptions inform its values and shape its styles? Given that ancient Greek democracy gave birth to tragedy and comedy in civic praise of the god Dionysos—from a special coupling of the worldly and the sacred—what happens when these genres recrudesce in the unsavory precincts of Elizabethan London, the polished court of Louis XIV, the beer halls of Weimar Berlin, and the neon “palaces” of Broadway? Sometimes the genres themselves are challenged by experiments in new forms or by performances deliberately situated in unaccustomed places. By tinkering with what audiences have come to expect or where they have come to assemble, do playwrights like Euripides, Brecht, and Sarah Kane destabilize civilized norms? Grounding our work in Greek theatre, we will address such questions in a series of chronological investigations of the theatre produced in each city: Athens and London in the first semester; Paris, Berlin, and New York in the second.

Are human beings capable of self-government? What does that require? As modern authoritarian movements imperil democratic institutions, norms, and the rule of law, ancient Greek tragedies illuminate values and aspirations underpinning democracy and modern liberal ideals of justice, equality, and universal human rights. Tragedy and democracy emerged simultaneously in ancient Athens in the late 6th century BCE and flourished throughout the 5th century BCE. Ancient Greece never achieved egalitarian politics or anything close to universal human rights, but Athenian tragedies emphasize the essential equality of all human beings in our vulnerability to suffering and death. Surviving plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides dramatize the costs of tyranny, anger, vengeance, and cruelty—to perpetrators, as well as to victims. Commending honesty, generosity, and compassion, tragedies locate nobility not in genetic inheritance, group affiliation, socioeconomic status, numerical superiority, or even moral or ideological convictions but, rather, in our conduct as individuals. Tragedies expose the consequences of human words and actions, as characters make choices conducive to success or failure for themselves and their communities. State-sponsored and publicly performed, tragedies made self-reflection and self-criticism a fundamental feature of Athenian democratic politics and society. “What should I do?” encapsulates the central question of every ancient Greek tragedy and every moment of our own lives. This course is designed for anyone interested in understanding the false promise of authoritarianism and appreciating the origins, goals, and possibilities for a free, humane, equitable democratic society.

Powdered, ruffled, and bewigged, the ghosts of the 17th- and 18th-century playhouse still stalk the stages, screens, and red carpets of the global entertainment industry. After a period of suppression by a puritan government, London theatres came roaring back to life in the 1660s, thanks in part to England’s first professional female actors—by some accounts the original modern celebrities—and the reign of a king, Charles II, who was besotted with drama and the people who made it. Over the coming century, the practice and theory of the theatrical arts would be thoroughly and durably transformed, and a new dramatic canon would be consolidated through both print and repertory enactment. Theatre was not only big business in Enlightenment Europe but also, arguably, the representative art form of the age. Part of the public’s fascination with stagecraft lay in the unsettling questions it raised about the nature of performance itself, not only as a form of artistic practice but also as an element of social and political life: What if, for instance, our putatively God-given identities (king and subject, wife and husband) were merely factitious roles that could be adopted or discarded at will? This yearlong “large seminar” considers how authors and theatrical professionals from the 1660s to the 1790s imagined the potential of performance to transform—or sometimes to reinforce—the status quo, with a look ahead to major films, mostly from classical Hollywood, that inherited and adapted the legacy of Restoration and 18th-century entertainments. Our primary emphasis will be on plays, with a survey of major Enlightenment Era comedies (some of the funniest and most outrageous ever written), parodies, afterpieces, heroic tragedies, imperial pageants, sentimental dramas, and Gothic spectacles by authors such as William Wycherley, George Etherege, John Dryden, Aphra Behn, Susanna Centlivre, John Gay, Henry Fielding, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Elizabeth Inchbald. We will also consider nondramatic writing on performance and theatrical culture, including 18th-century acting manuals, racy theatrical memoirs, and a “masquerade novel” by Eliza Haywood, in addition to films by directors such as Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, Oscar Micheaux, F. W. Murnau, Lois Weber, and Billy Wilder. Wigs are not required.

Theatre emerges from social rituals; and as a communal exercise, theatre requires people to work together toward a common purpose in shared and demarcated physical space. Yet, the very notion of “character,” first expressed in the indelibly defining mask of the ancient Greek protagonist, points paradoxically toward the spirit, attraction, and trial of individuation. And so we have been given Medea, Hamlet, and Tartuffe, among the many dramatic characters whose unique faces we recognize and who speak to us not only of their own conflicts but also of something universal and timeless. In the 19th century, however, the Industrial Revolution, aggressive capitalism, imperialism, Darwinism, socialist revolution, feminism, the new science of psychology, and the decline of religious clarity about the nature of the human soul—all of these, among other social factors—force the question as to whether individual identity has point or meaning, even existence. Henrik Ibsen, a fiercely “objective” Norwegian self-exile, and Anton Chekhov, an agnostic Russian doctor, used theatre—that most social of arts—to challenge their time, examining assumptions about identity, its troubling reliance on social construction, and the mysteries of self-consciousness that elude resolution. The test will be to see how what we learn from them equips us—or fails to do so—in a study of August Wilson, an African American autodidact of the 20th century, whose plays represent the impact, both outrageous and insidious, of American racism on “characters” denied identity by definition.

This seminar has one text at its center: Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Perennially perched near the top of the English language’s greatest works, Hamlet has launched stage careers, inspired shelves of criticism, delighted readers and audiences, and spawned adaptations ranging from the serious to the downright silly. This semester, we’ll survey the creative and critical landscape surrounding Shakespeare’s most-famous play. We begin by reading all three early printed versions of the play—the quartos of 1603 and 1604 and the folio of 1623—along with some important sources and analogues. Our close attention to the textual differences of these early editions will foster study of early modern print and manuscript culture, as we trace these Hamlets’ journeys from pen to stage to print and back. With a detailed understanding of Hamlet, the seminar will then consider major approaches to the play across the centuries, studying commentary from William Hazlitt, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dr. Johnson, A. C. Bradley, John Dover Wilson, and others. Near the end of term, our field of study will widen somewhat. We’ll read Tom Stoppard’s classic Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Theresa Rebeck’s Bernhardt/Hamlet (2019), and James Ijames’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Fat Ham (2022). Other readings may include Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge, and Shakespeare’s early play, Titus Andronicus. Students will be expected to write a short close reading, a review essay describing two prewar productions, and a conference paper related to Hamlet. Prior experience with Shakespeare, while not required, is ideal. Curiosity about Hamlet is a must.

In 1593, a young man occasionally employed by the Elizabethan secret service was found stabbed to death in a tavern, allegedly during an argument over the bar tab. The victim, who was said to have once claimed, “All they that love not tobacco and boys are fools,” happened to be the most famous playwright in the country: Christopher Marlowe. Had Marlowe been more judicious in selecting his drinking companions, his upstart rival, a recent small-town transplant named William Shakespeare, may not have ever eclipsed his star. And yet, for all our certainty of Shakespeare’s position in the literary firmament, his work was often neglected in the century following his death. It was Shakespeare’s elegist and rival, Ben Jonson, whose plays were thought to be not of an age but for all time. This seminar reads Shakespeare alongside two of his most important competitors, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, in an effort to resituate Shakespeare’s work among his rowdy contemporaries. Encountering a new play each week, the seminar will cover every major genre over the course of the term, reading plays from 1587–1615. We’ll study tyrannical overreachers and their desire for power in Marlowe’s 1 & 2 Tamburlaine and Dr. Faustus and Shakespeare’s Richard III and Macbeth. We’ll consider queer possibilities in Marlowe’s Edward II, Jonson’s Epicene, and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Over the course of the term, students will explore early modern theatrical practices, printing conventions, and cultural history. Students will leave the seminar with a rich introduction to Shakespeare and other early modern dramatists and a sense of why, after 400 years, Shakespeare has remained a persistent literary presence. In conference, students may work on any aspect of early modern English drama.

The creative process is paradoxical. It involves freedom and spontaneity yet requires expertise and hard work. The creative process is self-expressive yet tends to unfold most easily when the creator forgets about self. The creative process brings joy yet is fraught with fear, frustration, and even terror. The creative process is its own reward yet depends on social support and encouragement. In this class, we look at how various thinkers conceptualize the creative process—chiefly in the arts but in other domains, as well. We see how various psychological theorists describe the process, its source, its motivation, its roots in a particular domain or skill, its cultural context, and its developmental history in the life of the individual. Among the thinkers that we will consider are Freud, Amabile, Arnheim, Franklin, and Gardner. Different theorists emphasize different aspects of the process. In particular, we see how some thinkers emphasize persistent work and expert knowledge as essential features, while others emphasize the need for the psychic freedom to “let it happen” and speculate on what emerges when the creative person “lets go.” Still others identify cultural context and motivational or biological factors as critical. To concretize theoretical approaches, we look at how various ideas can contribute to understanding specific creative people and their work. In particular, we will consider works written by or about Picasso, Woolf, Welty, Darwin, and some contemporary artists and writers. Though creativity is most frequently explored in individuals, we also consider group improvisation in music and theatre. Some past conference projects have involved interviewing people engaged in creative work. Others consisted of library studies centering on the life and work of a particular creative person. And some students chose to do fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center and focus on an aspect of creative activity in young children.

Experiment and explore contemporary performance art. Through surveying a range of important artworks and movements, we will review the histories, concepts, and practices of performance art. Born from anti-art, performance art challenges the boundaries of artistic expression through implementing, as material, the concepts of space, time, and the body. Examples of artists that we will review are John Cage, Joan Jonas, Adrian Piper, Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, Simone Forti, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Pope.L, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Janine Antoni, Suzanne Lacy, Aki Sasamoto, and Anna Halprin, to name a few. We will review dialogues and movements introducing performance art, such as art interventions, sculpture, installation art, institutional critique, protest art, social media, video art, happenings, dada, comedy, sound art, graphic notation, scores, collaboration, and dance/movement. Students will be able to relate the form and function of performance art through research, workshopping ideas, experimentation, and improvisation—thereby developing the ability to confidently implement any method of the performance art genre.

From Milton (Satan) to Dryden to Dr. Johnson to Coleridge to De Quincey to Melville (Ahab) to Woolf to Auden to Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim to Kurosawa (Throne of Blood and Ran) to Peter Brook (The Mahabharata) to Julie Taymor to Taylor Swift...writers, artists, performers, and thinkers in the West, the East, and the South have gained enormous mileage by appropriating, purloining, replying to, adapting, being enraged by, and escaping Shakespeare—or merely by living under his shade. We will plunge into the enormous and still billowing artistic energy generated by this person. We will look at eight major plays, one a week, from every phase of his career—with a sampling of their critical and scholarly paraphernalia—and examine the writerly problems he faced and how he solved them and examine closely his incomparable rhetorical skills. We will try to pluck the heart out of the mystery of this most mysterious artist in order to help ourselves as artists. Conference projects, designed to be presented to the class, can comprehend poetic responses, fictive or dramatic responses, films and multimedia concoctions, or critical or essayistic responses to the entire body of work or to one of its many elements. It has been said that Shakespeare invented the idea of the human. We will think about this. Sonnet sequences are welcome.