Theatre Courses

The year-long course introduces students to the theory, history, and applications of dramaturgy, an approach to analyzing and working within collaborative, performance-, script- and time-based artistic practices across media. As a field, dramaturgy is analytical and practical, critical, collaborative, and creative. The dramaturg is often the only member of a creative team valued principally for their ability to feed back into the process of making rather than by what they have made themselves; they are expected to adapt from project to project and to embed themselves within any given process. At the same time, vestiges of the discipline’s origins in the Enlightenment persist in the expectation that the dramaturg maintains “objectivity”: they are responsible for fact-checking and verifying an artwork’s claims, correcting its contradictions, and elevating it to some standard of quality that often concatenates moral, aesthetic, and institutional values.

This course aims to teach the pragmatic applications of dramaturgy alongside its internal tensions and potential problematics, as well as the philosophical underpinnings of the field and its applications in theater, dance, performance art, installation, and screen-based performance. Across the four parts of the course, Dramaturg as Interpreter/Respondent, Dramaturg as Researcher, Dramaturg as Critic, and Dramaturg as Collaborative Artist, students will be asked to both debate works of art and criticism in seminar-based discussions, as well as generate and respond to each other’s work in short-throw, collaborative exercises. Issues of taste and objectivity, process versus product, the relationship of aesthetic, moral, and political values, liveness and mediation, and the role of the critic, as well as artistic research and autotheory as dramaturgical approaches, will be explored in readings/viewings that place artist’s works and statements in conversation with dramaturgical responses from contemporary critics and collaborators. Rather than attempt to pin down a fluid discipline, the course aims to provide tools for students to define, according to their experiences and artistic values, their philosophy and practice of dramaturgy.

A performance maker (Big Art Group), curator (Contemporary Performance and Special Effects Festival), and educator SLCTheatre), Manson’s performance work—through the company Big Art Group—creates radical queer narrative structures and embodiments to construct and aid transitory generative critical space for both participants and audience. Their work is dense, fast, and multilayered and traverses multiple genres and forms, often using interference, slippage, and disruption strategies. Manson’s work has been presented throughout 14 countries and more than 50 cities in Europe, Asia, and North America. Their work has been co-produced by the Vienna Festival, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Hebbel Am Ufer, Rome’s La Vie de Festival, PS122, and Wexner Center for The Arts. Manson is a Foundation For Contemporary Art fellow, Pew fellow, and a MacDowell fellow. Their writing, with Jemma Nelson, can be found in the publications PAJ, Theatre Magazine, Theatre der Zeit, and Theatre Journal.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.).

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 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.

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.

In the graduate studio, we will explore scenes and monologues from contemporary playwrights. Along with an intense focus on script analysis, story structure and character work, students will learn a set of acting tools that will assist them in making their work incredibly loose, spontaneous and authentic. Scenes and monologues will be chosen by the instructor, in collaboration with the students. Prerequisite: Graduate Student or completed at least 2 acting components for undergraduate students.

This year-long studio course turns to theories and practices of erotic and antagonistic collaboration as a way to expand and sharpen students’ approach to performance making. Students will engage with the work of performance artists (e.g. Linda Montano, Tehching Hsieh, Adrian Piper, Julie Tolentino, Wu Tsang, and Autumn Knight) and theorists (e.g. Sigmund Freud, Audre Lorde, Lauren Berlant, Lee Edelman, and Fred Moten) to investigate the political dynamism of collaborative artmaking while also creating performances across a sequence of four units that increase in scale over the course of the year: “duo,” “collective,” “group,” and “party.” Students will read critical texts in preparation for most course sessions but all assignments will be creative and consist in making and showing interdisciplinary performances.

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 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.

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, 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.

The goal of this course is to enable students to work with video while simultaneously developing their own thinking about how the medium creates knowledge. As students create their own moving image works - from concept to shooting to editing to displaying - we will study film theory and moving image references as an essential part of the process. The course will draw on a rich body of readings to assist students in crafting their own video language, encountering fundamental works of visual and film theory as resources and tools to think through their work. Students will gain an understanding of video art techniques and formats, including video installation, live performance, web projects, films, and cinema in its expanded form. We will also review video art works utilizing embodied practices, multi-channel video installations, and new technologies (AR, VR, etc). Through individual tutorials, group conversation, in-class critique, and collaborative exercises, students will translate theory and technique into their own language and personal voice. 3 hr class with additional weekly time for office hours.

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.

The Advanced Directing MFA Studio offers a comprehensive, year-long weekly training environment for directors at various stages of their craft. The class is focused on assembling a personal toolbox of directorial techniques suitable for theater across different styles and scales. Throughout the year, using classic plays, participants will engage in hands-on learning through readings, exercises, and in-class projects that cover text analysis, stage composition, production conception, and collaboration. The course emphasizes practical experience, including individualizing actor adjustments, managing rehearsal environments, and helping actors activate text. All participants are expected to perform in each other’s projects since understanding the actor’s challenges is essential to sensitive and effective directing. By the end of the Studio, directors will be well-equipped with the skills necessary to bring their directorial visions to life. Prerequisites: Graduate students or senior undergraduates with the approval of the professor.

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.

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.

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 is a graduate studio focused on interrogating the link between music and storytelling traditions in and beyond the musical theater industry. Special attention will be paid to how these forms intersect with wider social structures such as labor and economy, and identity and oppression. Black and queer musical theater with be essential to our research and inquiry. In-class lectures will range, for example, from hands-on experimentation with instruments and music-making technologies to an in-depth analysis of current trends within the industry. Our approach will blend theory, practice, and theater history. This course is suited for students who are interested in sound as essential to their work or are drawing connections between their sound-based theater practice through broader academic disciplines such as theater studies or musicology. Students will develop and share a portfolio of work that is unique to their own interests and skills based on assignments. Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduate students who have taken Songwriting For A New Musical Theater. 3 hr class with additional weekly time for office hours.

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.

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.

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.

In this graduate studio, the vectors of pure creative impulse hold sway over the process of writing for the stage and we write ourselves into unknown territory. Students are encouraged to set aside received and preconceived notions of what it means to write plays, or be a writer, along with ideas of what a play is “supposed to” or “should” look like, in order to locate their own authentic ways of seeing and making. In other words, disarming the rational, the judgmental thinking that is rooted in a concept of a final product and empowering the chaotic, spatial, associative processes that put us in immediate formal contact with our direct experience, impressions and perceptions of reality. Emphasis on detail, texture and contiguity will be favored over the more widely accepted, reliable, yet sometimes limiting Aristotelian virtues of structure and continuity in the making of meaningful live performance. Readings will be tailored to fit the thinking of the class. We will likely look at theoretical and creative writings of Gertrude Stein, George Steiner, Mac Wellman, Maria Irene Fornes, Adrienne Kennedy, Mircea Eliade, Kristen Kosmas, Richard Maxwell, Roland Barthes, as well as work that crosses into visual art realms and radical scientific thought from physicists David Bohm and F. David Peat. The course will be conducted in workshop fashion with strong emphasis on the tracking and documenting of process. This class meets once a week for three hours. Graduates and open to undergraduate juniors and seniors.

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.

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.

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.

This graduate level component is an intensive in artistic planning and production. From conceiving a project, planning, budgeting, and fundraising for its creation, promoting the premiere, taking a work on the road, and archiving it for the long term, this class will prepare students with a basic knowledge of what it takes to put your work into the world. In addition the class will look at the national and international contemporary performance field with a ground level introduction to working artists, residencies, presenting organizations,festivals, museums, and more. This class meets on zoom. Open to graduate students and undergraduate seniors.

This class will serve as an introduction to grants and fundraising for independent artists. We will explore managing a grants and individual giving calendar, local, state, and federal funding sources, and delve deep info project based grants for independent artists including The MAP Fund, Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Ats National Dance & Theater Projects, National Performance Network's Creation and Development fund and more. In addition we will explore crowdfunding methods and individual solicitation. Classes will be a mix of lectures via case studies of successful grants, guest appearances from foundation program officers, and workshop sessions through which students share progress and challenges in completing mock grant applications throughout the semester. Grad Component open to undergrad Juniors and Senior.

How do we as artists engage with an accelerating, fractured, technology-infused world? How do we as creators produce our work under current economic pressures? Contemporary Practice is a year-long course that focuses on artists and thinkers dealing with these questions and looks at how we situate our practice in the field. Students will investigate current and emerging practices in Performing Care, Contemporary Choreography, Speculative Theater, Immersive Theatre, Co-Presence, Performance Cabaret, Post-Digital Strategies, Socially Engaged Art, and Mixed Reality Performance. Classes will be structured around weekly readings/discussions. Through field research, embodied laboratories, and creative/professional development we will build a skill set, network, and knowledge base for articulating and supporting our work and engaging with collaborators, organizations, and audiences. This class meets once a week. Open to Graduates, Seniors or by permission of the professor.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Embodied Thesis provides a critical and supportive forum for developing new works of original theatre and performance, focusing on researching in multiple formats, including historical and artistic research, showings, improvisations, experiments, and conversation. Each of you had the opportunity to create a solo, duo, or group project. We share our research, respond to developmental prompts, keep a practice journal, loosely develop a structure/content for the projects, refine our performances through showings, and support and gave feedback to the cohort.

Embodied Thesis cultivates technical skills and nurtures a deep understanding of the integral relationship between research and embodiment in performance practice. By delving into an intentional and elongated creation process, students embark on a transformative journey of self-discovery. They leave the course equipped with an original work that authentically reflects their artistic voice and demonstrates their growth as innovative practitioners.

Taught by a rotating series of Sarah Lawrence faculty and guest artists, this course focuses on developing the skills needed for a wide variety of techniques for the creation and development of new work in theatre. Ensemble acting, movement, design and fabrication, playwriting, devised work, and music performance are all explored. The class is a forum for workshops, master classes, and open rehearsals, with a focus on the development of critical skills. In addition, students in Grad Lab are expected to generate a new piece of theatre to be performed each month for the Sarah Lawrence community. These performances may include graduate and undergraduate students alike. Required for all Theatre graduate students. This class meets twice a week.

This class meets once a week and is required for all second-year Theatre graduate students.

Graduate Practicum is designed for hands on graduate work.

Graduate Practicum is designed for hands on graduate work.

This graduate level course will focus on pedagogy and the theory of teaching theatre in higher education. Students will prepare to work as a theatre artist and educator in universities and colleges. Students will learn the practical skills of developing materials necessary to secure a position teaching theatre such as a teaching CV, pedagogical statement, artist statement, and diversity statement. Students will also learn the practical skills they will need once they’ve landed a teaching position such as developing a syllabus and other documents to track student progress.

We will discuss different perspectives on arts pedagogy and learn what is new and on the cutting edge of developing culturally competent, anti-racist, trauma informed, consent based, and inclusive teaching practices. Students will learn that Inclusive Teaching is a foundational framework for teaching in an increasingly diverse and globally connected society–one that recognizes and affirms the myriad backgrounds, perspectives, and identities individuals bring to learning environments. We will grapple with this in each class as students are encouraged to design their teaching materials to be welcoming, accessible, inclusive and explicitly centralizing of a broad range of students.

Students will learn how to identify their teaching goals for a course and then how to develop curriculums that will work towards those goals with each lesson. They will learn how to design exercises with multiple entrance points and they will learn how to design both summative and formative assessments. In addition to this in class work together, students will gain hands-on experience executing lessons and exercises by assisting a professor in the the SLC theatre program.

In this course we will discuss the ideas of thinkers including bell hooks, James P. Comer, Bettina Love, Kim Solga, Augusto Boal, Paulo Freire, Gada Mahrouse, Chanelle Wilson, Nayantara Sheoran Appleton, and Heidi Safia Mirza, among others. Open to graduate students.