An introduction to the craft of acting. Emphasis will be placed on honesty, spontaneity, and establishing a personal connection with the substance of the material.
Theater Courses
Courses
We will look at practice as both verb and noun, pay special attention to the ways in which we embody the work (and change) we want to see in the world. Through somatic activities, talks with invited guests, projects, and readings (across the arts, sciences, philosophy, religion, and activism), we'll revel in the interplay between process and product, solitude and community, structure and freedom, life and art.
In this studio course open to all, we'll dive into experiences in which body and language meet.
A course on works of dramatic literature whose comparative dimension is theatrical performance. We will consider four Shakespeare plays covering a range of theatrical genres; the emphasis will be on the ways in which Shakespearean meaning can be elucidated when the reader becomes a performer.
This course introduces students to set and costume design for performance, exploring theater as a visual medium.
This course offers an intensive survey of ongoing efforts to revisit and revise the American theatrical canon and repertoire. Students will examine the economic, institutional and cultural forces shaping the landscape of new play production in the United States as they also read a broad selection of plays from the contemporary American theater.
The Writers' Room will replicate the fast-paced environment of a Hollywood writers room. Students will be assigned to a writing team and will pen two complete scripts with their fellow writers.
Contemporary French Theater will introduce students to the vibrant and diverse scene of contemporary theater in France. Every week we will read a new play by a celebrated or an emerging living playwright, and examine their shared topics of interest and writing styles.
This course is an exploration of physical performance techniques that place the embodied actor at the center of the process of theatrical creation.
A hands-on approach to this interdisciplinary field. We will apply key readings in performance theory to space and time-based events, at sites ranging from theatre, experimental art, and film, to community celebrations, sport events, and restaurant dining.
In Advanced French Theater Workshop, students will focus their work on three main French playwrights: one classical, one modern, and one contemporary. This year, students will rehearse and perform excerpts from the great works of Molière, Alfred de Musset, and Pascal Rambert.
In this Princeton Challenge course, students will participate in building a relationship between a historically significant Black theater company, Crossroads Theater in New Brunswick, and the university community. Co-taught by Sydné Mahone, Director of play development at Crossroads 1985-1997, students will research the theater through its people and its art, while making the role of women in Black art-making more visible.
An exploration of theatrical sound design and engineering, this class will explore sound for both theater and music theater. We will investigate text from the point of view of sound, and learn how to communicate the ideas, palette and arc of a design to others. We will explore developing a creative process and turning our ideas into sounds that can be used onstage.
In addition to studying language and history through the lens of a regional collection of tales, this course will allow students to develop a working knowledge of the richly collaborative process through which musical theater is created.
Every life delivers a story (or three) worth telling well. This workshop rehearses the writing and performance skills necessary to remake the raw material drawn from lived experience into compelling autobiographical storytelling. As we engage the thematic focus of "Princeton, History and Me," we will explore autobiographical storytelling as both a practice and a process as we also evince (and confront) the personal, moral, ethical and artistic dimensions of the stories we choose to tell about ourselves, about Princeton, and the stories that remain to be told about both.
In this course, we contemplate corpses from Antigone to Alfred Hitchcock and from Shakespeare's tragedies to Stand By Me and Weekend at Bernie's and bring the dead to life.
This course will study the role that the arts can and do play in Trenton: a so-called invisible city, one of the poorest parts of the state, but intimately connected to Princeton. Examining the historical and contemporary racisms that have shaped Trenton, we will hear from activists, policy makers, artistic directors, politicians, and artists. Readings will include texts about urban invisibility, race, community theater, and public arts policy.
This studio class will explore a broad range of approaches to art-based performance: from instruction pieces and happenings, to the body as language and gesture, to performance as a form of archiving.
This course will survey plays written by Black playwrights in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will explore dramatic works of writers from Africa, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In this class we study the relationships between performance-making, philanthropy and ethics. How are performing artists financing their work, and what does this mean in relationship to economic and social justice?
Excavate/Illuminate will guide students' archival research and collaborative exploration of US history, journalism, and performance, focusing on the pivotal Tulsa Race Massacre (1921) as a case study.
This course will look at a range of British and American drama from the second half of the twentieth century to the twenty-first, with an emphasis on the developments of the last twenty years.
This junior methods seminar will prepare you to create and co-produce theatrical projects for your senior year independent work in a changing landscape of theater making.
Why do some BIPOC dramatists (from the US and Canada) choose to adapt/revise/re-envision canonical texts from the Western theatrical tradition? While their choices might be accused of recentering and reinforcing "white" narratives that marginalize and/or exoticize racial and ethnic others, we might also see this venture as a useful strategy to write oneself into a tradition that is itself constantly being revised and reevaluated and to claim that tradition as one's own. What are the artistic, cultural, and economic "rewards" for deploying this method of playmaking? What are the risks?
This upper level musical theater writing course will delve into the creation of new musical works for the stage, with an emphasis on music as an essential dramatic language.
This course is designed to encourage the development of directors for theater and musical theater, covering techniques and practices from both areas.
Co-taught by design collective dots, the course aims to explore the world of visual storytelling, with an emphasis on collaboration as an essential part of the process of designing 3-dimensional space for narratives.
This course will be an exploration, rehearsals and performances of a production of the play Fuenteovejuna by Lope de Vega, to be performed partly or completely in the Spanish language. The project will be directed by professional director Estefania Fadul, and will lead to performances in the Berlind Theater.
The comedian and storyteller Mike Birbiglia and the director Seth Barrish have collaborated on five shows Off and On Broadway, including "Sleepwalk With Me" and "The New One". Their award-winning work has now been seen around the world. In this unique course, Mike and Seth will share the finer points of their groundbreaking approach to creating compelling long-form monologues. Each student in the class will develop a 6-minute monologue which they will share in an end of the semester presentation.
Dan Rothenberg and Josephine Decker team up to explore original fables for children, devised for theater and film. We will look at multiple versions of folktales familiar to American children such as Little Red Riding Hood; international folklore; 20th century masters such as Hiyao Miyazaki and Maurice Sendak; and contemporary storytellers such as Kelly Link and Sylvia V. Linsteadt. The class invites musicians, dancers, writers, and performers to "devise" short original creations inspired by the beating heart of fables but updated for our contemporary world of urban migration, technological change, and climate peril.