In the 20th and 21st centuries, playwrights such as Brecht, Beckett, Churchill and Jacob-Jenkins have written plays that challenged conventional notions of how theater works. This course is a scene study class in which we’ll explore a variety of ways to act these plays. What does straightforward realistic acting do? What’s the role of emotion? What’s the actor’s relationship to the audience? How do we play different layers or realities? How do we perform gender, race, ethnicity, class? How does acting express ideas? How do we make these plays funny, and how funny should they be? This is a course about being playful and finding possibilities.
