Theater & Music Theater Courses

Theater & Music Theater

Introduction to Art Making

LCA 101 · Fall 2020

C01 · Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM

Instructors: Colleen Asper · Mark Doten · Ruth Ochs · Shariffa Ali · Stacy Wolf · Olivier Tarpaga · Tess James

How do artists make art? How do we evaluate it? In this course, students of all levels get to experience firsthand the particular challenges and rewards of art making through practical engagement with five fields — creative writing, visual art, theater, dance, and music — under the guidance of professionals.

Introduction to Theater Making

THR 101 · Fall 2020

C01 · Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM

Instructors: Aaron Landsman · Elena Araoz

A working laboratory that gives students hands-on experience with theatre’s fundamental building blocks — writing, design, acting, directing, and producing. Over the semester, students read, watch and discuss several approaches to theater, including plays, devising, autobiography and site-specific work. Addressing both the live art, and the emerging realm of virtual performance, we analyze how theater is created now, as well as the social and political implications of different ways of working. Students spend class time collaborating on virtual artistic responses to each approach, and a culminating project that integrates theater’s essential elements.

Is Politics a Performance? (SA)

FRS 143 · Fall 2020

FRS 143 · Wednesdays, 1:30-4:20 PM

Instructors: Aaron Landsman

In this transformative time, when national politics seems frayed at best, local government meetings remain sites of direct democracy and creative protest. Is Politics a Performance? looks at how we perform in these meetings, and who gets to play which roles. Drawing on the tools of sociology, philosophy, civics and theater, we will analyze meetings in Princeton and Trenton, as well as other US cities. With many government functions now taking place online, the course also reckons with our emerging, digital commons. Through a layered, practical and fun approach to decision-making, citizenship and dramaturgy, this class is ideal for students considering work in public policy, education, social sciences and performing arts.

Beginning Studies in Acting

THR 201 · Fall 2020

Multiple sections offered

Instructors: Nehassaiu deGannes · Vivia Font

An introduction to the craft of acting through character work, monologue work and script analysis. By engaging in both collaborative efforts and independent explorations, we will experiment with various acting traditions and techniques to develop methods of approaching performance. Emphasis will be placed on honesty, spontaneity, and establishing a personal/empathetic connection with assigned as well as devised material.

Introductory Playwriting

THR 205 · Fall 2020

S01 · Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:30 - 3:20 PM

Instructors: Nathan Davis

This is a workshop in the fundamentals of writing plays. Through writing prompts, exercises, study and reflection, students will be guided in the creation of original dramatic material. Attention will be given to character, structure, dramatic action, monologue, dialogue, language and behavior.

Practice

DAN 206 / MTD 206 / THR 206 · Fall 2020

U01 · Tuesdays + Thursdays, 1:30 - 2:50 PM

Instructors: Aynsley Vandenbroucke

The writer Annie Dillard says that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. With school as we know it upended, we have a unique opportunity to develop daily habits that contribute to lifelong independent learning and creating. We will look at practice as both verb and noun, paying special attention to the ways 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.

Storytelling with Technology for Performance (LA)

THR 210A / STC 210A · Fall 2020

Multiple sections offered

Instructors: Andrea Lauer · David Bengali

Telling stories through performance is human nature, but how can we use technology to enhance, frame, or reveal new perspectives on stories told? Students will learn about tools and techniques from design professionals, and will engage directly and collaboratively with technology to design experiences focused around live performance. Areas covered may include projections and multimedia, lighting, sound, interactivity/wearable tech, and programming for creative applications, as well as other digital+analog techniques. This class aims to bring together students with arts and STEM backgrounds, and does not require prior experience.

Storytelling with Technology for Performance (QCR)

THR 210B / STC 210B · Fall 2020

Multiple sections offered

Instructors: Andrea Lauer · David Bengali

Telling stories through performance is human nature, but how can we use technology to enhance, frame, or reveal new perspectives on stories told? Students will learn about tools and techniques from design professionals, and will engage directly and collaboratively with technology to design experiences focused around live performance. Areas covered may include projections and multimedia, lighting, sound, interactivity/wearable tech, and programming for creative applications, as well as other digital+analog techniques. This class aims to bring together students with arts and STEM backgrounds, and does not require prior experience.

French Theater Workshop

FRE 211 / THR 211 · Fall 2020

Multiple sections offered

Instructors: Florent Masse

FRE/THR 211 will offer students the opportunity to put their language skills in motion by exploring French theater and acting in French. The course will introduce students to acting techniques while allowing them to discover the richness of the French dramatic canon.

Stillness

DAN 221 / THR 222 · Fall 2020

U01 · Wednesdays, 1:30 - 4:20 PM

Instructors: Aynsley Vandenbroucke

In a universe filled with movement, how and why and where might we find relative stillness? What are the unique aesthetic, political, and daily life possibilities while school as we know it is on pause? We’ll dance, sit, question, and create practices and projects. We’ll play with movement within stillness, stillness within movement, stillness in performance and in performers' minds. We’ll look at stillness as protest and power. We’ll wonder when stillness might be an abdication of responsibility. We'll read widely within religions, philosophy, performance, disability studies, social justice, visual art, sound (and silence).

Sondheim’s Musicals and the Making of America

AMS 317 / MTD 321 / ENG 249 / THR 322 · Fall 2020

S01 · Tuesdays, 1:30 - 4:20 PM

Instructors: Stacy Wolf

In this course, we'll examine the musicals of Stephen Sondheim from COMPANY (1970) to ROAD SHOW (2009) as a lens onto America. We'll explore how Sondheim and his collaborators used the mainstream, popular, and commercial form of musical theatre to challenge, critique, deconstruct, and possibly reinforce some of America's most enduring myths.

Shakespeare I

ENG 320 / THR 310 · Fall 2020

Multiple sections offered

Instructors: Bradin Cormack

The first half of Shakespeare's career, with a focus on the great comedies and histories of the 1590s, culminating in a study of Hamlet.

Latinx Musicals on Stage and Screen

MTD 333 / GSS 228 / LAO 321 / THR 333 · Fall 2020

L01 · Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM

Instructors: Brian Herrera

This course offers an intensive survey of how Latina/o/x performers, characters, cultures, narratives and musical styles have always been a constitutive feature of the "American musical" — as performance genre, practice and tradition — on both stage and screen.

Black Dramatists in the English-Speaking World

ENG 354 / THR 351 / AAS 354 · Fall 2020

S01 · Mondays, 1:30 - 4:20 PM

Instructors: Nathan Davis

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.

Theater and Society Now

THR 385 / AMS 385 / GSS 385 / LAO 385 · Fall 2020

S01 · Tuesdays, 1:30 - 4:20 PM

Instructors: Brian Herrera

As an art form, theater operates in the shared space and time of the present moment while also manifesting imagined worlds untethered by the limits of "real" life. In this course, we undertake a critical, creative, and historical survey of the ways contemporary theater-making in the United States — as both industry and creative practice — does (and does not) engage the most urgent concerns of contemporary American society.

Producing Theater: French Festivals Today

FRE 389 / THR 389 · Fall 2020

S01 · Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:30 - 2:50 PM

Instructors: Florent Masse

The course will explore the creation, production, management and future of pioneering international festivals from France's main historic festivals, such as Festival d'Avignon and Festival d'Automne, to more recent and emerging ones worldwide.

Theatrical Design Studio

THR 400 / VIS 400 · Fall 2020

C01 · Fridays, 12:30 - 4:20 PM

Instructors: Jane Cox · Lawrence Moten · Sarita Fellows · Tess James

This course offers an exploration of visual storytelling, combined with a grounding in the practical, communicative, collaborative and anti-racist skills necessary to create physical environments for live theater making, whether in person or virtually. Students are mentored as designers, directors or creators (often in teams) on realized projects for the theater program season. Individualized class plans allow students to explore supporting online productions, to imagine physical environments for un-realized productions, or to explore exciting contemporary visualization techniques, depending on their area of interest and skill level.

Theater Making Studio

THR 402 / MTD 402 · Fall 2020

C01 · Mondays, 1:30 - 4:20 PM

Instructors: Jane Cox · John Doyle · Shariffa Ali

This junior methods seminar will prepare you to research, create and co-produce theatrical projects for your senior year independent work and beyond. We will address the development of theatrical literacy, individual creative process, and collaborative and leadership skills. We will incorporate practical exercises, virtual theater going, visitors and discussion. The seminar will offer a space for reflecting on art-making, individually and as a member of a collaborative cohort of advanced theater students, and will support you in developing an anti-racist theater practice. The class will culminate in a draft of an exciting theater season.

Topics in Drama: The Antigone Project

ENG 409 / THR 410 / HUM 409 · Fall 2020

S01 - Lisa Dwan · Mondays, 4:30-7:20 PM

Instructors: Lisa Dwan

Beginning with Sophocles' Antigone, this course will examine different versions of this seminal Greek tragedy — from different countries and across the centuries.

Theater Rehearsal and Performance

THR 451 / MTD 451 · Fall 2020

Multiple sections offered

Instructors: Sam Pinkleton · Tess James

This course will be an investigative performance-driven process that will attempt to joyously uplift lives that have ended, using theater, song and dance. Led by a visiting professional theater director and working with professional collaborators, students will create theatrical work in large groups, small groups and alone. During an ongoing global pandemic, this living archive of the dead will offer up space for proposals, reflections, indictments, celebrations and imagined alternatives to a world numbed by an ambush of death. The class will culminate in student micro-projects that can be viewed in any order, at any time, from anywhere.

Fantasia! Fantasia!: Dance-Theatre-Media

ATL 499 / VIS 499 / DAN 499 / THR 499 · Fall 2020

C01 — Raja Feather Kelly + Laura Snow · Mondays, 1:30 - 4:20 PM

Instructors: Laura Snow · Raja Feather Kelly

With Choreographer/Director Raja Feather Kelly and Video Artist Laura Snow students will create a devised dance-theatre production using the approach developed by Kelly's dance-theatre and media company the feath3r theory.