Theater & Music Theater

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Introduction to Theater Making is a working laboratory, which gives students hands-on experience with theater's fundamental building blocks—writing, design, acting, directing, and producing. Throughout the semester, students read, watch and discuss five different theater works. We will analyze how these plays and events are constructed and investigate their social and political implications. In-class artistic responses provide hands-on exploration as students work in groups to create and rehearse performances inspired by our course texts.

This course develops skills needed to successfully approach all acting styles and centers the actor as a lead creative artist. We will concentrate on how the voice, body, and imagination can build a performance. The goal is fluency in these tools, stronger stage presence, and collaborative rehearsal skills. Each class is made up of individual and ensemble-based physical and vocal exercises to bolster creative thinking and to ready the body and voice for performance. We will find inspiration in readings and short performance texts. Students will leave the semester with a strong foundation for further acting courses or projects in all genres.

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.

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. Particular emphasis will be placed on improving students' speaking skills through pronunciation and diction exercises. At the end of the semester, the course will culminate in the presentation of the students' work.

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.

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.

This course immerses students in the dynamic world of South African physical theatre. Through full-body training, improvisation, and ensemble work, students explore movement as protest, storytelling, and community-building. Inspired by Lecoq's teachings of the four core elements namely Earth, Air, Fire and Water; we will dive into building a performance vocabulary based on gesture, rhythm, and space. Students create original performances, using the body as the primary text, culminating in a showcase of devised physical theatre work.

What is the shared vocabulary of Movement and Light? How do we think about quality, timing, scale and form in both choreography and design? In this studio course we will explore light and movement to better understand how these elements inform each other in the creation of interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Students will take on the roles of both designer and choreographer, they will develop communications skills across artistic disciplines and question traditional power structures in their making process. This is a hands-on course with an emphasis on creating, revision, communication and collaboration across disciplines and cultures.

Plays produced in the United States from the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s to the Black Lives Matter Movement of the 2010s, we will identify and analyze various themes, approaches, and concerns within feminist plays. Employing script and dramaturgical analyses and performance techniques, students will learn how to contextualize plays from the race, gender, class, sexuality, and politics of the playwright and contextualize plays within their larger historical, social, and cultural milieus. In doing so, students will learn about the different lineages, politics, and aesthetics of feminist theatre.

This course offers an exploration of visual storytelling, research and dramaturgy, combined with a grounding in the practical, collaborative and inclusive skills necessary to create physical environments for live theater making. Students are mentored as designers, directors or project creators on realized projects in our theaters, or on advanced paper projects. Individualized class plans allow students to imagine physical environments for realized and un-realized productions, depending on their area of interest, experience and skill level. Students will see one or two shows off campus, typically in NYC, during the course of the semester.

This upper-level course will delve into the creation of new musical works for the stage, with an emphasis on music as an essential dramatic language. Students will explore the fundamentals of musical theater songwriting, as well as authentic musical theater writing processes including collaboration, adaptation, developing original story concepts, capturing musical ideas, engaging in dramaturgical discussions, sharing and receiving constructive criticism, rewriting, and presenting in-progress work. Following an introductory unit, students will utilize skills they are developing in class to create, workshop, and share a 3-person mini-musical.

Students will work with professional director Nikoo Mamdoohi and scholar Q-Mars Haeri in exploration and rehearsals towards performances of Mohammed Yaghoubi's play A Moment of Silence. The play investigates the impact of the Iranian revolution through the imagination of a writer and charts the recent history of the country through the lives of young people. Performing roles will be cast through Try On Theater process.