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.
This course introduces students to set and costume design for performance, exploring theater as a visual medium. Students will develop their ability to think about the physical environment (including clothing) as key components of story-telling and our understanding of human experience. Students will expand their vocabulary for discussing the visual world and work on their collaborative skills.
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 will explore the history and practice of musical theatre. Starting with the American musical's roots in minstrelsy and burlesque, the class will continue with Show Boat, the musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, and contemporary shows. Alongside the history of the musical, students will learn about the musical and theatrical tools of the genre, with an emphasis on directing and acting.
Song. Dance. Man. Woman. These are the basic components of the Broadway musical theatre. How have musical theatre artists, composers, lyricists, librettists, directors, choreographers, and designers worked with these building blocks to create this quintessentially American form of art and entertainment? This course will explore conventional and resistant performances of gender and sexuality in the Broadway musical since the 1940s. Why are musicals structured by love and romance?
A workshop course designed to support advanced student theater and music theater writers in exploring possible performance of their writing. Students will investigate their writing with a focus on collaboration, performance and production. Individualized creative assignments will be suggested for each student. Students will be introduced to methodologies for producing new works and for theatrical collaboration, and will discuss the writer's point of view in the rehearsal room, physical staging, working with performers and character development, and exploring visual storytelling.
This course is designed to provide students with the experience of doing social and historical research in the service of creating theatrical content, in collaboration with alumnae artists, around the fiftieth anniversary of undergraduate co-education at Princeton. Students will be paired with working artist alumnae, and together will begin research at the university archives, and be led in historical research and social analysis studying the lives of women who graduated from Princeton in the early years of undergraduate co-education.
This course provides students with a rigorous and challenging experience of creating theater under near-professional circumstances. A faculty or visiting professional director will lead the process. This involves an extensive rehearsal and technical rehearsal period, requiring more time than a typical student production. Students cast in the show or taking on major production roles such as stage manager or designer will receive course credit.