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.

Many Latin American performance artists have reimagined the use of theater to challenge social and political structures. Boal's 'Theater of the Oppressed', Teatro Yuyachkani, TiT, Teatro Trono, and more, challenge, subvert, and manipulate classic Eurocentric theater perspectives to spur awareness and action in their audiences. Through readings, discussion, viewing, writing, improv and play we will explore these artists' work, theatrical origins, and socio/geopolitical contexts. We will apply inspired tactics to our own work. Spanish not required. Acting experience not required. Willingness to play and take risks is integral to class.

We will explore the foundations of black performance theory, drawing from the fields of performance studies, theater, dance, and black studies. Using methods of ethnography, archival studies, and black theatrical and dance paradigms, we will learn how scholars and artists imagine, complicate, and manifest various forms of blackness across time and space. In particular, we will focus on blackness as both lived experience and as a mode of theoretical inquiry.

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.

In this studio course open to all, we will dive into experiences in which body and language meet. We'll think about these from aesthetic, cultural, political, medical, personal, and philosophical perspectives. We'll explore language from, in, around, and about (our) bodies.

This course examines how Deaf culture and American Sign Language (ASL) shape theater through visual storytelling, physical expression, and vaudeville traditions. Students study ASL children's plays, international visual theater, and one-act plays while engaging with guest Deaf artists. Since students in Princeton's ASL program are still developing fluency, the course helps hone expressive and receptive signing skills through rehearsal, performance, and devising. The semester culminates in the Visual Vaudeville Project, an ensemble showcase highlighting the dynamic interplay of language, culture, and performance.

This course is for all students, whether you've never danced before or have lots of experience in any style. We'll develop a community together, gather tools from multiple dance and somatic forms. We'll learn to create structures that support presence, trust, and playfulness in the unknown. We'll dive into personal, social, and performance practices, think about improvisation as both end in itself and a key aspect of creative processes in other art forms and fields as diverse as science, philosophy, and religion. On Wednesdays we'll build our skills and resources; on Fridays we'll put them to use in a co-created improv jam.

This workshop rehearses the critical and compositional skills relevant to the task of writing about live performance. We will engage a variety of critical and creative modes to research and compose original works of performance criticism, performance documentation, and other modes of writing about performance. We will survey the contemporary and historical ecosystems that have shaped the methods, theories, and practice of performance criticism in the United States, while also considering the recurring disruptions of these systems coming not only from artists and audiences, but also changes the technologies and economics of arts writing.

Once described by Samuel Johnson as both irrational and exotic, opera has long fascinated audiences with its curious mixture of drama, music, visual spectacle, and song. In this course we delve into all of the genre's marvelous eccentricities: its use of classical, early modern, and modern literature; the role of star singers in shaping the genre; the presentation of gender and sexuality, race, class, and age; opera production, past and present; and operatic-style entertainments from other cultures (including Peking Opera). Students will have the opportunity to attend a performance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

This course is an embodied exploration of Hip Hop feminism as scholarship, praxis, and performance. At once a multimedia research lab and a performance workshop, the course positions students as both critical investigators and creative practitioners. Students will engage the contributions of women in Hip Hop including MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Lauryn Hill, Bahamadia, Eternia, and more.

A continuation of work begun in Introductory Playwriting, in this class, students will complete either one full-length play or two long one-acts (40-60 pages) to the end of gaining a firmer understanding of characterization, dialogue, structure, and the playwriting process. In addition to questions of craft, an emphasis will be placed on the formation of healthy creative habits and the sharpening of critical and analytical skills through reading and responding to work of both fellow students and contemporary playwrights of note.

The most frequently produced musicals are revivals. On Broadway, at universities, at high schools, community theatres, and summer camps, most shows that are performed have been performed before. As musical theater scholars, how do we think about, research, analyze, and interpret revivals? As musical theater artists, how do we navigate revivals and the history of a show? In this seminar, we'll explore the scholarship and the practice of musicals' afterlives, discussing theories of revivals and examining and re-conceptualizing shows. Aspiring directors, music directors, designers, and performers can put your ideas about revivals into practice.

Over the course of the semester, novice and experienced student artists create an ensemble-devised performance of theater or immersive art, and test their project against mock eco-centric challenges from the field. Students will experiment with ecological impacts of producing theater and growing ecological challenges of presenting public art. Students will foster whimsy and innovative thinking to create art-centered solutions. The project will have an open studio performance. Students will also pitch an achievable climate-conscious solution to a challenge they see on campus.

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 Racine, Feydeau, and Lagarce. The course will place emphasis on refining and improving students' acting and speaking skills. It will culminate in the public presentation of the students' "Travaux" at the end of the semester.

This course explores the music and its role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). We will focus on: themes of genre hybridity, intertextuality, orchestration, emotional storytelling; how film scores shape character, narrative, and identity. Students will engage with foundational readings in film music theory and will develop critical listening skills through score analysis and discussions. This course is divided into two parts (the "Infinity Saga" and selected "Multiverse Saga" films up to 2023).

How do you tell a story about climate change that dynamically engages its audiences without overwhelming or boring them? We will explore this question and others by making an original work of investigative theater and through readings and discussions. Employing the methods of investigative theater, the class will create a script or performance text by pursuing a creative inquiry into some aspect of climate change. Each student will do creative research including interviews; collaborate on a script by editing and writing; and work with a team to create a final presentation of the show. Previous theater experience not required.

An introduction to the art and craft of lighting design for the stage and an exploration of light as a medium for expression. Students will develop an ability to observe lighting in the world and on the stage; to learn to make lighting choices based on text, space, research, and their own responses; to practice being creative, responsive and communicative under pressure and in company; to prepare well to create under pressure using the designer's visual toolbox; and to play well with others-working creatively and communicating with directors, writers, performers, fellow designers, the crew and others.

This course introduces students to physical acting techniques, which unleash playfulness and expand expressive potential in performance. Games, improvisation, acting exercises and theater masks cultivate freedom, joy, courage, and stage presence. An exploration of the rules of story through movement analysis, along with embodied approaches to text and practical methods to creating characters, prepare for work on monologues and scenes.

Live Art, also known as Performance Art, integrates several disciplines: dance, drama, and visual art as well as architecture, anthropology, sociology, and political science. This course includes classes in creative movement, voice and text, improvisation, mixed media, and technology in performance practice. Composition of the site-specific works provides experiences of space and architecture. Theoretical perspectives consider the principles of interdisciplinary practices from early twentieth century and will focus on socio-political contexts that Live Art historically responds to, giving this innovative practice immediacy and relevance.

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?

From Cross Colours to boom boxes, the 1990s was loud and colorful. But alongside the fun, black people in the U.S. dealt with heightened criminalization and poverty codified through the War on Drugs, welfare reform, HIV/AIDS, and police brutality. We will study the various cultural productions of black performers and consumers as they navigated the social and political landscapes of the 1990s. We will examine works growing out of music, televisual media, fashion, and public policy, using theories from performance and cultural studies to understand the specificities of blackness, gender, class, and sexuality.

The course is designed to encourage the development of directors for theater and music theater. The course will incorporate a strong practical element, giving student directors the opportunity to explore and hone their own practices, developing useful and appropriate style and language as they move forward in their work as young directors.

The course is an acting intensive offering students the opportunity to engage in a rigorous rehearsal process with a professional theater director. The course emphasizes exploration and embodiment of character, and culminates in a staged production in the Berlind Theater. This semester, the topic of The Comeuppance by Tony and Pulitzer prize winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins '06 will be explored—a comedy about isolation and nostalgia, following a group of friends preparing for their twentieth high school reunion.