Theatre, Speech and Dance
TSDA 0014 - S01 Teaching Musical Theatre
A practical study in the methods of creating a full-scale production of a musical with elementary age students. Students enrolled in this course will get the opportunity to work hands on with teachers and students in the Providence Public School system (two days per week), culminating in a performance of a musical in a professional Providence theatre. S/NC only. Enrollment limited to 8; written permission required.
Levels: UndergraduateTSDA 0015 - S01 Musical Theatre Songwriting
A practical study in the creation of songs for the musical theatre. Students enrolled in this course will develop the skills necessary to write the music and lyrics for pieces intended for use in dramatic works. American and international musical theatre writers from the last eighty years will be studied and analyzed. Those enrolled may choose a focus of composition, lyric writing, or both. They will present and perform (or arrange performances of) new material (and rewritten material) each week to be examined by the class, culminating in a cabaret of new works. While beginners are encouraged to join, this is not a music theory course, and composers are expected to have a basic knowledge of theory (or self-taught skills).
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0030 - S01 & S02 Introduction to Acting and Directing
Explores basic acting/directing concepts from a variety of perspectives including the use of the actor's imagination/impulsivity in the creation of truthful, dramatic performance; the body, as a way of knowing and communicating knowledge; and the voice, as a means of discovering and revealing emotion/thought. Areas of emphasis vary with instructor. First year students only.
Please attend the introductory meeting for the Theatre, Speech and Dance Department for interview information. Interviews are conducted in the beginning of September after which placements for all sections in both fall and spring semesters will be decided. Applicants who miss the first interviews should contact the professor to schedule another time. Interview and written permission required.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0060 - S01 Introduction to Playwriting Workshop
A workshop for students with little or no previous playwriting experience: practicum and theory in various playwriting styles and techniques. Weekly writing assignments and analyses, and development of a major play. Playwriting courses are also available in the Department of English.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTA12: WORKSHOP IN PLAYWRITING II (Literary Arts 21 Sec. 3)
Interested students should register for Literary Arts 21 Sec. 3.TSDA 0020 - The Interview: Interpretation and Practice
Provides an introduction to the art and methodology of the Interview through participation and observation. The class will examine and "play" with published texts as well as mock interviews and exercises in order to help students develop confidence as participants in the form and in-depth understanding of its rhetorical strategies.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0210 - Voice for Public Communication
Explores and builds the vocal tools necessary to most effectively communicate in public. Assignments include speeches, oral interpretation of literature, and monologues. Attendance is mandatory.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0220 - S01 Persuasive Communication
Provides an introduction to the rhetorical arts of invention, organization, style and delivery, and helps students develop confidence in public speaking through the presentation of persuasive speeches. Primarily for seniors.
Limited to 18. Instructor's permission required. No permission will be given during pre-registration; interested students should sign up on the TA 220 waitlist (form is at http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Theatre_Speech_Dance/) and attend the first day of class. Attendance is mandatory.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0230 - S01 & S02 Acting
Focus on elements of dramatic analysis and interpretation as applied to the art of acting, and, by extension, directing. Monologues, scene study, and improvisation are basis for comment on individual problems. Reading of dramatic texts and theory. Substantial scene rehearsal commitment necessary. Attendance mandatory. Not open to first-year students. Interview in Spring. Submit letter of application and sign up for interview at Lyman Hall 202/204 by April 30th. Written permission required.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0250 - S01 Introduction to Technical Theatre and Production
This course is an introduction to the basic principles of stagecraft, lighting and sound technology and the different elements of theatrical design.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0260 - Stage Lighting
Use this?: Through the study of classical paintings, film noir, pencil drawing, poetry and script analysis students will learn how to compose and focus light so as to be able to express artistic mood and visionOr use this for 26? This course is an introduction to stage lighting.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, Undergraduate.TSDA 0270 - Clothing and the Human Experience: Costume History
A survey of the history and concepts of clothing with a strong emphasis on the art, artists, and political-social movements influencing each major period. Aims to give the theatre designer an increased knowledge of research approaches and resources. The application of historical materials to stage-worthy costumes are discussed. Lab required.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0280 - S01 Costume Design and the Theatre
Introduction to the various elements of costume design in all performance forms and media. Examines the role of the costume designer in relation to other theatre artists. Stresses research techniques and their application. Lab required.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0310 - S01 Beginning Modern Dance
Introduction to the art of movement. Focuses on building a common vocabulary based on ballet, vernacular forms, improvisation, Laban movement analysis, American modern dance, and the body therapies. Individual work is explored. One and one-half hours of class, four days a week.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0320 - S01 Dance Composition
Focuses on building the individual's creative voice. A movement vocabulary is developed from Western techniques (ballet, American modern dance, Laban/Bartenieff movement analysis, vernacular forms, space-harmony/movement physics, and the body therapies) along with group improvisations and collaboration with artists in other disciplines.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0330 - S01 Mande Dance, Music and Culture
Examines, by theory and praxis, the techniques and philosophy of dance in Mande culture. Each dance is taught as a highly codified language, with detailed phrasing structures, focus, center, variations of intonation, and qualitative choice. The specific ethnicities are studied in relationship to their music and dance variations. Participants must be physically fit.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0410 (To be re-numbered) - Persuasion and Public Controversy
Examines the role of persuasion in defining controversial public issues and producing social agreements and judgments. Includes units on classical, symbolic, and institutional perspectives on persuasion. The overall goal is to improve our critical consumption of public argumentation. No background in argument is required or assumed. Preference given to first- and second-year students.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0400 Topics (Freshman Seminars)
TSDA 0420 Latino/a Theatre and Performance (regular schedule TSDA 1670)
This course will be an introduction to Latino/a theatre concentrating on the following themes: borders, diaspora and exile, political and personal identities, sexuality, gender and violence, and latino re-imagination of U S and Latin American history. We will read and view Chicano/a, Cuban American and Nuyorican drama and performance art. First year students only. No prerequisites.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0430 – Political Theatre of the Americas (regular schedule TSDA 1680)
This course will explore the political theatre and performance in the Americas (Latin America, the US and Canada). The course employs the term political theatre in a broad sense, but will be concerned primarily with the use of performance in indigenous rights, queer rights, and gender equity campaigns; anti-globalization, anti-consumerist, anti-militarization and anti-corruption movements (including election fraud) and general critiques of socioeconomic inequity. We will examine the strategies used by actors and participants in theatrical performances, performance art, and political protests that use the tools of performance so as to explore the rich relationship between politics and performances. There are no prerequisites, but one course in either Latin American Studies is recommended. The course has no enrollment limit.TSDA 0500 Topics (for Graduate Students)
TSDA 0500A - Introduction to Dramaturgy
The class will focus on the practice, theory and history of theatrical dramaturgy. Dramatic action, stage storytelling craft and time design will be examined while also exploring and establishing alternative theories of perception and performance organization. Special attention will be paid to the dramaturg's relationship to the making of new work.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0500B - Family Drama in America
A concentrated study of a uniquely American genre, the course covers exemplary dramas by O'Neill, Miller, Williams, August Wilson, Wendy MacLeod, Naomi Wallace and other playwrights, screenings of films as Ordinary People and The Celebration, and a selection of critical readings from Freud, Bachelard and others. Topics include realism, domesticity and interior space, alcohol, architecture, prodigality and chiasmus.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0500C - S01 Staging Postdramatic Theatre
This course will study and stage post-dramatic theatre and plays. We will examine theatre that makes use of the trappings and tools of dramatic theatre while embracing new or other organizing principles in its desire to evoke and understand the human condition - our emotions, habits, habitats, happenings, narratives, perceptions, and subjectivities. The tradition of character/action driven drama has been deconstructed and deployed against it by innovative artists. The class will ask what may be gained, liberated, lost, or troubled, by these turns and strategies in what is commonly now categorized as postmodern theatre (interrupted structure, fragmented and overlapping characterizations and landscapes, evolving and forced language, body and dance disturbances, refusal of a continuum, etc.) We will ask what makes productive play and what defines a "play" in the theatre and how post-dramatic artists make theatre-play necessary and charged.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0500A - Introduction to Dramaturgy
The class will focus on the practice, theory and history of theatrical dramaturgy. Dramatic action, stage storytelling craft and time design will be examined while also exploring and establishing alternative theories of perception and performance organization. Special attention will be paid to the dramaturg's relationship to the making of new work.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTA91: STUDY AT RISD
Eligible for consideration for credit are courses in beginning architecture, apparel design, patterning, water color, and graphics. Specific courses cannot be named until after the RISD catalog is issued. A list of courses approved for cross-registration will be posted in the registrar's office and the theatre arts office. This credit is only valid for theatre arts concentrators.TSDA 0930: TOPICS (FOR THE ACTOR’S INSTRUMENT)
Advanced vocal and physical technique for performers. Development of the actor's voice and body with the goal of increasing their effective use as the means of artistic expression on the stage and, by extension, in the media. Emphasis will vary. Course may be repeated once for credit, with permission of TSDA concentration advisor. Prerequisite: TSDA 0230. Enrollment limited to 16. S/NC only.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0930A - S01 The Actor's Instrument: Voice
A complete and well-seasoned actor has the ability to perform with specificity and ease, both vocally and physically. Specificity comes from an integration of speech and movement technique. Ease is only possible when a mastery of technical skills reaches the point where the actor can integrate them without loss of spontaneity. This is a life long process that begins by learning the fundamentals of technique and the continual refinement of them on a personal level. The goal of this class is to give the student the fundamental techniques of voice and speech in relation to the body. In the event of over subscription, student will be enrolled on the basis of seniority. Prerequisite: TSDA0230. Enrollment limited to 16. S/NC only.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 0930B - S01 The Actor's Instrument: Improvisation
This course is designed to help students explore the development of relationships in theatrical space without the benefit (or confinement) of a script. By cultivating and developing basic performance skills including spontaneity, self-awareness, creative use of the body and mind, access to the imagination, and collaborativity, this course has applications for actors and other performers interested in all types of performance as well as those interested in improvised performance specifically.
One of the intentions of this course is to generate truthful, creative, and collaborative play, which can lead naturally to material that is funny or humorous as an organic outcome of the moment. However, "comedy" or "improv comedy," which has a different set of intentions altogether, will be strongly discouraged in this course. "Getting laughs," as a goal in and of itself, manufactures unproductive pressure to "be clever" or to "succeed" in ways that are inconsistent with truly creative engagement.
Levels: Extra Credit Graduate, UndergraduateTA98: CONTEMPORARY BRITISH AND AMERICAN DRAMA (English 79)
Interested students should register for the appropriate section of English 79.TA99: BLACK LAVENDER: EXPLORATIONS OF BLACK GAY AND LESBIAN THEMED PLAYS (Afro-American Studies 99) Interested students should register for Afro-American Studies 99.
TSDA 1000 - S01 Intermediate Dance
Designed to expand the student's knowledge of and proficiency in dance as an art form. Mainly a studio course, but selected readings, papers, critiques, and field trips are important components of the course. Prerequisite: TA 31 or the equivalent is required.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTA101: VOICES BENEATH THE VEIL (Afro-American Studies 111)
Interested students should register for Afro-American Studies 111.TA102: ADVANCED PLAYWRITING (Literary Arts 102 Sec. 02)
Interested students should register for Literary Arts 102 Sec. 02.TSDA 1030 - Rhetorical Foundations of Human Communication
Communication analysis using the rhetorical theories of Aristotle, Burke, and Foucault. Readings include primary texts, critical essays and persuasive messages for analysis. The course presents several perspectives on communication, develops the conceptual tools of rhetorical analysis, and considers the ways in which our symbolic behaviors shape our social lives. Seminar limited to 20 students.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1040 - Interpersonal Communication
This course introduces principles of interpersonal communication by using dyads and small groups. Topics include: the self in interpersonal communication, verbal messages, nonverbal messages, message reception, and interpersonal relationships. Attendance mandatory.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1100 - S01 Theatre Management
An overview of the process of theatrical performance from script selection to closing, with emphasis on production and stage management. In addition, the role of front-of-house operations and the various theatrical unions are studied as components of different types of theatre organizations, such as regional theatres, opera companies, Broadway shows, and university theatres. Prerequisite: TA 25.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1160 - S01 Style and Performance
For qualified sophomores, juniors, and seniors who offer TA 23 as a prerequisite. Period scene study and monologues are basis for comment on individual progress in acting/directing. Extensive reading of dramatic texts and historic research materials. Work in voice, movement, dialect, and poetic text. Substantial commitment necessary for preparation of class scenes. Attendance mandatory. Limited to 21. Instructor's permission required. No permissions will be given during pre-registration; interested students should sign up on the TA 1160 waitlist (form is at http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Theatre_Speech_Dance/) and attend the first day of class.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1190 - Character, Mask, and Action
An intensive study of issues central to the practice of acting and directing through exercises, monologues, and scene study. Vocal and physical training, along with various techniques designed to enhance credibility on the one hand and theatricality on the other, with particular attention to the relationships between self and other at play in the construction of character and narrative. Prerequisite: TSDA 0230.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1210 - S01 Solo Performance
An exploration of the challenges and rewards of performing solo. Students research, write, and perform a one-person show. Other projects may include performance art, stand-up comedy, and monologuing. Substantial time commitment. Attendance mandatory. For advanced students with appropriate background and experience. Submit proposal and resume in the fall, For guidelines and information contact Lowry_Marshall@brown.edu. Permission required in advance.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1220 - The Development of the American Theatre from Colonial Times to 1915
Concentrates on theatre production, actors, business management, architectural styles and changes, styles of acting, and selected representative plays. Suggested for concentrators in theatre arts, American civilization, and American literature.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1230 - S01 Performance Theory and Theatre Histories
This course offers an introduction to basic texts in Performance Studies applied to the study of ancient and medieval theatre histories in global perspective. Students will learn fundamentals of performance theory while studying the histories of ancient Greek and Roman theatre, Medieval European ritual, Indian Sanskrit drama and theatrical form, Yoruban traditional performance, and modes of cross-cultural comparison.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1240 - S01 Performance Historiography and Theatre History
This course will provide an introduction to Performance history and historiography by concentrating on analysis of dramatic texts, theatrical events, festival performances and "performative" state and religious ceremonies from 1500-1850. We will explore incidents in Asia, the Americas and Europe as related to state consolidation, colonization, incipient nationalism(s), urbanization, cultural negotiation, and the representational practices the enacted.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1250 - S01 The Development of Twentieth-Century Theatre in the West
Focuses on the agendas and legacies of key figures and movements in the development of 20th Century Western theatre, from approximately 1870 to 1970. Examines the strategies of naturalism, surrealism, expressionism; the search for an effective poetry of the stage; concepts of character and dramatic action; the relationship of the "legitimate stage" to popular entertainment forms and of Western projects to Eastern examples.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1260 - Origin and Development of Popular Forms of Entertainment
Major forms of English and American popular entertainment are included, such as circus, carnival, dime museum, wild west show, medicine show, vaudeville, music hall, British pantomime, minstrel show, burlesque, and popular theatre.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1270 - Non-Western Theatre and Performance
Considers examples of festival theatre that deploy masks or strategies related to masking and asks why transformative play is so important in these holiday performances. Examples include: New Guinean pay-back ceremonies, civic festivals of Bali and ancient Greece, Yoruba Gelede festivals, and contemporary passion plays in Iran, India, and Vermont. Readings from various academic disciplines. Extensive use of films, slides, audio, and video.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280 –TOPICS IN THEATRE STUDIES
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280A - Acting for the Camera
Introduces students to theories of acting for camera to develop the practical skills required for film and television performance. Attention will be paid to the ways in which stage techniques can be adapted for use in media performance. Students will prepare scenes and monologue material written specifically for film and television.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280B - The Creative Ensemble
Levels: UndergraduateTSDA 1280C - Advanced Stage Lighting
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280D - Contemplative Practice and Post Modern Dance
This course offers an approach to post-modern dance technique and choreography grounded in principles derived from Asian contemplative practice. Employing visualization and energy direction techniques derived from Tai Chi and other disciplines, students will learn a concept of movement beyond movement. Students will also learn an internally-based approach to post-modern choreography using the I Ching as a creative tool.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280E - Feminism and Drama
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280F - History of Scenic Design
A survey of the history and concepts of scenic design with emphasis on the art, artists and the social/political movements influencing the major period. Aims to give the designer a foundation in research approaches. Also to provide an examination of stylistic approaches and innovations in the context of the historical period.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280G - Improbable Partnering and Exceptional Physical Interactions: Experimental Movement Theater
Explore ideas and acquire tools for developing exceptional human interactions onstage and improbable partnering defined through movement. The aim is to build skill and confidence creating complex relationships between couples and groups. Class consists of movement training, discussions, and rehearsals culminating in the creation of a dance-theater piece performed in the Spring Dance Concert.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280I - Intermediate Set Design
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280J - Introduction to Dramaturgy
Seminar in the theory and practice of theatrical dramaturgy, with a particular emphasis on new play development in the contemporary American theatre. Examines basic historical theory, contemporary theatrical texts, production dramaturgy, and the role of the dramaturg in the rehearsal and development process.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280K - S01 Intensive Ballet and Jazz Techniques
Explores and builds the necessary physical tools to communicate articulately and expressively in the ballet and jazz vocabularies. Select readings and video showings. Written journal required. Final presentation. Prerequisite: Intermediate level in any dance technique. S/NC.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280L - Modern American Drama
Modern American Drama is a broad overview of the field, from O'Neill through Kushner and Parks. Particular attention will be paid to the theatrical, social and performance context of the plays under study, although the plays themselves will be the only assigned texts.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280M - Music Theatre and Opera Scenes Performance
Music theatre as a genre; analysis musically and dramatically for performance. Provides instruction in basic techniques of singing/acting. Basic audition techniques practiced; students present one song each from opera and musical comedy genres, and present staged scenes from a variety of musical theatre genres. Students must be studying voice concurrently with workshop. Selected by audition.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280N - New Theories for a Baroque Stage
This course re-conceptualizes and re-models seventeenth-century "baroque" theatricality through the lenses of Russian formalist theory, phenomenology, (post-)surrealist literature and objects, Oulipian literature of constraints, Deleuzian theory, ontological-hysteric theatre, film, etc.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280O - S01 New Works/World Traditions: Innovation and Tradition
From research to performance, develops new dance theater pieces that are rooted in Mande dance and American dance. Includes study with Mande, American, and European artists in building a body of repertory for the concert stage. By audition.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280P - Performance Art and Architecture
This class will explore 20th-century avant-garde or experimental theatre, architecture, poetry and art movements that meet under the rubric performance art. From futurism to retro pomo homo, Onon to Orian, spam to slam, situationism to site-specific theatre, life/art and body art, etc. Reading the dematerialized body in digital arts, we'll ask: what's "new" about new media. Includes some performance work.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280Q - Reciting Sites: Performance, Ethnography, (Dis) Identification
This course will explore performance in the context of localities, and ask about the ways in which the personal meets the political in geographies of enactment. We will draw from ethnography, performance theory, and theories of identify formation and negotiation.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280R - Repertory of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Dance Masters
Studio course focusing on learning excerpts from repertories of such dance masters as William Forsythe, Jiri Kylian, Bill T. Jones, Jose Limon, Jack Cole, Talley Beatty, Lester Horton, Pearl Primus, and and Paul Taylor. Effort analysis, exploration of the creative process of these artists, and historical and cultural contextualization. to advanced dancers with all technical backgrounds.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280S - S01 Seminar in Theatre and Neuroscience
Investigates biological bases of performative behavior in relation to findings in cognitive neuroscience. Topics to be investigated include: jokes, dreams, creativity, and neural networks; the role of memory in theatre; how emotions are displayed and communicated; synesthesia and the arts; biological constraints on narrative; altered states of consciousness and performance; the relationship of neural representations of the body to archetypes.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280U - The Clown and the Comic World
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280V - Theatre and Conquest in the Americas, from Cortes to NAFTA
Explores the intimate relationship between theatre and conquest in the Americans as contained in missionary accounts, plays, performances and visual art from Cortés arrival to the present. Students will analyze plays and performances that stage the Spanish Conquest, consider the theatrical procedures of the conquest and examine theatrical representation as a methodology of conquest in the Americas.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280X - Twentieth-Century Design and Construction
Focuses both on design and the history of couture clothing. Students examine historic designs and create new ideas. Each student chooses a garment to be realized. Students work in pairs as designer/cutter draper to actualize an original garment. Cost of materials varies depending on the design and the fabrics chosen.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1280Z - The Expressive Chorus
A physical exploration in the dynamics of the ensemble and the individual performer's development of the heightened awareness necessary to play in that realm. Physicality, sound, and space explored as terrain for the expressive chorus. Rigorous participation. Group assignments culminate in informal showing of the work.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1281D - The Actor and U.S. Cultural History
This course connects the history of the "American Actor" to broad themes in U.S. social and cultural history from the colonial period to the present. Subjects include: John Wilkes Booth, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Cho, political activism/protest, war and anti-war efforts, among others. Significant independent project interpreting popular performance in its social and historical context expected.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1281E - Freakshows: Racialization in U.S. Performance
This course examines performances (theatrical and everyday) of racialization through the lens of "freakshows." How has "race" been produced as aberrant and/or spectacular in U.S. performance, and how does that legacy of "freakishness" continue to shape our understanding of race and racial difference?
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1281F - Twenty First Century Drama
This course is designed to familiarize students with contemporary American playwriting from 2000-2005. We will explore how these plays reflect our current moment with attention to conceptions of gender, sexuality, national identity, trauma and memory. Playwrights may include Jorge Cortinas, Sara Ruhl, Tony Kushner, Juliana Francis, Sabina Berman and Carl Hancock Rux.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1281G - S01 Caribbean Culture and Performance
Utilizing ethnography, history, media and Caribbean and performance theory, this course considers how different kinds of Caribbean cultural performance figure as "narratives" of difference and unity across a vast socio-cultural terrain where notions of race, class, gender, national and global belonging are engaged. We will analyze festivals, vernacular social forms, stage/commercial performance and everyday cultural performance in a Caribbean context.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1281H - S01 Black Diaspora, Dance and Vernacular Embodiments
How does staging the folk, popular and vernacular work? Using a diasporic and transnational lens, we will explore traditions of black dance across the 20th and early 21st centuries and how they come to be embodied on the concert stage. Historical and theoretical readings on African American, African and Caribbean dance will be supplemented with a practicum experimenting with translating social dance forms to staged environments. Topics may include folk, spirituals, dancehall, hip hop and house dance styles. Students are encouraged to bring their own personal social dance vocabularies to our investigation. Enrollment limited to: 12.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateT128 Sec. 02 Performing Art and Architecture
This class will explore 20th-century avant-garde or experimental theatre, architecture, poetry, and art movements that meet under the broad rubric performance art. Futurism to retro pomo homo, spam to slam, situationism to site-specific theatre, life/art to body art and back. Reading the dematerialized body in digital arts we'll ask: what's "new" about new media?TA128 Sec. 03 Advanced Stage Lighting
Advanced study of theory and practice of theatrical lighting.TA128 Sec. 04 Introduction to Dramaturgy
Seminar in the theory and practice of theatrical dramaturgy, with a particular emphasis on new play development in the contemporary American theatre. Examines basic historical theory, contemporary theatrical texts, production dramaturgy, and the role of the dramaturg in the rehearsal and development process.TA128 Sec. 05: 20th Century Design and Construction
This course focuses both on design and the history of couture clothing. Students will examine characteristic design ideas and from these ideas will create original designs based on ideas from the past. From these sketches, a collection will be chosen. From that collection, each student will choose a design she/he would like to see realized. Students will work in pairs as designer/cutter draper to actualize an original garment. Cost of materials varies depending on the design and the fabrics chosen.TA128 Sec. 06: Music Theatre Workshop
Music theatre as a genre; analysis musically and dramatically for performance. Provides instruction in basic techniques of singing/acting. Basic audition techniques practiced; students will present one song each from opera, and musical comedy genres; and present staged scenes from a variety of musical theatre genres. Students must be studying voice concurrently with workshop. Students selected by audition.TA128 Sec. 07: Repertory of 20th and 21st Century Dance Masters
Studio course focusing on learning excerpts from repertories of such dance masters as William Forsythe, Jiri Kylian, Bill T. Jones, Jose Limon, Jack Cole, Talley Beatty, Lester Horton, Pearl Primus, and Paul Taylor. Effort analysis, exploration of the creative process of these artists, and historical and cultural contextualization. Open to advanced dancers with all technical backgrounds.TA128 Sec. 08: New Works/World Traditions: Innovation and Tradition
Research to performance, course develops new dance theater pieces rooted in Made dance, music, and culture. Study with Mande artisans and scholars from Mali, West Africa, and America. Research in journals, praise songs, children's stories, drumming, mask work, interviews, films, dances, and oral histories of the Bamana, Mandinka, Minianka, Bobo, Khassonke, and Dogon people of Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso. By audition.TA 128 Sec. 09: Anatomy of a Violet Act: Stage Combat in Context
This course will explore the history and traditions of stage combat from page to stage with the goal also of understanding the creative process involved in staging acts of violence from theatrical literature and thus learning more about one of the most disturbing aspects of the human condition.TA128 Sec. 10: New Theories of the Baroque Stage
This course re-conceptualizes and re-models seventeenth-century "baroque" theatricality through the lenses of Russian formalist theory, phenomenology, (post-)surrealist literature and objects, Oulipian literature of constraints, Deleuzian theory, ontological-hysteric theatre, film, etc. Enrollment is limited to 20 students. Written permission required.TA 128-27 Becoming American(s): Race, Space and Genre, in US Theatre
1800-1924:
Explores the articulation of American identities--historical, cultural and
racial within play texts and theatrical productions 1800-1924. Primary focus is
on the intersection between emergent national narratives and policies (i.e. Manifest
destiny, Indian Removal), genre (melodrama, tragedy), the cultural identities they
create, inscribe and/or transform(Native American, Spanish American etc.) and their various performance spaces in the US.TA128 (27): The Actor and U.S. Cultural History
This course connects the history of the "American Actor" to broad
themes in U.S. social and cultural history from the colonial period to
the present. Subjects include: John Wilkes Booth, Ronald Reagan,
Margaret Cho, political activism/protest, war and anti-war efforts,
among others. Significant independent project interpreting popular
performance in its social and historical context expected.TA128 (32): Race and Ethnicity in 20th Century U.S. Popular Performance
This course scrutinizes the centrality of race and ethnicity in a broad
range of plays, musicals, films and other performance genres. Using
theatrical, filmic and televisual texts as historical documents of
performance practice, this course considers the various ways that
performance has enacted or enlivened shifting ideas about ethnicity and
race throughout the twentieth century. Weekly screenings required. Instructor: Brian Herrera [MW 2:30-3:50 – Lyman Hall 007]TA 128: 12 Theatre and Conquest in the Americas, from Cortés to NAFTA:
Explores the intimate relationship between theatre and conquest in the
Americas as contained in missionary accounts, plays, performances and visual art from Cortés arrival to the present. Students will analyze plays and performances that stage the Spanish Conquest, consider the theatrical procedures of the conquest and examine
theatrical representation as a methodology of conquest in the Americas.
(Th 4-6:20 Lyman 219)TA128 Sec. 11 Seminar in Theatre and Neuroscience
Investigates the biological bases of performative behavior, imagery, and iconography. Topics under consideration include: jokes, dreams, creativity and neural networks; the role of memory on the theatrical replication and communication of emotion; trance, shamanic imagery, and neural processes; and the iconography of sensation in relation to the somatic structure of the limbic system and the theory of archetypes.TA 128 Sec. 18 Gender, Race, and Performance: Theatres of Feminism
This class will chart the varied developments of feminist theatre and performance practices as they intersect (or diverge) with feminist, race critical, and queer theories. The space between theories of embodiment and embodiment of theory will be explored.128 Sec. 19 Reciting Sites: Performance, Ethnography, (Sis)Identification
This course will explore performance in the context of localities, and ask about the ways in which the personal meets the political in geographies of enactment. We will draw from ethnography, performance theory, and theories of identify formation and negotiation. Written permission.TSDA 1290 - S01 Advanced Costume Design - 25145
Costume design and rendering approaches to various genres of performing arts, including opera, musicals, and dance. Designed for the serious student of theatrical design. Advanced work on rendering emphasizing character, practicality, line, form, and color. Lab required.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1300 - Advanced Scenic Design and Technical Production
The examination of the working relationship between designer and director. An emphasis on the design abilities needed to communicate varied visual approaches. Developing the creative, theatrical vocabulary needed to turn a director's vision into a fully articulated set design. A substantial amount of plays will be read and researched. Drafting and model rendering techniques will be applied. Instructor approval required prior to registration.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1310 - S01 Advanced Modern Dance - 10408
Designed for dancers who have attained an advanced level in any dance technique. The purpose is to help such dancers come to understand both intellectually and kinesthetically the diversity of one of the few indigenous American art forms: modern dance.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1320 - Choreography
Designed for those who have had some experience in composition and would like to work, under supervision, on making dances. Emphasizes making full-length dances for small and large groups and demands a sophisticated use of space, dynamics, and music. Further emphasis on viewing and interpreting classic and contemporary works from a choreographic viewpoint.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1330 - S01 Dance History: The 20th Century - 14687
An exploration of the major figures and trends in modern dance. While the main focus of the course is on American Dance, attention is given to earlier European and other dance traditions that have contributed to the American dance heritage. May be of particular interest Americanists, art historians, dancers, and theatre majors.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1340 - S01 Dance Styles - 21758
This course focuses on the diverse styles, techniques and movement theories of Modern Dance. The students will practice the techniques and styles and will also study biographical material, view films, and attend live performances when possible.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1350 - S01 Dance Performance and Repertory - 10411
Half course credit each semester. A study of dance repertory through commissioned new works, reconstruction, coaching, rehearsal, and performance. Guest artists and consultants from the American Dance Legacy Institute. Enrollment is by audition. Limited to skilled dancers.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1360 - S01 Dance Performance and Repertory - 21759
A study of dance repertory offered through commissioned new works, reconstruction, coaching, rehearsal, and performance. The course will explore the phenomenology of dance, audience-performer connection, theatre production and dance criticism, among other topics. Enrollment is by audition. Limited to skilled dancers.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1370 - West African Traditions in American Dance
Traces the roots of American vernacular and concert stage forms from West Africa through the Middle Passage, the Caribbean, South America, the southern delta regions, and up into the urban centers. Students have the opportunity to study West African dance, Caribbean dance, Bahian dance, and American jazz dance.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1380 - Mise en Scene
A reconstruction of the idea of a stage and a frame on the evidence of theory, novels, plays, and especially films-the seen and the unseen-using the organizing strategies of mystery. Art's "impossible" brokering of the real and the representational in a dialectic of space is considered from a multiplicity of perspectives in diverse works.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1400 - Advanced Performance
An investigation into abstract and nonlinear modes of performance, working from fragmentary and recombined narrative, dramatic, and found sources. Seeks to evolve a conceptual approach to performance of the individual actor-director-writer through supervised and independent exercises and projects. Prerequisite TA 23. For juniors and especially seniors.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1410 - Lyric Stage, 1600 to the Present
An examination and analysis of the history, style, content, and stage of opera, operetta, ballad opera, and musical comedy with an emphasis on the fluctuating relationships between the theatrical and musical aspects of each production.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1430 - Russian Theatre and Drama
An overview of Russian theatre and drama from the 18th century to the present. Emphasis on plays as texts and historical documents, and on theatrical conditions, productions, and innovations. All readings are in English. Russian area studies concentrators are encouraged to enroll.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1440 - Seminar on Selected Figures in Theatre and Drama
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1440A - George Bernard Shaw
This seminar examines the dramatic writings of George Bernard Shaw in the context of 19th-century theatre practice and techniques. Contemporaries of Shaw will be read and discussed as well. Students will use the major Shaw collection at the John Hay Library.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1520 - S01 Seminar in Theatre Arts - 10414
Seminar designed primarily for senior theatre arts concentrators, required during Semester VII. Topics focus on career planning and theatre arts subjects not dealt with in other courses.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1630 - Performativity and the Body: Staging Gender, Staging Race
Bodies come in many shapes, colors, and sizes. In performances practices, the body is an instrument sometimes used to "talk back" to the ways shapes, colors, and sizes are haunted by histories of racialization, sexual discrimination, and other biases. This class explores various feminist and race critical theories in tandem with work of performance artists, visual artists, and theatre artists.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1640 - Theatre and Conquest in Greater Mexico: From Cortes to NAFTA
Explores the intimate relationship between theatre and conquest in the Americans as contained in missionary accounts, plays, performances and visual art from Cortés arrival to the present. Students will analyze plays and performances that stage the Spanish Conquest, consider the theatrical procedures of the conquest and examine theatrical representation as a methodology of conquest in the Americas.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1650 - 21st Century American Drama
This course is designed to familiarize students with contemporary American playwriting from 2000-2005. We will explore how these plays reflect our current moment with attention to conceptions of gender, sexuality, national identity, trauma and memory. Playwrights may include Jorge Cortinas, Sara Ruhl, Tony Kushner, Juliana Francis, Sabina Berman and Carl Hancock Rux.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1670 - Latino/a Theatre and Performance
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1690 - Performance, Art, and Everyday Life
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTA181: BRITISH AND AMERICAN DRAMA TO WORLD WAR II (English 183)
Interested students should register for the appropriate section of English 183.TSDA 1830 - Group Research Project
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1840 - Group Research Project
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTA188: CONTEMPORARY BRITISH AND AMERICAN DRAMA (English 189 Sec. 01)
Interested students should register for English 189 Sec. 01.TA189: INDEPENDENT READING AND RESEARCH
Intensive reading and research on selected topics arranged in terms of special needs and interests of the student. A written proposal must be submitted to the instructor and the chairperson of the theatre arts department before the project can be approved.TSDA 1970 - S01 Independent Reading and Research - 10423
Intensive reading and research on selected topics arranged in terms of special needs and interests of the student. A written proposal must be submitted to the instructor and the chair of the theatre arts department before the project can be approved. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 1990 - S01 Senior Honors Thesis Preparation - 10447
To be taken by all students accepted into the theatre arts honors program. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTA200: PERFORMANCE THEORY (Anthropology 281)
Interested students should register for Anthropology 281.TSDA 2100 - S01 Seminar in Dramatic and Theatrical Theory
Theory of drama from Greeks to Grotowski. Raises questions that are crucial to thinking about directing and acting in the theatre-the nature of theatrical space, political and aesthetic implications of mimesis and narrative form, and the role of theatre in society.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 2120 - Revolution as a Work of Art
A study of Russian revolutionary culture and new personhood, ca. 1905-1930, with readings from Russian fiction, philosophy, art criticism, dramatic and political theory, and cultural and theatre history. Topics include the revolution of the spirit, the culture of the future, iconography and spectacle, charismatic authority, and revolutionary terror. For graduate students and qualified juniors and seniors. All readings are in English. Those who can may read some materials in Russian.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTA 219: PERFORMANCE AND PERFORMATIVITY (English 219 Sec. 01)
Interested students should register for English 219 sec. 01).TSDA 2200: GRADUATE SEMINAR IN THEATRE HISTORY
TSDA 2200A - Abstraction and Resistance
A study of the uses of abstraction in modernist and postmodern theatre and drama, film, painting, and narrative fiction and of the engagement of resistance as a performative strategy for conceptualizing such nominally unframed and alogical texts. The works of selected theatre directors and playwrights, philosophers and theorists, novelists, filmmakers, and artists are examined and discussed.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 2200B - American Theatre, Beginning to the Rise of Unions in the Twentieth Century
TSDA 2200C - History and Theory of Acting in the West
An investigation of changing styles, theories and performance techniques with some attention to the overall history of acting, starting with the Greeks, the emphasis will be on English-speaking actors from the 18th century to the present. For graduate students and qualified juniors and seniors.TSDA 2200D - Seminar in Futurist Performance
The course will explore the theatrical work of the Italian art movement founded by F.T. Marinetti in the early part of the Twentieth Century. Areas covered will include the theoretical positions expounded in the early manifestos, text-based dramas of the Futurist Synthetic Theatre, the political Action Theatre, and performances in non-theatrical venues. Study willfocus especially on key figures of the movement (e.g. Balla, Dupero, Prampolini).TSDA 2200E – Historiography
TSDA 2200G - Performance, Photography, and the Live
What are the limits of approaching live performance as essentially ephemeral? What are the limits of habitually considering image capture to document time gone by, or exhibit "death at work" (as Cocteau wrote of cinema)? What are the limits of parsing the documentary and the theatrical as if those categories, and the media they imply, were mutually exclusive?
What is at stake in the lines drawn between media histories and theatre histories that account for the "still"? What is the bodily labor of the pose? Or the temporality of held gesture? Questions such as these will be posed across media as we explore histories of photography and tableaux vivant, as well as critical theories in performance studies, visual studies, art history, media studies, and theatre studies. We will look at images documenting violence, images re-presenting documented violence, and violence to documentary images in the course of a broader conversation about the "life" or "liveness" of the still.
Dramatic and Theatrical Theory
Theory of drama from Greeks to Grotowski. Raises questions that are crucial to thinking about directing and acting in the theatre--the nature of theatrical space, political implications of mimesis and narrative form, and the role of theatre in society. Enrollment limited to 20. Written permission required. J. EmighPerformance and Photography
The word 'theatricality' was first used in the decade photography was invented. This class will explore theatricality, liveness, memory, repetition, and reenactment in representation. We will read theorists and historians such as Barthes, Benjamin, Krauss, Deleuze and Taussig as well as artist (and incidents such as Abu Ghraib) to explore the tangled space between the 'still' and 'still alive.' Enrollment limited to 20. Written permission required. R. SchneiderTheoretical Understandings Of/For Theatre and Performance
Selected theoretical constructs will be examined in relationship to the ways in which they effect study and creation of theatrical and performative events. Limited to 20. Written permission required. S. GolubTA280: GRADUATE LEVEL INDEPENDENT READING AND RESEARCH
A program of intensive reading and research on selected topics arranged in terms of special needs and interest of the student.TA289: PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION PREPARATION
For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the Registration Fee to continue active enrollment while preparing for a preliminary examination.TSDA 2970 - S01 Comprehensive Examination Preparation - 14907
For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the registration fee to continue active enrollment while preparing for a preliminary examination.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 2980 - S01 Graduate Level Independent Reading and Research
A program of intensive reading and research on selected topics arranged in terms of special needs and interests of the student. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 2981 - S01 Master's Thesis Research
Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateTSDA 2990 - S01 Thesis Preparation
For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the registration fee to continue active enrollment while preparing a thesis.
Levels: Graduate, UndergraduateRELATED COURSES: Courses in dramatic literature and in the relationship of theatre to culture offered in other academic departments (such as the Departments of Anthropology, Classics, Comparative Literature, East Asian Studies, English, French Studies, German Studies, Hispanic Studies, Italian Studies, Music, and Religious Studies and the Afro-American Studies Program and the Center for Modern Cultures and Media) may be taken for credit towards a concentration or a Master of Arts degree in theatre, speech and dance with the approval of the appropriate advisor. Other courses related to theatre, speech and dance and allied media may also be approved for concentration credit.