Graduate Studies

Graduate Students in Theatre and Performance Studies at Brown University benefit from the flexibility of Brown’s graduate system that allows opportunities to take classes throughout the university as well as with distinguished field faculty. The libraries at Brown provide exceptional resources for research and house several special collections, among them the Harris Collection of American Drama and Poetry; the Smith Collection of Conjuring, Magicana, and Popular Entertainment Forms, and the Albert-Bernard Shaw Collection. A consortium with Trinity Repertory Company and a developing collaboration with Rhode Island School of Design make the Brown environment alive with opportunities in the performing arts. The interdisciplinary field of performance studies similarly takes advantage of a diversity of programs and resources both on campus and in greater Providence. A dynamic theatre season at Brown and a slate of courses with significant strength in theatre history, performance theory, cultural studies, and world performance allow a student to determine the right mix of theatre studies and performance studies for his or her particular project.

Advising faculty, in consideration of a student’s strengths, needs, and specific areas of interest, work with each student to determine a student’s course of study. The graduate program is highly selective and that means that the ratio of graduate student to faculty favors student access to faculty – a strength that cannot be underestimated.

The Ph.D. program offer a broad-based intellectual, critical, and aesthetic foundation along with opportunities for frequent collaboration among scholars, actors, directors, playwrights, designers, and performance and new media artists -- in the classroom and in production. Graduate students may serve as dramaturgs and literary-historical-performance theory resource people on faculty and M.F.A. creative projects, or graduate students may create such projects themselves. One of the things that makes Brown’s graduate program unique is the close collaboration with the M.F.A. programs in directing and acting through the Brown/Trinity Consortium as well as close collaboration with the Brown M.F.A. playwriting program, the premier program in the country. The intersection of these programs means that creativity and scholarship are never far apart – indeed the faculty in each of these programs are dedicated to a rigorous exploration of the intersections between history, theory, practice, and artist-scholarship. The Speech and Anthropology wings of the venture further contribute to broader cultural and critical concerns. The confluence of a variety of approaches assures an atmosphere of debate, discovery, and overall rigor.

The program offers opportunities for pedagogical development as well. Doctoral students may lecture in theatre history and theory in M.F.A. acting and directing courses as well as assume undergraduate teaching or other duties within the Department. Some opportunities include teaching assistantships in Theatre, Speech and Dance departmental courses, or the teaching of courses in a student’s area of specialty. Of course, a Brown graduate student need not teach every semester, and Brown does not take advantage of graduate students by relying on them as teachers. Brown protects its stellar undergraduate reputation by insuring that undergraduate education remain an extremely high priority and therefore, unlike other schools, Brown does not indiscriminately take advantage of graduate students in the classroom. This results in a win-win situation for grads and undergrads alike. Though a grad student is not overburdened with teaching, the Department requires that each student gain experience in pedagogy. Brown’s Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning (http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Sheridan_Center/) offers many opportunities for Graduate advancement in pedagogy, as do teaching opportunities within the Theatre, Speech and Dance Department itself. Specific teaching assistantships will be determined in consultation with a student’s committee.

The graduate field of Theatre and Performance Studies includes faculty members from Theatre, Speech and Dance as well as Field Faculty from Anthropology, Africana Studies, English, Literary Arts, Comparative Literature, Italian, Literary Arts, Classics, Music, and Modern Culture and Media. Indeed, and in some distinction to other programs, students are encouraged to take advantage of courses across the university, meaning that the diversity of opportunities at Brown can be folded into a program of study. The number of doctoral candidates in Theatre and Performance Studies on the Brown campus will range between ten and sixteen at any given time. Graduate seminars are small and there is ample opportunity, in and out of classes, for exchange among graduate students and faculty.

ADMISSION

The program offers a number of options for admission. Students with a B.A. may apply for either

1. The A.M./Ph.D. program: Students accepted to this program do not yet have a Masters in the field and expect to acquire an A.M. in the process of doctoral candidacy at Brown.

2. The Ph.D. program: Students who already have an M.A. in Theatre and/or Performance Studies or a related field may apply for the Ph.D. Students with an M.F.A. may also apply to the Ph.D., but may be required to complete additional coursework.

3. The Brown/Trinity Consortium M.F.A.-Ph.D. program. Directing students in the Brown/Trinity Consortium may apply for admission into the combined M.F.A.-Ph.D. program after their first year of study. The combined program requires at least one year of additional course work to reach a total of 18 courses, as well as comprehensive exams and a scholarly dissertation. Directing students would complete their next 2 years according to the Ph.D. curricular model, but would receive mentoring that would allow them to make the most effective progress towards Ph.D. candidacy.

For graduate application deadlines please check here. A statement of purpose, a writing sample, and three letters of recommendation are requested with the application. Also requested are complete official transcripts of all work (graduate and undergraduate) in sealed envelopes. GRE verbal reasoning scores are required. TOEFL test results are required for applicants coming from non-English speaking countries. An undergraduate major in theatre or performance studies is not required for admission. Applicants who have had little or no academic work in theatre may, however, experience initial difficulty with graduate courses that presuppose undergraduate work in theatre or performance studies and may be guided by advisors to acquire the competence in theatre scholarship expected for the Ph.D.

Inquiries should be addressed to Rebecca Schneider, Director of Graduate Studies in Theatre and Performance Studies, Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance, Box 1897, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912; e-mail: John_Emigh@brown.edu. The application can be downloaded here.

Inquiries regarding the MFAs in Acting or Directing should be addressed to Jill Jann, Consortium Administrator at Trinity Repertory Company, 201 Washington Street, Providence, RI 02903; e-mail: jjann@trinityrep.com. Inquiries regarding the MFA in playwriting should be addressed to writing@brown.edu.

Required Courses for the Ph.D.: Students who do not yet have a Masters in the field and expect to acquire an A.M. in the process of doctoral candidacy at Brown will complete at least 15 courses. Two of these may be independent studies. Students who already have an A.M. or M.F.A degree from another institution will work with the Director of Graduate Studies to determine how many of their A.M. or M.F.A. credits will transfer toward Brown's Ph.D. degree. For students for whom all credits are accepted the following will be required. For the Ph.D. degree, at least 8 courses beyond the Master's Degree are required. Two of these may be independent studies. For all students, required courses are the Seminar in Dramatic Theory (TA 210) and at least two different installments of the Graduate Seminar (TA 220), the latter offered each year on rotating topics by different members of the Department's Graduate Faculty. (These requirements are currently pending grad school approval.) In recent years, Graduate Seminar topics have included: American Theatre from the Beginnings to World War I; History of Actors and Acting; Revolution as a Work of Art; Theory of Drama and Theatre; Theatrical Modernism; Abstraction and Resistance; Theatricality, Photography, and Performance. In addition, upon examination of a student's transcript, a student may be asked to audit, for no graduate credit, all or some of the three-semester Histories of World Theatre course sequence (TA 123, TA 124, and TA 125). The premise upon which these prerequisite requirements are based is that a student arriving from elsewhere to pursue a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies at Brown should be held responsible for knowing the course content of what our undergraduate concentrators know. With permission of the instructor, graduate credit may be awarded in TA 123, TA 124, TA 125, or several of the TA 128 classes, or in two of the acting courses that are taught by members of the Graduate Faculty, TA 119: Character, Mask and Action and TA 140: Advanced Performance. Since only 200-level or above courses are designated "Primarily for Graduate Students" at Brown, the instructor of a 100-level course, that is usually enrolled in by undergraduate and graduate students, will often assign additional work for a graduate student who wants to receive graduate credit for the course. Those students who do not need to take a course for credit and who do not want to pay for an "audit" designation to appear on their graduate school transcript may "vagabond" a course, meaning they may sit in on the course but receive no credit or any formal designation that they were in the course. Students who audit a course generally work out with the course's instructor which and how many assignments must be completed to receive credit as an auditor. An audited course does not, however, count toward graduate credit. Also required of all graduate students for each semester in residence is participation in the Graduate Colloquium Series. See the Colloquium Series described below. For a list of "milestones" for progress in the department, go to Milestones.

Elective Courses: Brown's Graduate Faculty offers a full menu of specialty courses currently in the areas of Theatre and Drama of the Americas; European Theatre and Performance Traditions; Non-Western Theatre and Performance; Theatre and Neuroscience; The Development of Twentieth-Century Theatre in the West; Russian Theatre and Drama; Revolution as a Work of Art; Mise en Scene; Performance Theory; New Theories for a Baroque Stage; Ethnography and Performance; Feminist, Race-Critical, Queer Theory and Performance; and Performance Art Theory and Practice. Our Department also offers courses in Dance History, Modern Dance and West African Traditions in American Dance, as well as in Solo Performance (Acting) and Style and Performance (Acting) that some of our graduate students have found to be quite useful. These courses offer different methodologies and discourses as well as variety in subject matter. In addition, our diverse field faculty offer courses in Playwriting, Music, Africana Studies, English, Literary Arts, Comparative Literature, Classics, Anthropology, Modern Culture and Media, etc. There are many other relevant courses involving film studies, digital media studies, literary theory and genre studies, religion and ritualistic performance, art history and representation, cultural studies and political discourse, and gender and identity politics, many of which are cross-listed and some team-taught through two departments, indicating the openness to academic border-crossing and resource-sharing that is the norm at Brown. Students may choose to audit or to "vagabond" (described above) an elective course, and Brown's unofficial "shopping period" (the period during which you can add a course without incurring a fee) allows students to sit in on several different courses before deciding upon a final course schedule for the semester.

Graduate Colloquia: In addition to a number of public lectures that are open to all Brown students as well as to the Providence community, the graduate faculty of the Department convenes a series of colloquia per academic year that are specifically designed to inform and engage our graduate students. The colloquia are both faculty- and student-run and may include sessions in which students present current work. Speakers are invited from a list that is drawn up by the graduate faculty and the graduate students to reflect students' research interests. We often host scholars at the forefront of scholarship so that graduate students are exposed to the newest and best that performance scholarship has to offer and so that students have a chance to establish personal contacts with persons influential in the field. Past guests have included Diana Taylor, Elin Diamond, Herbert Blau, Jennifer Devere Brody, Ann Pellegrini, Timothy Murray, Shannon Jackson, Eric Lott, Roberto Varea, Jody Enders, Michal Kobialka, Branislav Jakovljevic, Fred Moten, Karen Shimakawa, Adrian Heathfield, and Andre LePecki. Brown Professors from the Department and the Field Faculty also present their recent work. The colloquium, which is attended by faculty and graduate students, and moderated by a graduate student from the department, meets on approximately two Friday afternoons a month throughout the year. The colloquium also sponsors “key text” sessions specially designed for incoming graduate students, as well as workshops on professional development, where faculty coach students in “how to” write proposals, abstracts, conference papers, resumes, job letters, etc. Graduate students are required to attend all of the graduate colloquia sessions, for which they receive no academic credit.

Foreign Language Requirements for Graduate Students in Theatre and Performance Studies, Brown University: The Masters Program requires that MA candidates satisfy the requirement for reading comprehension on one foreign language before they graduate. That requirement can be satisfied in one of the following ways:

The student can be a native speaker in a language other than English.
The student can prove an appropriate level of study of a foreign language from a college transcript. The transcript should show that the student has passed a class at the equivalent level to Brown’s advanced-intermediate foreign language courses (level 40).
The student can take and pass one of Brown’s “Reading” classes, such as “Reading for German,” or “Reading for French.” These classes are generally offered during the summer.
The student can pass a placement exam delivered by the Brown Language Lab. The placement exam used by the lab tests reading, vocabulary, and grammar (rather than listening/speaking). The score of the test should be 474 or higher.

The Doctoral Program requires that Ph.D. candidates satisfy the requirement for reading comprehension in two foreign languages, or satisfy a requirement for research proficiency in one foreign language. Both languages should be completed before the student can graduate to ABD status (all but dissertation).

The requirement for reading comprehension in two languages can be satisfied in one of the following ways for each language:

The student can be a native speaker in a language other than English.
The student can prove an appropriate level of study of a foreign language from a college transcript. The transcript should show that the student has passed a class at the equivalent level to Brown’s 40-level (advanced-intermediate) foreign language courses.
The student can take and pass one of Brown’s “Reading” classes, such as “Reading for German,” or “Reading for French.” These classes are generally offered during the summer.
The student can pass a placement exam delivered by the Brown Language Lab. The placement exam used by the lab tests reading, vocabulary, and grammar (rather than listening/speaking). The score of the test should be 474 or higher.

The requirement for research proficiency in one language can be satisfied in one of the following ways:

The student may be a native speaker in a language other than English.
The student may write a paper in English using multiple primary and secondary sources in the foreign language (cited in the text in the foreign language and translated by the student into English as well). The student must also take a placement test at the Brown Language Lab and score 474 or higher.
The student may pass a placement test delivered by the Brown Language Lab with a score of 474 or higher. The student will also pass a 50 level course in language and literature, taught in the foreign language.
After passing or being exempted from a 50 level course in language and literature, the student may pass a course at the 100 level or higher conducted in a language other than English.

Qualifying Assessment: An assessment takes place at the completion of every student's third semester, regardless of whether a student entered with a Masters Degree or without. The assessment consist of submission, to the core graduate faculty, of the student's Brown transcript to date (including second semester Fall grades) as well as one term paper of the student's choice, written while at Brown and preferably but not necessarily chosen from a class or independent study taken within the department. Four copies of this material should be submitted by January 15 (assuming all students entered in the Fall and took no leaves of absence) to the DGS. The core graduate faculty will meet during the following semester to together assess each student's progress in the department and evaluate whether or not a student should proceed to the comprehensive exams. In the rare circumstance that a student should not proceed, that student will be awarded an A.M. degree upon the completion of 10 courses but will not progress toward Doctoral study at Brown.

Selecting a Committee: At some during the second year of study (and occasionally earlier) a student selects a chair as the first step to selecting a committee of three to oversee the long road to the comprehensive exams and the dissertation defense. A student does not have to have selected a chair prior to the Qualifying Assessment, though a student may have done so. To select a chair, a student asks a member of the core graduate faculty or the field faculty to serve in this function. The selection of the chair is largely at the discretion of the student, though often the student discusses potential choices with the Director of Graduate Studies who serves as the student’s chair until a formal selection is made. A faculty member need not accept a student's request and students should select carefully based on coincidence of scholarly experience and interest. It is best to have taken at least one class with a professor before asking them to chair, though this is not always possible. The chair shepherds the student through the process of comprehensive exams and, ultimately, the dissertation, acting as the student’s advisor and advocate. Once a student has a chair, and at the time that s/he begins preparing for the comprehensive exams, then the student can select members from the faculty who will constitute the student’s Special Committee. The student selects the broader committee together with his or her chair, with an eye toward the requirements of the comprehensive exams and the student’s (and faculty’s) areas of expertise. The committee consists of the chair and two (or three) other professors. Usually, at least two members of the committee are from the core graduate faculty, with the third professor being from core, field, or the university at large. A field faculty member may be chosen as committee chair upon approval of the Director of Graduate Studies. A fourth member may be selected from either inside or outside the university on approval (or insistence) of the Director of Graduate Studies. After the comprehensive exams, if a student needs to alter the committee to accommodate the dissertation, the committee may be amended. When possible, it is best to select a committee that can serve throughout the comprehensive exam and dissertation process. However, we are flexible, and understand that processes are vital and lively and can indeed alter during a course of study.

Comprehensive Exams: To qualify for doctoral candidacy, a student will take comprehensive exams. Generally, the exams are taken three to six months after the completion of course work, and conversation about the exams should begin with the committee chair before the last semester of coursework. The exams consist of one general exam on theatre and performance history and three specialized essay exams based on reading lists prepared by the student and augmented and approved by the student’s committee to reflect areas of scholarly interest. These lists will be prefaced by a descriptive statement on the area of the study and the focus of inquiry, and may be accompanied by a set of questions the student will prepare to address. Once the lists are approved (by signature of committee members), the student will commence study. Students should allow at least three months for study of the lists before the exam itself. When the student is ready to take the exam, the committee will construct one question for each list area, and the student will write an essay in response to that question. It is advisable that discussions about the comprehensive exams begin with the student’s chair at least six months in advance of the projected exam date because it takes time to form the appropriate committee for the specialized areas of study, it takes time to adequately develop appropriate bibliographic lists representative of the areas of study, it takes time to have the lists approved, and it takes time to study those lists in preparation for the exams. The written exams are passed in to the committee and then defended orally.

Dissertation: Upon passing the comprehensive exams, a scholarly dissertation is required. The dissertation, formatted in either Chicago or MLA style, will be subject to an oral defense. For final touches, see the library link on thesis binding.

Financial Support: Doctoral students are guaranteed five years of full tuition support as well as an admirable stipend and health benefits. The first year is awarded Fellowship, meaning that a student does not have any requirements beyond coursework. The second three years are awarded as Teaching Assistantships or Proctorships. The final year is a Dissertation Fellowship. Some flexibility is allowed. For example, should a student be awarded an outside grant for study, financial support from Brown may be deferred. If a student is in good standing and still needs time to complete the dissertation after five years, a student may apply for continuing funding, though that funding is not guaranteed.

Production Opportunities for Doctoral Students: Although the graduate degree in Theatre and Performance Studies does not formally involve production requirements, many of our graduate students avail themselves of the many production opportunities at Brown. We encourage this experience, so long as participation is not at the expense of the research and scholarship that is central to the academic program. The tradition of quality theatre at Brown is over a century old and annually involves hundreds of students from inside and outside the Department. The Brown theatre facilities provide opportunities for the use of varied production methods: proscenium, arena, environmental and three-quarter round – not to mention street theatre, digital theatre, even “invisible theatre.” The Department mounts a full production season in its two theatres, in addition to Senior Slot and occasional Graduate Slot Productions, the annual Brownbrokers Student Musical and the Commencement Show.

“Sock and Buskin” is the name of the producing arm of the Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance and refers specifically to a board of between 12 and 15 undergraduate students and occasionally graduate students who help determine the departmental season, help staff building and running crews for shows, usher, aid with publicity and in general, represent student interests and enlist student support in the matter of season production at Brown. The board meets with interested faculty members throughout the academic year to read and discuss plays that have been submitted for season consideration, compiling a kept list of plays from which the season for Stuart and Leeds Theatres is selected in early April. Undergraduate students can be elected to the Sock and Buskin Board and graduate students in Theatre and Performance Studies can elect to participate during any year of graduate residency at Brown.

Through our relationship with the Literary Arts Department at Brown, we regularly try to produce a new play written by a current or recently graduated Brown student, sometimes as a world premiere. Season productions are cast from auditions open to all members of the student community. Through Rites and Reason Theatre (the research and production wing of Africana Studies and Theatre Studies dedicated to New World theatre), our students may partake of a wide array of performance experiences, often of original works having their world premieres at Brown. Production Workshop is a student-run producing organization with its own facilities that features the work of our undergraduate and graduate students in the roles of actors and directors, playwrights and dramaturgs, designers and technicians. There is also Musical Forum, which produces an established musical each year, and Shakespeare on the Green, which produces three of the Bard’s plays outdoors every Spring. Brown also supports repertory groups in modern dance and in African dance as well as the American Dance Legacy. There are also two improvisational troupes on campus. Our graduate students have acted in, directed, stage managed and dramaturged on many productions, as well as having worked in technical capacities. Opportunities for practicum work exist in directing, design, playwriting, performance art, installation, and an emergent category of “artist scholarship” experimentation. All told, some seventy productions are staged at Brown every year.

Brown is a liberal arts university, founded in 1764. It is a well-integrated, innovative academic community, situated in Providence, R.I.--a city of considerable cultural, artistic, and intellectual activity that is within easy reach of the libraries, museums and cultural activities of the Southern New England area. Providence is a one-hour train ride from Boston and a three-hour train ride from New York City. Trinity Repertory Company, a nationally known professional company, is located in Providence, as is Perishable Theatre, Black Repertory Theatre, the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre , and Providence First Works.

HISTORY OF THE THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE STUDIES AT BROWN

The tradition of theatre at Brown dates from the 19th century and the involvement of hundreds of student participants yearly underscores the vitality of and avid interest in theatre at the University. Few universities--if any--approach Brown's program in longevity and productivity. Hundreds of former students in Brown's A.B. and A.M. programs in theatre now live and work as scholars, teachers, actors, technicians and playwrights in cities and towns throughout the United States and abroad, having brought with them a heightened sensitivity to dramatic literature and a strong awareness of the complexity and creativity involved in the theatrical event.

The Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies is part of Brown’s long-standing and highly successful undergraduate department of Theatre, Speech and Dance. Brown theatre, which began after the Civil War in 1868, has flourished on the campus ever since. Throughout the nineteenth century, various organizations presented productions of musicals, dramas, and revues at locations all around campus and throughout the city of Providence. With the founding of Sock and Buskin by Professor Thomas Crosby of the English Department in 1901 there has been an unbroken record of seasons, first at the Providence Opera House and various theatres downcity, then Rockefeller Hall, and finally in 1931 in the new Faunce House Theatre (restored and reopened three years ago as the Stuart Theatre). It joined the smaller Isabelle Russek Leeds Theatre and Ashamu Dance Studio that were built in 1979 in the home of the department, Lyman Hall, as the three components of the Catherine Bryan Dill Center for the Performing Arts.

In 1935, an undergraduate, Burt Shevelove (author of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) founded a student organization known as Brownbrokers (the name is a combination of Brown and Pembroke). The express purpose of Brownbrokers was the writing and performing of an original musical each year, and so it does to this day. The oldest continuing student theatre group is Production Workshop, an association of students formed in 1961 by then undergraduate Richard Foreman (of Ontological Hysterical fame) in order to bring more experimental work to the campus. In 1970 George Houston Bass joined the Brown faculty to supervise a fledgling student group then called the Black Theatre. That group became Rites and Reason Theatre and is currently housed in Churchill House with the Africana Studies Department where a very active season of performances continue to employ George Houston Bass’s “research to performance” method.

Beginning in the 1969-70 season, dance concerts became a regular feature of a theatre season at Brown. Brown houses the American Dance Legacy Institute, focusing on modern Western dance. Offered, as well, is a powerful program in dances of the African Diaspora.

In 2002 the Theatre, Speech and Dance Department launched the new Ph.D. program as part of the new Brown University and Trinity Repertory Company Consortium, also launched that year. The Consortium brings together Trinity’s Masters of Fine Arts in Acting and Directing with Brown’s Master’s and, now, Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies.

THEATRE AND PERFOREMANCE STUDIES ACROSS THE BROWN CAMPUS

Besides the productions of the department itself, performance work flourishes in other places on campus. The Literary Arts Department, which houses the M.F.A. in playwriting, produces readings and workshops of scores of new plays during the school year. Graduate students from Theatre and Performance Studies have often served as dramaturgs, directors, or performers on these projects.

As the Speech program is part of the Theatre, Speech and Dance Department, excellent opportunities for communications studies and the performance studies intersections between rhetoric and theatre exist. Historically, graduate students have regularly held assistantships in Speech, and professors and lecturers from various wings of the department (theatre, speech, and dance) often team-teach and/or collaborate on performance and scholarly projects.

There are often special year or semester-long faculty seminars offered by groups of faculty from various disciplines on topics of interest for Theatre and Performance Studies graduate students. Such seminars are sponsored by Brown’s Wayland Colloquium, by the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, or by the Cogut Center for the Humanities. Graduate students are often welcome to apply to participate. Some topics from current years: Emotion; Embodiment; Incarceration, Narrative and Performance; Shame; Digital Arts; Theatre and Social Change; Gesture.