Writing for Performance
The Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies (TAPS) supports a strong and thriving culture of Writing for Performance, with professors in TAPS, Africana Studies, and Literary Arts involved in teaching and mentoring young playwrights. Undergraduate classes are offered at the introductory and advanced levels. Opportunities to explore embodied performance of your own writing abound, formally and informally: via Production Workshop (Brown’s wholly student-run theater), RPM in Rites and Reason Theatre, and collaborations with the MFA writers who annually produce a festival of undergrad short works (undergrads also commission and produce MFA works). The student group, Brownbrokers, regularly produces new student musicals as well. In short, there is writing going live all over campus. In addition, undergraduate writers often sit on the Sock and Buskin board, which selects the production season for the TAPS department and are involved in many levels of activity in the department as a whole. We offer an undergraduate concentration track in Writing for Performance, which coheres curricular options, affords a focused level of mentorship, and creates solidarity (through regular meetings, retreats and intensives).
There is no singular style to the playwriting that comes out of Brown – from classical to postmodern to site-specific to high naturalism to agitprop, camp or kitsch, all writing is welcome. We cherish only a wealth of experiment, fun, rigor, craft, openness to others, and discovery!
