Theatre Courses
Graduate Seminar
The seminar meets weekly on Fridays and has two distinct parts. In the fall semester, graduate students work together to tackle a theme, topic, or theatrical theory. In the spring semester, there are a changing list of topics and guests — producers, writers, directors, actors, and academicians. From this continually renewed guest faculty, students receive both fresh and classic insights into all facets of the theatre world and theatre history in lectures, demonstrations, exercises, and discussions. This class meets weekly on Friday afternoons at 3:40.
Theatre Forum
Required of all theatre graduate students. This class meets once a month (usually Tuesdays at 2 p.m.) to explore current topics in the theatre and meet leading professionals in the field.
Acting
Acting and Directing for the New American Theatre
Semester: Spring
This class will focus on directing and acting in new American drama, specifically plays produced within the past five years covering a range of styles and content. Each week, two students will direct a ten-minute scene each, using actors from the class, and present it to the class for critique. The class will focus on how the text, both in form and content, informs the choices that both actors and directors make during the rehearsal process.
Acting Conference
Semester: Year
This is an intensive scene class that focuses on the relationship of text, dramatic actions, and the actor’s need to discover personal performance experience and knowledge of diverse global forms and styles of theatre. Classes will connect physical and vocal work with the immediacy of needs, events, and character. Video will be used, and differences between stage and film performances will be explored. Emphasis will be placed on building technique and range and on refocusing acting habits and definitions. New plays by contemporary and international playwrights will form the basis of cold readings and auditioning techniques. Scene work will proceed, step-by-step, from the first breakdown of text to the needs of the performer. This class meets once a week.
Acting Practicum
Semester: Fall
This acting class will be a combination of Grotowski physical techniques, Viewpoints, and scene study. The goal is to create a strong ensemble that is fearless and an environment that is physically challenging to motivate breakthroughs in the actor’s understanding of craft and performance. It is designed to prepare actors for the professional environment through heightened artistic responsibility. Students will work on texts from modern European and American drama. The scenes will be taken from the works of Chekhov, Ibsen, and Strindberg, as well as Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill and Lillian Hellman. This class will meet twice a week.
Acting the Poetic Text
Semester: Year
The emotional, vocal, and physical demands of acting in poetic plays are extreme. In order to rise to the challenge of performing in such works, the actor’s instrument must be capable of expressing poetry. The objectives of this course are to explore various techniques designed to tap and release the actor’s raw passion, to develop the physical stamina necessary to perform poetic text, and to work toward creating a performance vocabulary appropriate to the scale of poetic text. Particular attention will be paid to honing the skills necessary to speak complex language with clarity and precision. We will begin with the works of Shakespeare and move backward and forward in time, depending on the composition and the specific needs of the class. The course culminates in a performance project. This class meets twice a week.
Acting Shakespeare
Semester: Spring
“O, for a muse of fire!” No playwright in history created more dramatic roles or combustible language than Shakespeare. He did so through some simple techniques that he communicated to his actors in a code that they understood and that he embedded in his scripts. In this class, we’ll learn some of that code and use his techniques to ignite his words, using Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet as our primary texts. This class meets twice a week.
Auditioning
Semester: Fall
A study of the skills necessary for a successful audition. Actors will practice cold readings and prepare monologues to performance level. Emphasis will be placed on how best to present oneself in an audition situation. Class size is limited. This class meets once a week.
Breaking the Code
Semester: Year
A specific, text-driven approach to performance, based upon identifying, analyzing, and exploiting particular attributes common to characters in all plays. This class provides a foundation and a context for the most vital and decisive characterizations. Students will read, discuss, and act scenes from contemporary plays and adaptations. This class meets twice a week.
Collective Conscious: Actor, Director Ensemble
Semester: Year
A specific approach to performance that unifies director and actor in a common understanding of the central metaphor of a play. In addition to script analysis, comparative study of styles, and regular in-class performance, students will present work as part of the Theatre program season. Over the course of the year, each student will be required to direct and perform. Open to serious students who have an interest in both directing and acting. This class meets twice a week.
Comedy Workshop
Semester: Year
This is an exploration of the individual’s comic voice and the classic structures of comedy. It begins with a focus on improvisation and ensemble. Theatre games, status play, storytelling, and the Harold Exercise develop the artist’s freedom and confidence. The second semester introduces the students to commedia dell’arte characterization, vaudeville comic and straight partnering, political satire, and parody. The workshop produces a Comedy Night at the end of the year, in which each student performs five minutes of stand-up comedy in a club atmosphere. This class meets twice a week.
Contemporary Scene Study
Semester: Year
Two-character scenes by modern American playwrights will form the basis of intensive acting work. By focusing on techniques of script analysis and how they relate to examination of objectives, given circumstances and obstacles, students will be given practical methods for unlocking contemporary texts. This class meets once a week.
Creating a Role
Semester: Year
It is a sanctum of discovery enabling the actor to explore non-Western movement: centering energy, concentration, the voice, and the “mythos” of a character to discover one’s own truth in relation to the text, contemporary as well as the classics. Traditional, as well as alternative, approaches to acting techniques are applied. Fall semester concentrates on working on roles such as Hamlet, Leontes, Caliban, Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Hecuba, Medea, Antigone, and Lady Macbeth; spring semester, applied to scene study from such works by Arrabal, Beckett, Ionesco, Maria Irene Fornes, Sam Shepard, Albert Camus, and Jean Genet. This class meets twice a week.
Creativity Workshop
Semester: Year
This is an experimental workshop. Among its objectives are exploring the participants’ impulsive response to texts (plays for theatre and screen and some poetry), as well as examining the power of intuition to more deeply understand these texts. The key elements require exercises in various forms of “active” meditation. The work is often strenuous and requires physical skill and agility and a passion for adventure. Our overarching objective is to enhance the participants’ ability to act, write, or direct for theatre. This class meets once a week for four hours.
Improvisation Laboratory
Semester: Year
Using experimental exercises and improvisation, we will explore the character’s connections to his or her environment, relationships, needs, and wants. In the second semester, we will concentrate on fashioning a workable technique, as well as on using improvisation to illuminate scene work from the great dramatic playwrights: Lorca, Chekhov, Strindberg, O’Neill, Shaw, etc. Available to students who are willing to approach material experimentally in a laboratory setting. This class meets twice a week.
Improvisation Techniques
Semester: Spring
Great art comes from using oneself. If theatre is a way of knowing oneself, improvisation energizes that process. This course is for actors who are willing to personalize, place their characters in dangerous situations, play strong objectives, and then move on. A conscious way to reach the unconscious. We will approach the material experimentally in a laboratory setting twice a week. Available to students who are willing to act with and without text.
New Musical Theatre Lab
Semester: Year
Exploring forms, styles, and collaborative techniques needed to create musicals, the students will develop works based on original material. Students will research the history of musicals from the emergence of European cabaret and performance, with a particular focus on the influence of interdisciplinary needs of contemporary musicals. The process of auditioning, casting, rewriting, rehearsals, and performance will also be presented. Open to actors, singers, composers, lyricists, and musicians. This class meets once a week.
Interview and audition required.
Singing Workshop
Semester: Year
We will explore an actor’s performance with songs and various styles of popular music, music for theatre, cabaret, and original work emphasizing communication with the audience and material selection. Dynamics of vocal interpretation and style will also be examined. This class requires enrollment in a weekly voice lesson and an Alexander Technique class. Class members will be selected by audition during registration week. This class meets once a week.
Audition required.
Voice and Movement
Alexander Technique
Semester: Year
The Alexander Technique is a neuromuscular system that re-educates and enables the student to identify and change poor and inefficient habits that may be causing stress and fatigue. With gentle hands-on guidance and verbal instruction, the student learns to replace faulty habits with improved coordination by locating and releasing undue muscular tensions. This includes the ease of the breath and the effect of coordinated breathing on the voice. It is an invaluable technique that connects the actor to his or her resources for dramatic intent. This class meets once a week.
Breathing Coordination for the Performer
Semester: Year
Students will improve their vocal power and ease through an understanding of basic breathing mechanics and principles of speech. Utilizing recent discoveries of breathing coordination, performers can achieve their true potential by freeing their voices, reducing tension, and increasing concentration and stamina. Students will consolidate their progress by performing pieces in their field (theatre, dance, music, etc.) in a supportive atmosphere. This class meets once a week.
Building a Vocal Technique
Semester: Year
A continuation of Breathing Coordination for the Performer, which is suggested as a prerequisite, students can work on scenes they currently are rehearsing and also bring in pieces of their own choosing. Emphasis will be on physical ease and the use of breathing coordination to increase vocal range and power. This class meets once a week.
Freeing The Natural Voice
Semester: Year
Students will begin to open the channels of communication as physical and psychological tensions release. Using technical and imagistic exercises, students will open their connection to breath, develop resonance and range, increase sensitivity to their creative impulse, and strengthen their voice. This class meets once a week.
Introduction to Stage Combat
Semester: Year
Students will learn the basics of armed and unarmed stage fighting with an emphasis on safety. Actors will be taught to create effective stage violence, from hair pulling and choking to sword fighting, with a minimum of risk. Basic techniques will be incorporated into short scenes to give students experience performing fights in classic and modern contexts. This class meets once a week.
Linklater Voice Training Into Text
Semester: Year
This course will investigate how Linklater voice work parlays into text. Students will expand vocal agility and dynamics and find greater sensitivity and connection to language. Students will discover an authentic and personal experience of the self through voice. This class meets once a week.
Directing
Acting and Directing for the New American Theatre
Semester: Spring
This class will focus on directing and acting in new American drama, specifically plays produced within the past five years covering a range of styles and content. Each week, two students will direct a ten-minute scene each, using actors from the class, and present it to the class for critique. The class will focus on how the text, both in form and content, informs the choices that both actors and directors make during the rehearsal process.
Creativity Workshop
Semester: Year
This is an experimental workshop. Among its objectives are exploring the participants’ impulsive response to texts (plays for theatre and screen and some poetry), as well as examining the power of intuition to more deeply understand these texts. The key elements require exercises in various forms of “active” meditation. The work is often strenuous and requires physical skill and agility and a passion for adventure. Our overarching objective is to enhance the participants’ ability to act, write, or direct for theatre. This class meets once a week for four hours.
Collective Conscious: Actor, Director Ensemble
Semester: Year
A specific approach to performance that unifies director and actor in a common understanding of the central metaphor of a play. In addition to script analysis, comparative study of styles, and regular in-class performance, students will present work as part of the Theatre program season. Over the course of the year, each student will be required to direct and perform. Open to serious students who have an interest in both directing and acting. This class meets twice a week.
Directing Shakespeare
Semester: Year
How does a director approach the complex challenges of staging Shakespeare? Through an intensive examination of Hamlet, the course will examine how to use research and Shakespearean scholarship, how to prepare a text for rehearsals, how to develop a production approach, how to collaborate with designers on that approach, and how to rehearse the play with special attention to the work with actors. This class meets twice a week.
Previous directing experience required.
Directing Workshop
Semester: Year
Directors will study the processes necessary to bring a written text to life and the methods and goals used in working with actors to focus and strengthen their performances. Scene work and short plays will be performed in class, and the student’s work will be analyzed and evaluated. Common directing problems will be addressed, and the directors will become familiar with the conceptual process that allows them to think creatively. In the second semester, students will select and direct a one-act play for production. Open to beginning directors. This class meets twice a week.
Stage Management
Semester: Year
This yearlong elective course will focus on the art and practice of stage management. Students will be assigned productions and will be mentored through the process from auditions through tech week and strike. This class meets once a week.
Greta Minsky will teach this course during the fall semester; D.J. Potter will teach this course during the spring semester.
The Director/Playwright Dialogue
Semester: Fall
This class will include directors and playwrights exploring the director/playwright relationship. Directors will work with student playwrights and the original scripts being created in the playwriting classes toward the goal of staging readings of the work(s). Definition of jobs, staging techniques, and methods of artistic communication will be examined. Class size is limited. This class meets once a week.
The Director/Designer Dialogue: From the Page to the Stage
Semester: Spring
Student directors will develop skills essential to realizing a design vision. Emphasis will be on furthering communication skills, with an eye toward improving the collaborative process of design while strengthening directors’ abilities in relating ideas to design professionals. Exercises will include use of sketches, photographs, and other media. This class meets once a week.
Playwriting
Playwriting courses are subdivided into craft and workshop courses. Craft courses focus on process and typically entail reading assignments and specific, short writing assignments. Workshop courses focus on the writing of complete plays.
Craft Courses
Experiments in Language and Form
Semester: Year
In this class we focus on writing “Experimental Theatre”—that is, we experiment with theatrical forms that extend beyond traditional portrayals of time, three-dimensional space, language, character and dramatic structure—and discover the impact that different types of onstage presentations might have on audiences. We are not interested in imitating the style of experimental playwrights but, rather, using their texts as influence, stimulus, and encouragement as we attempt our own experiments. We will also style experimental texts to ascertain the types of environments—political, spiritual, mental, social—that influenced such texts to be generated; that is, created. Our aim, first and foremost, is to investigate and explore ways to genuinely investigate and give theatrical expression to our personal-political-spiritual interior lives, values, observations, and beliefs. We will then strive to examine the most effective manner of communicating our theatrical experiments to an audience. Our experimental writing may include multimedia presentation as part of the scripted, onstage play or performance. This class meets once a week.
Face the Blank Page
Semester: Year
Who are you as a playwright? What kind of stories are you passionate about? What do you want to say? What do you want others to hear? Why? This course will explore these questions and your relationship to them as a writer. It will begin with writing exercises that will kick-start the creative process and end with the first draft of a new play. This class meets once a week.
Playwriting for Solo Performance
Semester: Spring
This class is for people who lean toward performing and writing. Most of us have stories to tell, but what makes a personal story dramatic? This course challenges the solo performer to discover and craft the dramatic structure of the solo play—not just what is on the stage but what is on the page, with emphasis on imagination, characterization, story, and plot. This class meets once a week.
Playwriting Techniques
Semester: Fall
Students will write scenes every week. Each scene will explore issues of structure or creative process in order to facilitate the development of a technique that is individual yet based on traditional dramaturgical ideas. At the end of the semester, students select one of these scenes and write a longer, finished piece that grows out of it. This class meets once a week.
The Playwright's Voice
Semester: Year
This is a full-year course for beginning playwrights in the art of the scene and one-act play. In the first semester, students write a scene a week or every other week, prompted by exercises, script analysis, and craft readings designed to break through old patterns of writing, teach the art of storytelling, and stimulate one’s singular voice in a variety of ways. The second semester focuses on the art and craft of the one act, a vibrant form that allows for experimentation and fearless storytelling. This class meets once a week and prepares students to pursue playwriting in future classes.
Writer's Gym
Semester: Year
“You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.”
—Jack LondonWriter’s Gym is a yearlong writing workshop, designed for writers of any genre and any level of experience from beginner to advanced. Our focus in on writing exercises that develop characters and stories—whether for the stage, screen, or prose narration. In addition, we study theories about the nature of creativity. Our goals are as follows: to study writing methods that help to inspire, nurture, encourage, and sustain our urge/ need to write; to learn how to transform personal experiences and observations into imaginative, dramatic, and/or prose fiction or poetic metaphor and imagery; to concentrate on building the inner lives of our characters through in-depth character work in order to create stronger stories; to explore—that is, to say, investigate, and gain access into—our spontaneous ideas; to articulate and gain a more conscious relationship to the “inner territory” from which we draw ideas; to confront issues that block the writing process; and to gain greater confidence in relation to revision as we pursue clarification of the work. This class meets once a week.
Workshop Courses
Medley Workshop: Developing the Dramatic Idea
Semester: Year
The purpose of this workshop is to develop and complete a draft of a full-length play—specifically, a character-driven story that involves multiple events and/or multiple turning points and revelations, concluding with a major crisis and/or consequence for the characters. We will also study a selection of full-length plays and/or screenplays for inspiration, guidance, and analysis of various contemporary styles of drama. Styles may be varied; but as dramatists, we all are challenged by a form of storytelling that requires us to try and hold the public attention of an audience for a condensed length of “real” time in a public space. This class meets twice a week.
Spencer Workshop
Semester: Fall
This course is designed for playwriting students who have a basic knowledge of dramatic structure and an understanding of their own creative process. Students will be free to work on plays of any length and with themes, subjects, and styles of their choice. They may also work on more than one project at a time. Work will be read aloud and discussed in the class each week. The course requires that students be self-motivated and enter with an idea of which play or plays they plan to work on. This class meets once a week.
Outreach
Methods of Theatre Outreach
Semester: Year
Developing original, issue-oriented dramatic material using music and theatre media, this course will present the structures needed for community extension of the theatre. Performance and teaching groups will work with small theatres, schools, senior citizen groups, museums, centers, and shelters. The productions and class plans will be made in consultation with the organizations and our touring groups. We will work with children’s theatre, audience participation, and educational theatre. Teaching and performance techniques will focus on past and present uses of oral histories and cross-cultural material. Sociological and psychological dynamics will be studied as part of an exploration of the role of theatre and its connections to learning. Each student will have a service-learning team placement. Special projects and guest topics will include use of theatre in developing new kinds of after-school programs, styles and forms of community on-site performances, media techniques for artists who teach, and work with the Sarah Lawrence Human Genetics program. This class meets once a week.
Original Works
Making New Work
Semester: Year
A performance lab where creative process and global forms and styles are presented and explored. The class will form an ensemble and develop original material while learning directing techniques needed to work collaboratively. Focus includes using research of past and present world theatrical movements. Methods of vocal and physical work will add to interdisciplinary collaborations in order to explore sources of inspiration for new work. Using connections that cross cultural and media traditions, the group will create and present weekly projects. Open to actors, dancers, visual artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and directors. This class meets once a week.
Projects
Semester: Year
This course will provide a critical and supportive forum for the development of new works of original performance. Interdisciplinary forms such as self-scripting, devised works, performance pieces, puppet works, performative installations, or image pieces will be examined, as each student focuses on creating one original project—typically a solo, a duet, or a trio—over the course of either a semester or the full year. During the first class, students will show works in progress. During the second session, students and faculty will meet to discuss these showings and any relevant artistic and practical problems that may arise. This class meets twice a week.
Open to juniors, seniors, and graduate students.
Puppetry
Semester: Year
This course will introduce students to the uniquely interdisciplinary performing medium, puppetry. Students will research and study a global range of ancient and modern puppet styles and forms: Western models such as toy theater and string puppets, as well as Eastern practices such as Indonesian shadow and Japanese Bunraku, among others. After conducting research, students will have hands-on experiences with each form, developing short original puppet works and focusing on puppeteering skills, contemporary construction methods, and creative problem solving. Second semester will culminate in a presentation of an original puppet work, developed in collaboration with students from Puppetry for Directors, Designers, and Fabricators. This class meets once a week.
Puppetry for Directors, Designers, and Fabricators
Semester: Year
This course will primarily focus on the development of an original work of puppet theater. We will begin with a survey of contemporary artists, working in puppetry, as well as directors and designers who integrate puppet forms into their work: Basil Twist, Janie Geiser, Paula Vogel and Paul Zaloom to name a few. After an extensive research period, the class will concentrate on the creation of storyboards and maquettes, the design and fabricate all puppets and set pieces, and finally conduct a rehearsal period. Spring semester will culminate in a presentation of these pieces built in collaboration with students from Puppetry. This course is geared for directors, designers and advanced puppetry students. The class will meet once a week for two hours during the fall semester, and once a week for four hours during the spring semester.
Dan Hurlin will be teaching this course in the fall; Dan Hurlin and Tom Lee will be continuing this course in the spring.
Strategies for Being Alone on Stage
Semester: Year
This course will provide a survey of solo theater/performance work from artists during the last three decades and will analyze their various approaches to being alone on stage. We will look at autobiographical work (Spaulding Grey, Lisa Kron), political work (Holly Hughes, Tim Miller), character-based work (Anna Devere Smith, Danny Hoch), poetic work, (David Cale, Beatrice Roth), movement-based work (Ann Carlson), musical work (Rinde Eckert, Cynthia Hopkins), and many others. In addition, students will develop and show their own solo work over the course of the semester. This class meets once a week.
Design and Technology
Costume Design I
Semester: Year
An introduction to the many aspects of costuming for students with little or no experience in the field. Among the topics covered are basics of design, color, and style; presentation of costume design, from preliminary concept sketches to final renderings; researching period styles; costume bookkeeping, from preliminary character lists to wardrobe maintenance charts; and the costume shop, from threading a needle to identifying fabric. The major class project will have each student research, bookkeep, and present costume sketches for a play. Some student projects will incorporate production work. This class meets once a week.
Costume Design II
Semester: Year
A more advanced course in costume design for students who have completed Costume Design I or who have the instructor’s permission to enter. Topics covered in Costume Design I will be examined in greater depth, with the focus on students designing actual productions. An emphasis will be placed on the students developing sketching techniques and beginning and maintaining their portfolios. This class meets once a week.
Design Techniques in Media and Puppetry
Semester: Year
This course allows students to explore design possibilities in projection, animation, scenic design, and puppetry through a series of exploratory projects and group work. Visual sequences will be created using overhead projector, stop-motion animation techniques, shadow puppetry, and video animation. The course will introduce basic digital image manipulation in Photoshop®, simple video animation in AfterEffects®, and the live manipulation of video using Isadora® media interface software. Individual projects in the second semester will challenge students to integrate these techniques into performance. Basic knowledge of Photoshop and the Mac operating system is highly recommended. This class meets once a week.
Lighting Design I
Semester: Year
Lighting Design I will introduce the student to the basic elements of stage lighting, including tools and equipment, color theory, reading scripts for design elements, operation of lighting consoles and construction of lighting cues, and basic elements of lighting drawings and schedules. Students will be offered hands-on experience in hanging and focusing lighting instruments and be invited to attend technical rehearsals. They will be offered opportunities to design productions and to assist other designers as a way to develop greater understanding of the design process. This class meets once a week.
Lighting Design II
Semester: Year
Lighting Design II will build on the basics introduced in Lighting Design I to help develop the students’ abilities in designing complex productions. The course will focus primarily on CAD and other computer programs related to lighting design, script analysis, advanced console operation, and communication with directors and other designers. Students will be expected to design actual productions and in-class projects for evaluation and discussion and will be offered the opportunity to assist Mr. MacPherson and others, when possible, to increase their experience in design.
Scenic Design I
Semester: Year
This course introduces basic elements of scenic design, including developing a design concept, drafting, and practical techniques for creating theatrical space. Students will develop tools to communicate their visual ideas through research, sketches, and models. The class will discuss examples of design from theatre, dance, and puppetry. Student projects will include both conceptual designs and production work in the department. There is a $50 course fee. This class meets once a week.
Scenic Design II
Semester: Year
This class will further develop the student’s skill set as a scenic designer through work on department productions and individual projects. Students will be introduced to CAD drawing and computer modeling through Vectorworks and develop their ability to communicate with directors, fellow designers, and the technical crew. In addition, students will continue to have hands-on exposure to practical scenic construction, rigging, and painting techniques. Students in this course are required to design a department production.
Sound Design for the Theatre
Semester: Year
This course will cover sound design from the beginning of the design process through expectations when meeting with a director, how to collaborate with the rest of the design team, and ultimately creating a full sound design for performance. The course will explain how to edit sound, as well as many of the programs commonly used in a professional atmosphere. Throughout the semester, we will create sound effects and sound collages and cover the many ways that sound is used in the theatre. Skills learned in this class will prepare students to design sound in many different venues and on different types of systems. The class will focus on the creative side of sound design, while covering the basics of system design, sound equipment, and software. This class will meet once a week.
Sound Design for the Theatre II
Semester: Year
Students will develop sound design projects and be mentored in their creation and execution. Opportunities to observe sound design work in professional venues will also be offered, when appropriate.
Tools of the Trade
Semester: Year
This course focuses on the nuts and bolts of light board operation, sound board operation, and projection technology, as well as the use of Final Cut Pro® and Pro Tools® editing programs and basic stage carpentry. Students who take this course will be eligible for additional paid work as technical assistants in the Theatre program. This class meets once a week.
Theatre Studies
Far-Off, Off-Off, Off-, and On-Broadway – Experiencing the 2009-2010 Theatre Season
Semester: Year
Weekly class meetings in which productions are analyzed and discussed will be supplemented by regular visits to many of the theatrical productions of the current season. The class will travel in the tri-state area, attending theatre in as many diverse venues, forms, and styles as possible. Published plays will be studied in advance of attending performances; new or unscripted works will be preceded by examinations of previous work by the author or company. Students will be given access to all available group discounts in purchasing tickets. This class meets once a week.
Global Theatre: Africa and the Black Diaspora in the Caribbean and America
Semester: Fall
This course will explore the wide range of theatrical expression found in the work of diverse writers, including Wole Soyinka, Athol Fugard, Derek Walcott, Mustapha Matura, Trevor Rhone, Errol John, Suzan-Lori Parks, Lynn Nottage, August Wilson, Lorraine Hansberry, and Ntozake Shange, among others. A variety of plays will be read and discussed and selected scenes worked on. Students will also attend relevant plays in New York City. This class meets twice a week.
History and Histrionics: The Theatre Through Time
Semester: Year
We will explore theatre as both a product of its time and place and of the vision of individual playwrights. Through a combination of lecture and discussion, students should emerge with access to the major idioms of dramatic writing. This class meets once a week.
Stuart Spencer will teach this cours in the fall; Amlin Gray will teach this course in the spring.
London Theatre Tour
Semester: Intersession
The purpose of the course is to experience and examine present-day British theatre: its practices, playwrights, traditions, theatres, and artists. This is a two-credit academic course, and any student enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College is eligible to take the class. During the two weeks in London, students will attend a minimum of 12 productions, tour various London theatres, meet with British theatre artists, attend regularly scheduled morning seminars, and make an oral presentation on one of the plays that the group is attending. Plays will be assigned prior to the end of the fall semester, and preparation and research for the presentation should be completed before arriving in London. Productions attended will include as wide a variety of venues, styles, and periods of theatre as possible. Seminars will analyze and critique the work seen, as well, as to discover themes, trends, and movements in the contemporary theatre of the country. Free time is scheduled for students to explore London and surrounding areas at their leisure.
The Performing Arts for Social Change
Semester: Year
In today’s world, theatre is increasingly defined as a commercial enterprise. This course will examine the use of theatre for social change, examining its history, practice, theory, role, and production. Discussions will include an examination of approaches to using theatre for creating personal and social change and the key elements of successful projects. Interactive class sessions will include participation in a creative process involving community building, team building, conflict resolution, social analysis, and scene creation. Each student will be expected to develop a coherent theory of change, construct a viable performing arts-based project “blueprint,” and participate in a performance event created from the creative process. Students will also visit one Saturday rehearsal of the City at Peace project in New York City, a nonprofit organization using the performing arts to empower teenagers to transform their lives and communities. This class meets once a week.
Producing
DownStage
Semester: Year
DownStage is an intensive, hands-on conference in theatrical production. DownStage student producers administrate and run their own theatre company. They are responsible for all aspects of production, including determining budgeting and marketing an entire season of events and productions. Student producers are expected to fill a variety of positions, both technical and artistic, and to sit as members of the board of directors of a functioning theatre organization. In addition to their obligations to class and designated productions, DownStage producers are expected to hold regular office hours. Prior producing experience is not required. First-year undergraduate students are not eligible. This class meets twice a week.
Internships
Conference for Internships
Semester: Year
For students who wish to pursue a professional internship as part of their program. All areas of producing and administration are possible: production, marketing, advertising, casting, development, etc. Students must have at least one full day each week to devote to the internship. Through individual meetings, we will best determine each student’s placement to meet individual academic and artistic goals.
Outside Programs
Theatre students may be invited to participate in outside programs, including the following:
The Play’s The Thing…Sarah Lawrence College Playwriting Summer Intensive
Playwriting Summer Intensive is a five-day, five-night workshop designed to provide traditional and innovative guidance in the art and craft of writing plays. Student writers have the opportunity to work with our faculty playwrights, working playwrights all, in daily classes and one-on-one meetings. Each member of the playwriting faculty offers a distinct voice and perspective, and each class is designed to lend a particular approach to the creation of a play. All students have the chance for their work to be read aloud by Sarah Lawrence graduate student actors, under the guidance of faculty directors. Students also have the opportunity to work with actors on structured improvisations of their written material. Guests join the faculty seminars on a broad range of interests. All students and faculty meet together for meals, group discussions, and nightly readings of student written material. More information is available at www.slc.edu/summer.
La MaMa E.T.C.
Summer 2010
La MaMa E.T.C. in New York sponsors two summer events in Italy in conjunction with Sarah Lawrence. They are the International Symposium for Directors, a three-week training program for professional directors, choreographers, and actors, where internationally renowned theatre artists conduct workshops and lecture/demonstrations; and the Playwright Retreat, a one-week program, where participants have ample time to work on new or existing material. Each day, master playwright Lisa Kron will meet with the playwrights to facilitate discussions, workshops, and exercises designed to help the writers with whatever challenges they are facing. More information is available at www.lamama.org/italy/directorssymposium.html and www.lamama.org/italy/PlaywrightRetreat.html.