2012-2013 Theatre Courses

This course will provide a critical and supportive forum for the development of new works of original performance, focusing primarily on where current dance and theatre combinations find inspiration. In the first semester, students will explore contemporary theatre-building techniques and methodologies from Dada to Judson Church and beyond. The majority of time will be devoted to lab work, where students will create their own short performance pieces through a multidisciplinary approach. Students will be asked to devise original theatre pieces that utilize such methods as solo forms, viewpoints, chance operations, and creations from nontheatrical sources. In addition to the laboratory aspect to the class, a number of plays, essays, and artists’ manifestos will be discussed. In the second semester, students will collaborate on a single, evening-length work, utilizing theatrical and nontheatrical sources in an attempt to speak to our cultural moment. Please note: The second semester will require additional developmental/rehearsal time outside of class. In addition to class work, there will be several opportunities to visit rehearsals and performances of professional theatre and dance in New York City. This class meets once a week. Open to first-year graduate students only.

Taught by a rotating series of Sarah Lawrence faculty and guest artists, this course focuses on developing the skills needed for a wide variety of techniques for the creation and development of new work in theatre. Ensemble acting, movement, design and fabrication, playwriting, devised work, and music performance are all explored. The class is a forum for workshops, master classes, and open rehearsals, with a focus on the development of critical skills. In addition, students in Grad Lab are expected to generate a new piece of theatre to be performed for the Sarah Lawrence community every month. These performances may include graduate and undergraduate students alike.Open to graduate students only.

This course will provide a critical and supportive forum for the development of new works of original theatre with a focus on conducting research in a variety of ways, including historical and artistic research, workshops, improvisations, experiments, and conversation. Each student will focus on creating one original project—typically, but not limited to, a solo—over the course of the full year. During the class, students will show works in progress. During conference, students and faculty will meet to discuss these showings and any relevant artistic and practical problems that may arise.Open to second-year graduate students only.

This workshop will translate the actor’s imagination into stage action by building one’s performance vocabulary. The class engages the students’ essential self by expanding their craft through a wide-ranging set of training techniques. This class meets twice a week.

Have you ever wondered where Arthur Miller got the idea to get inside Willy Loman’s head? Did you realize that it was only after August Strindberg went insane that he wrote some of his most famous and influential plays? Did you know that the comedies of Ancient Greece and the 17th century were far more sexually explicit than contemporary comedies? Did you know there’s a Nigerian play that is about the ancient Yoruban culture but uses ideas from Aristotle to tell its story? And that Aristotle’s ideas can also be found in plays by William Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, and Tennessee Williams? Did you ever wonder what we really mean by “realistic”? Or “naturalistic”? And that there’s a difference? Did you ever consider that Godot may already have arrived? History and Histrionics answers these questions but asks many more. We read great plays from the last 2,500 hundred years—tragedy, comedy, social critique, realism, naturalism, expressionism, musical theatre, absurdism, existentialism, and much more—to try to figure what they’re about, why they were written as they were, and how they fit in the great constellation of our dramatic heritage. This course meets once a week.

This course is for students with little or no design or technical experience who are curious about design and want exposure to multiple design areas. It is also a useful tool for directors, playwrights, and actors who want to increase their understanding of the design and technical aspects of theatre to enhance their abilities as theatrical artists. This is a very hands-on class, in which students will learn the basics needed to execute set, costume, lighting, and sound designs. We will use a short scene or play as the focus of our discussions of the collaborative design process. Class format will include both classes with the full design faculty and classes focused on specific design areas.

This course is for students who have design or technical experience or have taken Design Elements I and want to explore design and technical theatre in greater depth. This course is also useful for students who are studying one area of design and want an introduction to other areas. Students will explore two of the four design areas (set, costume, lighting, and sound design) in greater depth, building their technical skills, design basics, and collaborative communication skills. Class format involves classes with the full design faculty and six weeks of classes in each of two design areas with individual design teachers. The goal of this semester is to have students develop the ability to create a simple design in their chosen areas. Open to students who have taken Design Elements I or with faculty permission.

Investigations for those aspiring to produce, direct, create, and/or perform musical theatre and experimental chamber opera, this class is open to theatre designers and technicians, actors, singers, dancers, composers, lyricists, and musicians who are interested in learning and using crossover skills. Students will create teams to present and perform project scenes in class that include set and costume designs, musical and choreographic styles, and that go from concept ideas to production. Students will research the history of musicals, including European cabaret and global performance, with a particular focus on the influence of interdisciplinary needs of contemporary musicals. The process of adaptation, auditioning, casting, rewriting, rehearsals, and performance will also be presented. Second semester will include a production of a contemporary chamber opera and an ENCORE production of musical theatre songs. An interview and/or audition is required.

We will explore an actor’s performance with songs in 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 weekly voice lessons and an Alexander Technique class. Audition required. This class meets once a week.

SLC Lampoon is a comedy ensemble of actors, directors, and writers. The techniques of Second City and Theatersports will be used to create an improvisational troupe that will perform throughout the campus. The ensemble will craft comic characters and write sketches, parodies, and political satire. This work will culminate in a final SLC Lampoon Mainstage performance in the style of Second City or Saturday Night Live. Audition required.

Successful performances in dance and theatre rely on training that prepares performers in mind, body, and spirit to enter the realm of aesthetic exploration and expression. In this class, we will work toward acquiring skills that facilitate the investigation of previously unimagined ways of moving. Through traditional and experimental practices, students will develop a sense of form, energy use, strength and control, and awareness of time and rhythm. Improvisation is an important aspect of this study. Placement class required.

The plays of Anton Chekov, Tennessee Williams, and August Wilson will serve as the point of departure in our exploration of the craft of acting. In this class, students will be challenged to expand their range of expression and build their confidence to make bold and imaginative acting choices. Particular attention will be paid to learning to analyze the text in ways that lead to defining clear, specific, and playable actions and objectives. This class meets twice a week.

Those actors rooted in the tradition of playing Shakespeare find themselves equipped with a skill set that enables them to successfully work on a wide range of texts and within an array of performance modalities. The objectives of this class are to learn to identify, personalize, and embody the structural elements of Shakespeare’s language as the primary means of bringing his characters to life. Students will study a representative arc of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as the sonnets, with the goal of bringing his characters to life. Class time will be divided between physical, vocal, and text work. This class meets twice a week.

A study of the skills necessary for a successful audition, actors will practice cold readings and prepared 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.

Using the foundations learned during their first years in the Theatre program, students will apply their theatrical training to the camera. The students will learn how to maintain an organic experience in spite of the rigid technical restrictions and requirements. The second half of each semester will be dedicated to putting a scene on its feet and shooting it. We will use a monitor playback system for reviewing work to help identify specific problems. Class size is limited. This class meets twice a week.

An exploration of the classic structures of comedy and the unique comic mind, this course begins with a strong focus on improvisation and ensemble work. The athletics of the creative comedic mind is the primary objective of the first-semester exercises. Status play, narrative storytelling, and the Harold exercise are used to develop the artist’s freedom and confidence. The ensemble learns to trust the spontaneous response and their own comic madness. Second semester educates the theatre artist in the theories of comedy. It is designed to introduce students to commedia dell’arte, vaudeville, parody, satire, and standup comedy. At the end of the final semester, each student will write five minutes of standup material that will be performed one night at a comedy club in New York City and then on the College campus on Comedy Night. This class meets twice a week.

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 and 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 works by Arrabal, Beckett, Ionesco, Maria Irene Fornes, Sam Shepard, Albert Camus, and Jean Genet. This class meets twice a week.

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. This course is available to students who are willing to approach material experimentally in a laboratory setting. This class meets twice a week.

Like jazz, the American musical is one of this country’s unique art forms. And like jazz, the musical’s roots lie deep in both our European and African ancestry. We will begin by delving into the origins of American musical theatre—the early operettas, vaudevilles, burlesques, minstrel shows, and musical extravaganzas of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From there, we will move to the astonishingly fertile 1920s, when the jazz sounds of songwriters like Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle began to influence the music and lyrics of people like Ira & George Gershwin and Rodgers & Hart. We will look at the 1930s, when the sophisticated but inconsequential musical comedies of tunesmiths like Cole Porter existed side by side with provocative, politically themed musicals by Kurt Weill or (again) the Gershwins. By the end of the term, we will have reached the 1940s, when the Rodgers & Hammerstein “integrated” musical revolutionized musicals, giving them weight, substance, and greater coherence. In the second term, we will study the great book musicals of the 1950s, created by, among others, Frank Loesser, Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Lerner & Lowe, Irving Berlin, Adler & Ross, Bock and Harnick, and… well, the list goes on and on. And we’ll conclude with the likes of Kander & Ebb and Stephen Sondheim and his many collaborators, who began to deconstruct, deepen, and stretch the form into still new and challenging shapes and themes. We will spend some classes listening to (or, if possible, looking at) and discussing the librettos and songs of notable but lesser known musicals. At other times, we will look in depth at landmark musicals (e.g., Show Boat, Of Thee I Sing, Lady in the Dark, Carousel, Guys and Dolls, Follies, Company) that either changed or epitomized the form. This class meets twice a week.

During the fall semester, we will develop—through theatrical exercises, improvisations, character development, and “hands-on” collaboration with the screenwriting team—an ensemble cast. As the webisodics are developed, workshopped, and revised, the filmmakers will be shooting and editing the weekly staged readings as performed by the actors. The actors will further explore, investigate, and create three-dimensional, complex characters. We will review and discuss revisions and complexity of plot in class. Camera blocking and comprehension of camera movements will be taught. When principal photography is wrapped, the actors will further develop their craft by working with the screenwriters doing table reads and staged readings of original material. These workshop pieces will be shot, edited, and discussed in class to enhance the revision process. The outcome of this past year’s course is the Web series, “Socially Active,” which can be viewed online at: http://vimeo.com/channels/sociallyactive. This class will be team-taught by Theatre instructor Douglas Mac Hugh and Filmmaking instructor Fred Strype. Class size is limited. Permission of the instructors is required. This class meets once a week for four hours.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to La MaMa, dedicated to the playwright and to all aspects of the theater.”—Ellen Stewart

The La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City has been the host of contemporary and international theatre artists for 50 years. You will have the opportunity to attend the performances, meet the artists, and participate in workshops led by them, as well as access the La MaMa archives on the history of international theatre in New York. Your personal “syncretic theatre journey” is enhanced by the observance of fellow theatre-makers and oneself that is informed concretely by the application of text, research, movement, music, design, puppetry, and multimedia, as well as social and political debate in class. Coordinators of the La MaMa International Symposium for Directors, David Diamond and Mia Yoo, will host you in New York City, where you will exchange ideas with visiting and local artists: Yara Arts, artists of the Great Jones Repertory Theatre. Historical and contemporary experimental playwrights will be discussed: 4.48 Psychosis, by Sarah Kane, Ubu Roi, by Alfred Jarry, Les Cenci, by Antonin Artaud, Dutchman, by Amira (Leroi Jones) Baraka, A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen, Yukio Mishima’s Modern Noh Plays, Mystery-Bouffe, by Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Mud, by Maria Irene Fornes.

The Alexander Technique is a neuromuscular system that 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 easing 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. Audition required.

Students improve their vocal power and ease through an understanding of basic breathing mechanics and anatomy. Utilizing recent discoveries of breathing coordination, performers can achieve their true potential by freeing their voices, reducing tension, and increasing vocal stamina. In the second semester, principals of the Alexander Technique are introduced; students consolidate their progress by performing songs and monologues in a supportive atmosphere. Two sections. This class meets once a week.

A continuation of Breathing Coordination for the Performer, which is suggested as a prerequisite, students deepen their understanding of breathing coordination and Alexander Technique and work on songs and monologues of their choice. The emphasis is on maintaining physical ease in performance to increase vocal range and power. This class meets once a week.

Students learn the basics of armed and unarmed stage fighting, with an emphasis on safety. Actors are taught to create effective stage violence, from hair pulling and choking to sword fighting, with a minimum of risk. Basic techniques are incorporated into short scenes to give students experience performing fights in classic and modern contexts. Each semester culminates in a skills proficiency test aimed at certification in one of eight weapon forms. This class meets once a week.

This course is a continuation of Introduction to Stage Combat and offers additional training in more complex weapons forms, such as rapier and dagger, single sword, and small sword. Students receive training as fight captains and have the opportunity to take additional skills proficiency tests, leading to actor/combatant status in the Society of American Fight Directors.

We will explore the full instrument of the performer, namely the human body. Daily exercises open the body to larger movement potential while introducing students to a better functioning alignment, efficient muscle and energy use, full breathing, clear weight transfer, and an increased awareness while traveling through space. In addition, students will be asked to create “movement-based pieces” in an effort to discover and articulate the languages that the body communicates regardless of the words spoken on stage. In all aspects, the goals of this class are to enable students to be courageous with their physical selves, more articulate with their expression, and more personally expressive in their performances. In addition to occasional reading handouts, there will be opportunities to visit rehearsals and performances of professional theatre and dance in New York City. This course meets twice a week.

This course is a hands-on laboratory class in the skills, practices, and attitudes that help a stage manager organize an environment where a theatrical team can work together productively and with minimum stress. Classroom exercises and discussion augment the mentored production work that is assigned to each student. Script analysis, blocking notation, prop management, and cue writing/calling are among the topics covered. Knowledge of and practice in stage management are essential tools for directors and useful supplements for actors and designers. This class meets once a week during the fall semester; spring semester is devoted to mentored production practicums. Greta Minsky will teach in the fall semester; Rebecca Sealander, in the spring semester.

An advanced course focusing on the work of actors and directors in rehearsal. Through work on scenes both outside and in front of the class, students will develop the ability to work in partnership to activate the central struggle of a play and translate the spirit of the text into the physical world. We will examine in a very practical way the communication tools and rehearsal strategies which most effectively engage the creative energies of all collaborators as they work to articulate, through bold and specific choices, a directorial vision in four dimensions. This course meets once a week for four hours. This class meets twice a week.

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 and any interested student. This class meets twice a week.

This class will focus on directing plays in the 20th-century canon, covering a range of styles and content. It will cover the whole journey of directing a play, with a strong emphasis on practical work. Students will be required to bring in design research for plays and to direct scenes from the plays, both of which they will present to the class for critique. The class will focus on how to use the text to inform the choices made by the director. Jackson Gay will teach in the fall; Will Frears, in the spring.

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 the budget 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. This class meets twice a week.

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 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.

The creative director of the Theatre program will lead a discussion group for all the directors, assistant directors, and playwrights participating in the fall theatre season (including readings, workshops, and productions). This is an opportunity for students to discuss with their peers the process, problems, and pleasures of making theatre at Sarah Lawrence College (and beyond). This workshop is part problem solving and part support group, with the emphasis on problem solving. This course is required for students who accept a position in the fall theatre season.

This course focuses on the nuts and bolts of lightboard 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.

This course allows students to explore design possibilities for media projections, integrating animation, experimental film, video, and puppetry through a series of exploratory projects and group work. Visual sequences will be created using overhead projectors, stop-motion animation techniques, shadow puppetry, film, and video. The course will introduce basic digital-image manipulation in Photoshop, simple video animation in AfterEffects, editing in Final Cut Pro, 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 Macintosh operating system is highly recommended. This class meets once a week.

This is a performance lab open to actors, dancers, visual artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and directors. The class will form an ensemble where creative process, media crossovers, and global forms and styles are presented within an active media lab. The group, using shared performance techniques, will explore the development of personal devised work. Methods of vocal and physical work will add to interdisciplinary collaborations in order to explore sources of inspiration for new work. Investigating both traditional and contemporary performance, we will acknowledge new connections that are happening between video games and text, science and technology. Crossing cultural and media traditions, the group will create and present weekly projects, as well as a final performance.

This class is a laboratory, where students will explore (on their feet) a range of methodologies, philosophies, and approaches to creating performance and theatre. How do you direct a theatre piece without starting with a play? Alongside a broad survey of artists and art movements of the 20th century that continue to influence theatre artists today, students will practice a variety of ways of staging, with and without text, and always in relation to being a “live event.” Following a trajectory from the Dadaists to Fluxus, from the surrealists to John Cage (and beyond), we will wrangle with these “postdramatic” artists and explore how their ideas can lead us in finding our own unique theatrical voice. Students will be given reading and creative assignments outside of class and will be expected to work collaboratively throughout the term. This class meets once a week.

This course will begin with a detailed look at the traditional Japanese Bunraku puppet theatre, a form that involves texts by some of the most revered Japanese writers and detailed puppets operated by three puppeteers, each in full view of the audience. We will continue to explore Japanese splinter forms (Otome Bunraku, Kuruma Ningyo), as well as contemporary, American adaptations of the style. Students will then have the opportunity to develop their own manipulation skills with three-person puppets and construct and devise their own bunraku-style performance. This class meets once a week for two hours.

In this course we will focus specifically on marionette puppetry. We will explore the form and its history through individual and group research projects. We will further our exploration through hands-on learning with various techniques in construction and puppeteering. Through specific exercises, the students will also gain an understanding of how to prepare the puppeteer’s body for performance. The class will culminate with the creation and presentation of puppetry pieces of their own making. This class meets once a week for two hours.

In this class, students will conduct research on two disparate forms of puppet theatre: one Western; one Eastern. Toy Theatre, originally a juvenile entertainment from Europe, was adapted for adult performance in the late 20th century by such artistic titans as designer Edward Gordon Graig, sculptor Alexander Calder, and playwright Erik Ehn. The Shadow theatre traditions of Asia range from the secular (China) to the spiritual (Indonesia) and infuse modern theatre with a new, almost limitless, vocabulary. After in-depth research into the history of these forms, students will embark on hands-on learning, building fabrication and manipulation skills as they create their own short pieces in these two syles. This class meets once a week for two hours.

This course is 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.

This is a more advanced course in costume design for students who have completed Costume Design I or who have the instructor’s permission to enroll. 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 a portfolio.  This class meets once a week.

This is an advanced conference in costume design.

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 will be invited to attend technical rehearsals. They will have opportunities to design productions and to assist other designers as a way of developing greater understanding of the design process. This class meets once a week.

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 increase their experience in design by assisting Mr. MacPherson and others, when possible.

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. This class meets once a week. There is a $50 course fee.

This class will further develop the student’s skill set as a scenic designer through work on department productions and individual projects. Students will deepen their skills in drafting and rendering for the stage 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.

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 course, 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.

This course challenges the assumption that talent cannot be taught. What we call “talent” is more likely a set of skills that may not be teachable but can be developed. During class, we discover a point of view, sharpen our creative torque, exercise focus, and listen to our subconscious. We also employ craft to make more potent our vision for a particular play. We interpret feedback from our peers in order to expand and adjust our material. Using techniques learned from great world dramatists, we rigorously edit and revise. All the while, we remember that there is a certain ineffable quality to every great play—something in its craft that remains a mystery. The objective of this course is to make the most of what can be developed or learned while retaining the magic of our work. This class meets once a week.

You have an idea, or vision, for a play that you would like to write. You have no particular idea for a play, yet you feel eager to explore and learn how to write in the dramatic form—which involves live characters interacting in three-dimensional space before a live audience. Either way, this course involves learning craft techniques, as well as advanced methods, for dramatizing your ideas from initial scenes to completed rough/first drafts. The course will involve in-class writing exercises and reading selected plays. We incorporate free writing and brainstorming techniques, acting improvisation, and audio and video recordings from your in-process work. In-progress drafts of your work will involve 1-, 5-, 10-, and 30-minute versions of your play as it comes into being. This class meets once a week.

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.” As we investigate various experimental playwrights—Beckett, Ionesco, Arrabal, Adrienne Kennedy—we will seek to ascertain the political, spiritual, psychological, and social elements that influenced the creation of their works. Our aim is, first and foremost, to investigate and explore ways to genuinely investigate and give theatrical expression to our own personal. political, and 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” will include multimedia presentations as part of the scripted, onstage play or performance. This class meets twice a week.

The focus of this class is to discover both the nature of your creative process and the fundamentals of dramatic structure that gives form to that process. In the first term, students will write a series of both spontaneous writing exercises and structural exercises. Both types of exercise are taken from The Playwrights Guidebook, which we will use as a basic text. At the end of the first term, students will write a short, but complete, play based on one of their spontaneous writing exercises. In the second term, students go on to adapt a short story of their choice and to write a play based on a historical character, event, or period. The focus in all instances is on the writer’s deepest connection to the material—where the drama lies. The work is read aloud in class and discussed in class each week. Students will also read and discuss plays that mirror the challenges presented by their own exercises. This class meets once a week.

Who are you as a writer? What do you write about, and why? Are you merely writing the play that you want to write—or the play that you need to write? Where is the nexus between the amorphous, subconscious wellspring of the material and the rigorous demands of a form that plays in real time before a live audience? This course is designed for playwriting students who have a basic knowledge of dramatic structure and an understanding of their own creative process and are ready to create a complete dramatic work of any length. (As Edward Albee points out, “All plays are full-length plays.”) Students will be free to work on themes, subjects, and styles of their choice. Work will be read aloud and discussed in class each week. The course requires that students enter with, at minimum, an idea of the play on which they plan to work; they may also bring in a partial draft or even a completed draft that they wish to revise. We will read some existent texts, time allowing. This class meets twice a week.

 “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club”—Jack London

Writers Gym is a yearlong writing workshop designed for writers of any genre and for 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.

Writing for Solo Performance is a course designed for actors who want to write and act in their own work. We will learn how to take the personal story and shape it into a monologue for the stage. We will examine the many forms of personal monologue, autobiographical narrative, and fictional narrative, as well as character-driven, topical, and reality-based monologues and the poetic series. In addition, we will explore staging and new trends such as audience participation and the incorporation of new media. Emphasis will be placed on students finding and developing their unique styles and voices, with the goal of creating fully realized solo shows. We will survey and study the field of solo performance from John Leguizamo to Anna Deveare Smith, Spalding Grey, Guillermo Gomez Pena, and Lisa Kron.

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. 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 the 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 College Human Genetics program. Group B is a weekly conference course with Shirley Kaplan and Allen Lang that is available to those students who have previously taken the Theatre Outreach course and who want to continue teaching and have a placement in the community. This class meets once a week.

Want to learn how to use the performing arts to change the world? Today, theatre is increasingly defined as a commercial enterprise. This course will examine the use of theatre for social change, examining its practice, theory, role, and production. Discussions will include how theatre is used for creating personal and social change and the key elements of successful projects. Classes will look at the full range of a social change initiative, from process to performance to organization to impact. 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 and construct a viable performing arts-based project “blueprint.” Students will also visit a rehearsal of The Possibility Project in Manhattan. (Mr. Griffin is the founder and president of The Possibility Project, a nonprofit organization using the performing arts to empower teenagers to transform their lives and communities.) This class meets once a week.

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 within the tristate 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.

Sponsored by Sarah Lawrence College and the British American Drama Academy (BADA), the London Theatre Program offers undergraduates from Sarah Lawrence an opportunity to work and study with leading actors and directors from the world of British theatre. The program offers acting classes with leading artists from the British stage. These are complemented by individual tutorials, where students will work one-on-one with their teachers. A faculty selected from Britain’s foremost drama schools teaches technical classes in voice, movement, and stage fighting. This intense conservatory training is accompanied by courses in theatre history and theatre criticism, tickets to productions, and the experience of performing in a professional theatre. In addition, master classes and workshops feature more of Britain’s fine actors and directors. Designed for dedicated students who wish to study acting in London, the program offers enrollment in either the fall or spring semester for single-semester study. Those wishing to pursue their training more intensely are strongly encouraged to begin their training in the fall and continue with the Advanced London Theatre Program in the spring semester. Audition required.

La MaMa E.T.C. sponsors two summer events in Umbria, Italy, in conjunction with Sarah Lawrence College: International Symposium for Directors, a three-week training program for professional directors, choreographers, and actors in which internationally renowned theatre artists conduct workshops and lecture/demonstrations; and 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 http://lamama.org/programs/la-mama-umbria-international.

This course will provide a critical and supportive forum for the development of new works of original performance, focusing primarily on where current dance and theatre combinations find inspiration. In the first semester, students will explore contemporary theatre-building techniques and methodologies from Dada to Judson Church and beyond. The majority of time will be devoted to lab work, where students will create their own short performance pieces through a multidisciplinary approach. Students will be asked to devise original theatre pieces that utilize such methods as solo forms, viewpoints, chance operations, and creations from nontheatrical sources. In addition to the laboratory aspect to the class, a number of plays, essays, and artists’ manifestos will be discussed. In the second semester, students will collaborate on a single, evening-length work, utilizing theatrical and nontheatrical sources in an attempt to speak to our cultural moment. Please note: The second semester will require additional developmental/rehearsal time outside of class. In addition to class work, there will be several opportunities to visit rehearsals and performances of professional theatre and dance in New York City. This class meets once a week. Open to first-year graduate students only.

Taught by a rotating series of Sarah Lawrence faculty and guest artists, this course focuses on developing the skills needed for a wide variety of techniques for the creation and development of new work in theatre. Ensemble acting, movement, design and fabrication, playwriting, devised work, and music performance are all explored. The class is a forum for workshops, master classes, and open rehearsals, with a focus on the development of critical skills. In addition, students in Grad Lab are expected to generate a new piece of theatre to be performed for the Sarah Lawrence community every month. These performances may include graduate and undergraduate students alike.Open to graduate students only.

This course will provide a critical and supportive forum for the development of new works of original theatre with a focus on conducting research in a variety of ways, including historical and artistic research, workshops, improvisations, experiments, and conversation. Each student will focus on creating one original project—typically, but not limited to, a solo—over the course of the full year. During the class, students will show works in progress. During conference, students and faculty will meet to discuss these showings and any relevant artistic and practical problems that may arise.Open to second-year graduate students only.

This workshop will translate the actor’s imagination into stage action by building one’s performance vocabulary. The class engages the students’ essential self by expanding their craft through a wide-ranging set of training techniques. This class meets twice a week.

Have you ever wondered where Arthur Miller got the idea to get inside Willy Loman’s head? Did you realize that it was only after August Strindberg went insane that he wrote some of his most famous and influential plays? Did you know that the comedies of Ancient Greece and the 17th century were far more sexually explicit than contemporary comedies? Did you know there’s a Nigerian play that is about the ancient Yoruban culture but uses ideas from Aristotle to tell its story? And that Aristotle’s ideas can also be found in plays by William Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, and Tennessee Williams? Did you ever wonder what we really mean by “realistic”? Or “naturalistic”? And that there’s a difference? Did you ever consider that Godot may already have arrived? History and Histrionics answers these questions but asks many more. We read great plays from the last 2,500 hundred years—tragedy, comedy, social critique, realism, naturalism, expressionism, musical theatre, absurdism, existentialism, and much more—to try to figure what they’re about, why they were written as they were, and how they fit in the great constellation of our dramatic heritage. This course meets once a week.

This course is for students with little or no design or technical experience who are curious about design and want exposure to multiple design areas. It is also a useful tool for directors, playwrights, and actors who want to increase their understanding of the design and technical aspects of theatre to enhance their abilities as theatrical artists. This is a very hands-on class, in which students will learn the basics needed to execute set, costume, lighting, and sound designs. We will use a short scene or play as the focus of our discussions of the collaborative design process. Class format will include both classes with the full design faculty and classes focused on specific design areas.

This course is for students who have design or technical experience or have taken Design Elements I and want to explore design and technical theatre in greater depth. This course is also useful for students who are studying one area of design and want an introduction to other areas. Students will explore two of the four design areas (set, costume, lighting, and sound design) in greater depth, building their technical skills, design basics, and collaborative communication skills. Class format involves classes with the full design faculty and six weeks of classes in each of two design areas with individual design teachers. The goal of this semester is to have students develop the ability to create a simple design in their chosen areas. Open to students who have taken Design Elements I or with faculty permission.

Investigations for those aspiring to produce, direct, create, and/or perform musical theatre and experimental chamber opera, this class is open to theatre designers and technicians, actors, singers, dancers, composers, lyricists, and musicians who are interested in learning and using crossover skills. Students will create teams to present and perform project scenes in class that include set and costume designs, musical and choreographic styles, and that go from concept ideas to production. Students will research the history of musicals, including European cabaret and global performance, with a particular focus on the influence of interdisciplinary needs of contemporary musicals. The process of adaptation, auditioning, casting, rewriting, rehearsals, and performance will also be presented. Second semester will include a production of a contemporary chamber opera and an ENCORE production of musical theatre songs. An interview and/or audition is required.

We will explore an actor’s performance with songs in 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 weekly voice lessons and an Alexander Technique class. Audition required. This class meets once a week.

SLC Lampoon is a comedy ensemble of actors, directors, and writers. The techniques of Second City and Theatersports will be used to create an improvisational troupe that will perform throughout the campus. The ensemble will craft comic characters and write sketches, parodies, and political satire. This work will culminate in a final SLC Lampoon Mainstage performance in the style of Second City or Saturday Night Live. Audition required.

Successful performances in dance and theatre rely on training that prepares performers in mind, body, and spirit to enter the realm of aesthetic exploration and expression. In this class, we will work toward acquiring skills that facilitate the investigation of previously unimagined ways of moving. Through traditional and experimental practices, students will develop a sense of form, energy use, strength and control, and awareness of time and rhythm. Improvisation is an important aspect of this study. Placement class required.

The plays of Anton Chekov, Tennessee Williams, and August Wilson will serve as the point of departure in our exploration of the craft of acting. In this class, students will be challenged to expand their range of expression and build their confidence to make bold and imaginative acting choices. Particular attention will be paid to learning to analyze the text in ways that lead to defining clear, specific, and playable actions and objectives. This class meets twice a week.

Those actors rooted in the tradition of playing Shakespeare find themselves equipped with a skill set that enables them to successfully work on a wide range of texts and within an array of performance modalities. The objectives of this class are to learn to identify, personalize, and embody the structural elements of Shakespeare’s language as the primary means of bringing his characters to life. Students will study a representative arc of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as the sonnets, with the goal of bringing his characters to life. Class time will be divided between physical, vocal, and text work. This class meets twice a week.

A study of the skills necessary for a successful audition, actors will practice cold readings and prepared 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.

Using the foundations learned during their first years in the Theatre program, students will apply their theatrical training to the camera. The students will learn how to maintain an organic experience in spite of the rigid technical restrictions and requirements. The second half of each semester will be dedicated to putting a scene on its feet and shooting it. We will use a monitor playback system for reviewing work to help identify specific problems. Class size is limited. This class meets twice a week.

An exploration of the classic structures of comedy and the unique comic mind, this course begins with a strong focus on improvisation and ensemble work. The athletics of the creative comedic mind is the primary objective of the first-semester exercises. Status play, narrative storytelling, and the Harold exercise are used to develop the artist’s freedom and confidence. The ensemble learns to trust the spontaneous response and their own comic madness. Second semester educates the theatre artist in the theories of comedy. It is designed to introduce students to commedia dell’arte, vaudeville, parody, satire, and standup comedy. At the end of the final semester, each student will write five minutes of standup material that will be performed one night at a comedy club in New York City and then on the College campus on Comedy Night. This class meets twice a week.

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 and 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 works by Arrabal, Beckett, Ionesco, Maria Irene Fornes, Sam Shepard, Albert Camus, and Jean Genet. This class meets twice a week.

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. This course is available to students who are willing to approach material experimentally in a laboratory setting. This class meets twice a week.

Like jazz, the American musical is one of this country’s unique art forms. And like jazz, the musical’s roots lie deep in both our European and African ancestry. We will begin by delving into the origins of American musical theatre—the early operettas, vaudevilles, burlesques, minstrel shows, and musical extravaganzas of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From there, we will move to the astonishingly fertile 1920s, when the jazz sounds of songwriters like Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle began to influence the music and lyrics of people like Ira & George Gershwin and Rodgers & Hart. We will look at the 1930s, when the sophisticated but inconsequential musical comedies of tunesmiths like Cole Porter existed side by side with provocative, politically themed musicals by Kurt Weill or (again) the Gershwins. By the end of the term, we will have reached the 1940s, when the Rodgers & Hammerstein “integrated” musical revolutionized musicals, giving them weight, substance, and greater coherence. In the second term, we will study the great book musicals of the 1950s, created by, among others, Frank Loesser, Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Lerner & Lowe, Irving Berlin, Adler & Ross, Bock and Harnick, and… well, the list goes on and on. And we’ll conclude with the likes of Kander & Ebb and Stephen Sondheim and his many collaborators, who began to deconstruct, deepen, and stretch the form into still new and challenging shapes and themes. We will spend some classes listening to (or, if possible, looking at) and discussing the librettos and songs of notable but lesser known musicals. At other times, we will look in depth at landmark musicals (e.g., Show Boat, Of Thee I Sing, Lady in the Dark, Carousel, Guys and Dolls, Follies, Company) that either changed or epitomized the form. This class meets twice a week.

During the fall semester, we will develop—through theatrical exercises, improvisations, character development, and “hands-on” collaboration with the screenwriting team—an ensemble cast. As the webisodics are developed, workshopped, and revised, the filmmakers will be shooting and editing the weekly staged readings as performed by the actors. The actors will further explore, investigate, and create three-dimensional, complex characters. We will review and discuss revisions and complexity of plot in class. Camera blocking and comprehension of camera movements will be taught. When principal photography is wrapped, the actors will further develop their craft by working with the screenwriters doing table reads and staged readings of original material. These workshop pieces will be shot, edited, and discussed in class to enhance the revision process. The outcome of this past year’s course is the Web series, “Socially Active,” which can be viewed online at: http://vimeo.com/channels/sociallyactive. This class will be team-taught by Theatre instructor Douglas Mac Hugh and Filmmaking instructor Fred Strype. Class size is limited. Permission of the instructors is required. This class meets once a week for four hours.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to La MaMa, dedicated to the playwright and to all aspects of the theater.”—Ellen Stewart

The La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City has been the host of contemporary and international theatre artists for 50 years. You will have the opportunity to attend the performances, meet the artists, and participate in workshops led by them, as well as access the La MaMa archives on the history of international theatre in New York. Your personal “syncretic theatre journey” is enhanced by the observance of fellow theatre-makers and oneself that is informed concretely by the application of text, research, movement, music, design, puppetry, and multimedia, as well as social and political debate in class. Coordinators of the La MaMa International Symposium for Directors, David Diamond and Mia Yoo, will host you in New York City, where you will exchange ideas with visiting and local artists: Yara Arts, artists of the Great Jones Repertory Theatre. Historical and contemporary experimental playwrights will be discussed: 4.48 Psychosis, by Sarah Kane, Ubu Roi, by Alfred Jarry, Les Cenci, by Antonin Artaud, Dutchman, by Amira (Leroi Jones) Baraka, A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen, Yukio Mishima’s Modern Noh Plays, Mystery-Bouffe, by Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Mud, by Maria Irene Fornes.

The Alexander Technique is a neuromuscular system that 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 easing 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. Audition required.

Students improve their vocal power and ease through an understanding of basic breathing mechanics and anatomy. Utilizing recent discoveries of breathing coordination, performers can achieve their true potential by freeing their voices, reducing tension, and increasing vocal stamina. In the second semester, principals of the Alexander Technique are introduced; students consolidate their progress by performing songs and monologues in a supportive atmosphere. Two sections. This class meets once a week.

A continuation of Breathing Coordination for the Performer, which is suggested as a prerequisite, students deepen their understanding of breathing coordination and Alexander Technique and work on songs and monologues of their choice. The emphasis is on maintaining physical ease in performance to increase vocal range and power. This class meets once a week.

Students learn the basics of armed and unarmed stage fighting, with an emphasis on safety. Actors are taught to create effective stage violence, from hair pulling and choking to sword fighting, with a minimum of risk. Basic techniques are incorporated into short scenes to give students experience performing fights in classic and modern contexts. Each semester culminates in a skills proficiency test aimed at certification in one of eight weapon forms. This class meets once a week.

This course is a continuation of Introduction to Stage Combat and offers additional training in more complex weapons forms, such as rapier and dagger, single sword, and small sword. Students receive training as fight captains and have the opportunity to take additional skills proficiency tests, leading to actor/combatant status in the Society of American Fight Directors.

We will explore the full instrument of the performer, namely the human body. Daily exercises open the body to larger movement potential while introducing students to a better functioning alignment, efficient muscle and energy use, full breathing, clear weight transfer, and an increased awareness while traveling through space. In addition, students will be asked to create “movement-based pieces” in an effort to discover and articulate the languages that the body communicates regardless of the words spoken on stage. In all aspects, the goals of this class are to enable students to be courageous with their physical selves, more articulate with their expression, and more personally expressive in their performances. In addition to occasional reading handouts, there will be opportunities to visit rehearsals and performances of professional theatre and dance in New York City. This course meets twice a week.

This course is a hands-on laboratory class in the skills, practices, and attitudes that help a stage manager organize an environment where a theatrical team can work together productively and with minimum stress. Classroom exercises and discussion augment the mentored production work that is assigned to each student. Script analysis, blocking notation, prop management, and cue writing/calling are among the topics covered. Knowledge of and practice in stage management are essential tools for directors and useful supplements for actors and designers. This class meets once a week during the fall semester; spring semester is devoted to mentored production practicums. Greta Minsky will teach in the fall semester; Rebecca Sealander, in the spring semester.

An advanced course focusing on the work of actors and directors in rehearsal. Through work on scenes both outside and in front of the class, students will develop the ability to work in partnership to activate the central struggle of a play and translate the spirit of the text into the physical world. We will examine in a very practical way the communication tools and rehearsal strategies which most effectively engage the creative energies of all collaborators as they work to articulate, through bold and specific choices, a directorial vision in four dimensions. This course meets once a week for four hours. This class meets twice a week.

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 and any interested student. This class meets twice a week.

This class will focus on directing plays in the 20th-century canon, covering a range of styles and content. It will cover the whole journey of directing a play, with a strong emphasis on practical work. Students will be required to bring in design research for plays and to direct scenes from the plays, both of which they will present to the class for critique. The class will focus on how to use the text to inform the choices made by the director. Jackson Gay will teach in the fall; Will Frears, in the spring.

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 the budget 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. This class meets twice a week.

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 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.

The creative director of the Theatre program will lead a discussion group for all the directors, assistant directors, and playwrights participating in the fall theatre season (including readings, workshops, and productions). This is an opportunity for students to discuss with their peers the process, problems, and pleasures of making theatre at Sarah Lawrence College (and beyond). This workshop is part problem solving and part support group, with the emphasis on problem solving. This course is required for students who accept a position in the fall theatre season.

This course focuses on the nuts and bolts of lightboard 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.

This course allows students to explore design possibilities for media projections, integrating animation, experimental film, video, and puppetry through a series of exploratory projects and group work. Visual sequences will be created using overhead projectors, stop-motion animation techniques, shadow puppetry, film, and video. The course will introduce basic digital-image manipulation in Photoshop, simple video animation in AfterEffects, editing in Final Cut Pro, 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 Macintosh operating system is highly recommended. This class meets once a week.

This is a performance lab open to actors, dancers, visual artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and directors. The class will form an ensemble where creative process, media crossovers, and global forms and styles are presented within an active media lab. The group, using shared performance techniques, will explore the development of personal devised work. Methods of vocal and physical work will add to interdisciplinary collaborations in order to explore sources of inspiration for new work. Investigating both traditional and contemporary performance, we will acknowledge new connections that are happening between video games and text, science and technology. Crossing cultural and media traditions, the group will create and present weekly projects, as well as a final performance.

This class is a laboratory, where students will explore (on their feet) a range of methodologies, philosophies, and approaches to creating performance and theatre. How do you direct a theatre piece without starting with a play? Alongside a broad survey of artists and art movements of the 20th century that continue to influence theatre artists today, students will practice a variety of ways of staging, with and without text, and always in relation to being a “live event.” Following a trajectory from the Dadaists to Fluxus, from the surrealists to John Cage (and beyond), we will wrangle with these “postdramatic” artists and explore how their ideas can lead us in finding our own unique theatrical voice. Students will be given reading and creative assignments outside of class and will be expected to work collaboratively throughout the term. This class meets once a week.

This course will begin with a detailed look at the traditional Japanese Bunraku puppet theatre, a form that involves texts by some of the most revered Japanese writers and detailed puppets operated by three puppeteers, each in full view of the audience. We will continue to explore Japanese splinter forms (Otome Bunraku, Kuruma Ningyo), as well as contemporary, American adaptations of the style. Students will then have the opportunity to develop their own manipulation skills with three-person puppets and construct and devise their own bunraku-style performance. This class meets once a week for two hours.

In this course we will focus specifically on marionette puppetry. We will explore the form and its history through individual and group research projects. We will further our exploration through hands-on learning with various techniques in construction and puppeteering. Through specific exercises, the students will also gain an understanding of how to prepare the puppeteer’s body for performance. The class will culminate with the creation and presentation of puppetry pieces of their own making. This class meets once a week for two hours.

In this class, students will conduct research on two disparate forms of puppet theatre: one Western; one Eastern. Toy Theatre, originally a juvenile entertainment from Europe, was adapted for adult performance in the late 20th century by such artistic titans as designer Edward Gordon Graig, sculptor Alexander Calder, and playwright Erik Ehn. The Shadow theatre traditions of Asia range from the secular (China) to the spiritual (Indonesia) and infuse modern theatre with a new, almost limitless, vocabulary. After in-depth research into the history of these forms, students will embark on hands-on learning, building fabrication and manipulation skills as they create their own short pieces in these two syles. This class meets once a week for two hours.

This course is 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.

This is a more advanced course in costume design for students who have completed Costume Design I or who have the instructor’s permission to enroll. 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 a portfolio.  This class meets once a week.

This is an advanced conference in costume design.

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 will be invited to attend technical rehearsals. They will have opportunities to design productions and to assist other designers as a way of developing greater understanding of the design process. This class meets once a week.

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 increase their experience in design by assisting Mr. MacPherson and others, when possible.

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. This class meets once a week. There is a $50 course fee.

This class will further develop the student’s skill set as a scenic designer through work on department productions and individual projects. Students will deepen their skills in drafting and rendering for the stage 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.

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 course, 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.

This course challenges the assumption that talent cannot be taught. What we call “talent” is more likely a set of skills that may not be teachable but can be developed. During class, we discover a point of view, sharpen our creative torque, exercise focus, and listen to our subconscious. We also employ craft to make more potent our vision for a particular play. We interpret feedback from our peers in order to expand and adjust our material. Using techniques learned from great world dramatists, we rigorously edit and revise. All the while, we remember that there is a certain ineffable quality to every great play—something in its craft that remains a mystery. The objective of this course is to make the most of what can be developed or learned while retaining the magic of our work. This class meets once a week.

You have an idea, or vision, for a play that you would like to write. You have no particular idea for a play, yet you feel eager to explore and learn how to write in the dramatic form—which involves live characters interacting in three-dimensional space before a live audience. Either way, this course involves learning craft techniques, as well as advanced methods, for dramatizing your ideas from initial scenes to completed rough/first drafts. The course will involve in-class writing exercises and reading selected plays. We incorporate free writing and brainstorming techniques, acting improvisation, and audio and video recordings from your in-process work. In-progress drafts of your work will involve 1-, 5-, 10-, and 30-minute versions of your play as it comes into being. This class meets once a week.

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.” As we investigate various experimental playwrights—Beckett, Ionesco, Arrabal, Adrienne Kennedy—we will seek to ascertain the political, spiritual, psychological, and social elements that influenced the creation of their works. Our aim is, first and foremost, to investigate and explore ways to genuinely investigate and give theatrical expression to our own personal. political, and 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” will include multimedia presentations as part of the scripted, onstage play or performance. This class meets twice a week.

The focus of this class is to discover both the nature of your creative process and the fundamentals of dramatic structure that gives form to that process. In the first term, students will write a series of both spontaneous writing exercises and structural exercises. Both types of exercise are taken from The Playwrights Guidebook, which we will use as a basic text. At the end of the first term, students will write a short, but complete, play based on one of their spontaneous writing exercises. In the second term, students go on to adapt a short story of their choice and to write a play based on a historical character, event, or period. The focus in all instances is on the writer’s deepest connection to the material—where the drama lies. The work is read aloud in class and discussed in class each week. Students will also read and discuss plays that mirror the challenges presented by their own exercises. This class meets once a week.

Who are you as a writer? What do you write about, and why? Are you merely writing the play that you want to write—or the play that you need to write? Where is the nexus between the amorphous, subconscious wellspring of the material and the rigorous demands of a form that plays in real time before a live audience? This course is designed for playwriting students who have a basic knowledge of dramatic structure and an understanding of their own creative process and are ready to create a complete dramatic work of any length. (As Edward Albee points out, “All plays are full-length plays.”) Students will be free to work on themes, subjects, and styles of their choice. Work will be read aloud and discussed in class each week. The course requires that students enter with, at minimum, an idea of the play on which they plan to work; they may also bring in a partial draft or even a completed draft that they wish to revise. We will read some existent texts, time allowing. This class meets twice a week.

 “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club”—Jack London

Writers Gym is a yearlong writing workshop designed for writers of any genre and for 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.

Writing for Solo Performance is a course designed for actors who want to write and act in their own work. We will learn how to take the personal story and shape it into a monologue for the stage. We will examine the many forms of personal monologue, autobiographical narrative, and fictional narrative, as well as character-driven, topical, and reality-based monologues and the poetic series. In addition, we will explore staging and new trends such as audience participation and the incorporation of new media. Emphasis will be placed on students finding and developing their unique styles and voices, with the goal of creating fully realized solo shows. We will survey and study the field of solo performance from John Leguizamo to Anna Deveare Smith, Spalding Grey, Guillermo Gomez Pena, and Lisa Kron.

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. 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 the 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 College Human Genetics program. Group B is a weekly conference course with Shirley Kaplan and Allen Lang that is available to those students who have previously taken the Theatre Outreach course and who want to continue teaching and have a placement in the community. This class meets once a week.

Want to learn how to use the performing arts to change the world? Today, theatre is increasingly defined as a commercial enterprise. This course will examine the use of theatre for social change, examining its practice, theory, role, and production. Discussions will include how theatre is used for creating personal and social change and the key elements of successful projects. Classes will look at the full range of a social change initiative, from process to performance to organization to impact. 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 and construct a viable performing arts-based project “blueprint.” Students will also visit a rehearsal of The Possibility Project in Manhattan. (Mr. Griffin is the founder and president of The Possibility Project, a nonprofit organization using the performing arts to empower teenagers to transform their lives and communities.) This class meets once a week.

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 within the tristate 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.

Sponsored by Sarah Lawrence College and the British American Drama Academy (BADA), the London Theatre Program offers undergraduates from Sarah Lawrence an opportunity to work and study with leading actors and directors from the world of British theatre. The program offers acting classes with leading artists from the British stage. These are complemented by individual tutorials, where students will work one-on-one with their teachers. A faculty selected from Britain’s foremost drama schools teaches technical classes in voice, movement, and stage fighting. This intense conservatory training is accompanied by courses in theatre history and theatre criticism, tickets to productions, and the experience of performing in a professional theatre. In addition, master classes and workshops feature more of Britain’s fine actors and directors. Designed for dedicated students who wish to study acting in London, the program offers enrollment in either the fall or spring semester for single-semester study. Those wishing to pursue their training more intensely are strongly encouraged to begin their training in the fall and continue with the Advanced London Theatre Program in the spring semester. Audition required.

La MaMa E.T.C. sponsors two summer events in Umbria, Italy, in conjunction with Sarah Lawrence College: International Symposium for Directors, a three-week training program for professional directors, choreographers, and actors in which internationally renowned theatre artists conduct workshops and lecture/demonstrations; and 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 http://lamama.org/programs/la-mama-umbria-international.