Theatre Courses

Contact

Director

E-mail

914.395.2430

The Sarah Lawrence College Theatre MFA Program is focused on deep collaboration, community building, and interdisciplinarity. We support performance and theater artists through a curriculum crossing the boundaries of design, acting, directing, management, performance, technology, writing, producing, voice, movement, civic engagement and much more. Students have the advantage of taking classes within the music and dance programs as well to supplement their practice.

MFA Theatre 2023-2024 Courses

Written Thesis

Graduate Component—Year

This class meets once a week and is required for all second-year Theatre graduate students.

Faculty

Performance Lab

Graduate Component—Year

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 each month for the Sarah Lawrence community. These performances may include graduate and undergraduate students alike. Required for all Theatre graduate students. This class meets twice a week.

Faculty

Embodied Thesis

Graduate Component—Year

Embodied Thesis provides a critical and supportive forum for developing new works of original theatre and performance, focusing on researching in multiple formats, including historical and artistic research, showings, improvisations, experiments, and conversation. Each of you had the opportunity to create a solo, duo, or group project. We share our research, respond to developmental prompts, keep a practice journal, loosely develop a structure/content for the projects, refine our performances through showings, and support and gave feedback to the cohort.

Embodied Thesis cultivates technical skills and nurtures a deep understanding of the integral relationship between research and embodiment in performance practice. By delving into an intentional and elongated creation process, students embark on a transformative journey of self-discovery. They leave the course equipped with an original work that authentically reflects their artistic voice and demonstrates their growth as innovative practitioners.

Faculty

The Art of Pedagogy: Creating a Modern Theatre Classroom in Higher Education

Graduate Seminar

This graduate level course will focus on pedagogy and the theory of teaching theatre in higher education. Students will prepare to work as a theatre artist and educator in universities and colleges. Students will learn the practical skills of developing materials necessary to secure a position teaching theatre such as a teaching CV, pedagogical statement, artist statement, and diversity statement. Students will also learn the practical skills they will need once they’ve landed a teaching position such as developing a syllabus and other documents to track student progress.

We will discuss different perspectives on arts pedagogy and learn what is new and on the cutting edge of developing culturally competent, anti-racist, trauma informed, consent based, and inclusive teaching practices. Students will learn that Inclusive Teaching is a foundational framework for teaching in an increasingly diverse and globally connected society–one that recognizes and affirms the myriad backgrounds, perspectives, and identities individuals bring to learning environments. We will grapple with this in each class as students are encouraged to design their teaching materials to be welcoming, accessible, inclusive and explicitly centralizing of a broad range of students.

Students will learn how to identify their teaching goals for a course and then how to develop curriculums that will work towards those goals with each lesson. They will learn how to design exercises with multiple entrance points and they will learn how to design both summative and formative assessments. In addition to this in class work together, students will gain hands-on experience executing lessons and exercises by assisting a professor in the the SLC theatre program.

In this course we will discuss the ideas of thinkers including bell hooks, James P. Comer, Bettina Love, Kim Solga, Augusto Boal, Paulo Freire, Gada Mahrouse, Chanelle Wilson, Nayantara Sheoran Appleton, and Heidi Safia Mirza, among others. Open to graduate students.

 

Faculty

Acting and Performance

Advanced Acting MFA Studio: Contemporary Scene Study

Graduate Component

In the graduate studio, we will explore scenes and monologues from contemporary playwrights. Along with an intense focus on script analysis, story structure and character work, students will learn a set of acting tools that will assist them in making their work incredibly loose, spontaneous and authentic. Scenes and monologues will be chosen by the instructor, in collaboration with the students. Prerequisite: Graduate Student or completed at least 2 acting components for undergraduate students.

Faculty

Voice-Over Acting Technique

Component—Year

This course is an introduction to the craft and technique of voice-over acting in various forms. The class is open to performers with an interest in gaining the necessary skills to perform in the fields of animation, video games, audio books, commercials, and more. Actors will learn to differentiate between genres and how to adapt their performance approach to each. We will cover basic skills, such as warmups, common terminology, home-studio setup, and audition and performance techniques. We will then build on those skills by learning to break down text, apply breath, perform copy, develop specific characters, and receive feedback and direction. Actors will have the opportunity to dive deeply into a genre of their choice, find and write their own copy, and practice recording and editing takes with the goal of creating a demo reel.

Faculty

Actor’s Workshop: Acting the Kilroys

Component—Year

This course meets twice a week.

This script-based approach to acting and performance springs from the works and goals of The Kilroys, “a gang of playwrights…who came together to stop talking about gender parity in theatre and start taking action.” Students will perform given scenes written in a variety of styles by female, queer, and trans writers. Students will also study the greater context of plays, watch films and documentaries, and read and discuss essays and plays that deal with theatre’s response to the events that shape our world. Kilroys is about a way of looking at theatre: “We make trouble. And plays.” Acting the Kilroys is open to actors of any and all identities.

Faculty

Acting Shakespeare

Component—Year

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.

Faculty

Solo Performance

Component—Year

Solo performance is nothing new. This has been happening since the dawn of man, and it will continue to happen... —Nilaja Sun

Discover the story you have to tell and own your voice boldly enough to tell it. Unlock your creativity not only for solo performance but also for every other aspect of your creative self! This playwriting-into-performance class will first focus on the actors finding a subject matter that motivates and sustains them. We will discuss the actor’s strengths and weaknesses throughout the process, finding the actor’s unique voice through self-observance and self-discipline. The goal of this class is to catapult students from summary to interpretation, from regurgitation to analysis, from the simple act of seeing to the complex and bold endeavor of examination. Students are expected to actively measure relevant theoretical knowledge with critical issues pertaining to social justice and social change. Solo Performance emerges out of a desire to heal. Students are invited to create their own performance piece of theatre by developing and rehearsing a script within the spring term. Inviting them to have an intensive self-discovery and process, students will begin with reading and examining one-character plays. We will read the works of Spalding Grey, Anna Devere Smith, Lemon Andersen, and many more; then, as a class, we will discuss techniques, autobiographical subject matter, and themes. Students will create first drafts, next rewrites, then rehearsals, culminating in a final reading and/or performance of their own work.

Faculty

Actor’s Workshop: Craft and Character

Component—Year

This course will be made up of exercises, monologues, and scene work intended to teach actors how to use acting techniques like Stanislavsky and Hagen in the craft of acting. Students will learn how to craft a set of given circumstances and make playable choices and objectives based on the analysis of their chosen performance text in order to create a truthful performance. The goal of the class is to give each student his/her own understanding of the importance of developing technique, rigor, and artistic practice in the craft of acting, as well as how to unlock the layers and complexities of any character that they play.

Faculty

Actor’s Workshop

Component—Year

In this class, students will begin developing their own artistic practice for performance—supported by workshops on major acting methods such as Brecht, Stanislavski, and Hagen, as well as workshops on physical theatre and performance in the context of devised work. Through learning the historical and artistic context of different techniques, students will be encouraged to determine which practices are useful to them in their own work. These include vocal and physical warmups, relaxation, concentration, sensory awareness, listening, communication, and collaboration. Students will complete presentations that will spring from these workshops, as well as monologues and scene study. Students will work toward an awareness of their own process so that they might be confident in their ability to develop characters outside of the context of a classroom. Students will be asked to honestly evaluate their own work, along with feedback from the professor. This class is intended for first- and second-year Theatre Thirds, as well as others who have not taken many (or any) acting courses.

Faculty

Acting and Directing for Camera

Component—Year

A theatre program acting or directing component or permission of the instructor is required.

This comprehensive, step-by-step course focuses on developing the skills and tools that young actors need in order to work in the fast-paced world of film and television while also learning how to write, direct, edit, and produce their own work for the screen. The first semester will focus on screen acting and on-camera auditions (in person and taped). Through intense scene study and script analysis, we will expand each performer’s range of emotional, intellectual, physical, and vocal expressiveness for the camera. Focus will also be put on the technical skills needed for the actor to give the strongest performance “within the frame” while maintaining a high level of spontaneity and authenticity. Students will act in assigned and self-chosen scenes from film and television scripts. Toward the end of the semester, the focus will switch to on-camera auditions, where students will learn the do’s and don’ts of the in-person and the self-taped camera audition. During the second semester, students will learn the basics of filmmaking, allowing them to create their own work without the restraints of a large budget and crew. The basic fundamentals of screenwriting, cinematography, directing, and editing will be covered, along with weekly writing, reading, viewing, and filming assignments. Students will finish class with edited footage of their work and clear next steps. For this course, students must have their own, or access to a, camera (iPhone, iPad, or other camera) and a computer with editing software (e.g., iMovie, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere).

Faculty

Filming With Actors: A Workshop for Directors and Actors

Component—Fall

Students must have completed at least one yearlong acting component in the theatre program.

For the actors (theatre students), we will explore the basics of acting on film with a focus on script analysis and the elements of characterization. We will also explore methods that will allow the actor’s work on camera to be loose, spontaneous, and real.

Faculty

Collaborative

Puppet, Spectacle, and Parade MFA Studio

Graduate Component

Drawing from various puppetry techniques alongside the practices of Jacques Lecoq we this graduate studio explores and experiments with puppetry and performance. Throughout the course, we will work in collaborative groups to create puppetry performance including building the puppets and devising works that utilize puppets and objects. We will explore large-scale processional style puppets, puppet as objects and materials, puppeteering the performance space, and the role/relationship of the puppeteer/performer to puppet. This class meets once a week. Prerequisite: Puppetry or by permission of instructor.

Faculty

Digital Devising: Creating Theatre in a Post-Digital World

Component—Year

This class meets once a week.

This class explores the histories, methods, and futures of ensemble and co-authored performance creation, with a focus on new skills and concepts of the digital and post-internet world. After an overview of historical devising companies, artists, concepts, and strategies, we will develop skill sets and frameworks for creating work in a lab setting using the formal aspects of digital and post-internet performance. Some of the frameworks included are digital time; avatars and the double event; embodied and representational strategies in the uncanny valley, staging digital tools, interfaces, and structures; aspects of connectivity, politics, and economics; post-internet materiality; and using code to generate and control performances and creation of texts.

Faculty

Songwriting for a New Musical Theatre (Section 1)

Component—Year

This course suggests a unique approach to musical theatre making, forged during the making of the Tony/Obie award-winning musical, Passing Strange. The method treats song, not story, as the seed out of which a show grows. Students are taught to conjure stories out of their songs rather than tacking songs onto a preexisting narrative. The urgency of personal biography as the source material for theatrical mythmaking (vs. invented fictions) is also emphasized, along with the incorporation of solo performance and the use of video. Emphasis on in-the-moment creating via a demystification of the songwriting process seeks to keep students inspired and motivated, with more time spent creating than listening to a lecture. Students are regularly given songwriting prompts and invited to take time away from class to compose. Students will work toward building, by semester’s end, a final show drawn from the songs that they’ve written. Students will learn techniques that transform the “magic” of songwriting into a reflexive act of communication available to anyone, with or without songwriting experience. The fundamentals of songwriting are taught, along with an introduction to various music software apps.

Faculty

Songwriting for a New Musical Theatre (Section 2)

Component—Year

This course suggests a unique approach to musical theatre making, forged during the making of the Tony/Obie award-winning musical, Passing Strange. The method treats song, not story, as the seed out of which a show grows. Students are taught to conjure stories out of their songs rather than tacking songs onto a preexisting narrative. The urgency of personal biography as the source material for theatrical mythmaking (vs. invented fictions) is also emphasized, along with the incorporation of solo performance and the use of video. Emphasis on in-the-moment creating, via a demystification of the songwriting process, seeks to keep students inspired and motivated, with more time spent creating than listening to a lecture. Students are regularly given songwriting prompts and invited to take time away from class to compose. Students will work toward building, by semester’s end, a final show drawn from the songs that they’ve written. Students will learn techniques that transform the “magic” of songwriting into a reflexive act of communication available to anyone, with or without songwriting experience. The fundamentals of songwriting are taught, along with an introduction to various music software apps.

Faculty

Design and Media

Interactive Media MFA Studio

Graduate Component

This course is designed to introduce students to strategies for making performances and installations using contemporary media playback systems and existing materials sourced from popular culture. By rearranging found media materials in new ways, participants will explore the methods and politics of appropriation in performance work. Bi-weekly workshops on text, sound, and video manipulation in a collaborative format will alternate with experiments in performance, composition and lectures on the historical use of the remix in a variety of art forms. This course is designed to introduce students to strategies for making performances and installations using contemporary media playback systems and existing materials sourced from popular culture. By rearranging found media materials in new ways, participants will explore the methods and politics of appropriation in performance work.  Bi-weekly workshops on text, sound, and video manipulation in a collaborative format will alternate with experiments in performance, composition and lectures on the historical use of the remix in a variety of art forms. The course takes the form of a weekly 4-hour lab format. Participants should have an interest in both performance and performance technology, though experience in either is not a prerequisite. Prerequisites: Open to Graduate Students and advanced Undergraduate students who have taken Sound Design or Video Design courses.

 

Faculty

Corrupting the Moving Image MFA Studio

Graduate Component

In this course, students will analyze and experiment with different moving image formats, including web projects and films, while focusing on video art, video installation and live performance. They will develop an understanding of moving image techniques and, with the aid of film theory, how they can be augmented, disrupted and corrupted. We will destabilize 'the quotidian' by mutating conventions as a political method and a creative process. Cutting-edge experiments in video corruption as an aesthetic strategy will be emphasized, from willful corruptions of the medium to the use of accidents and errors to break established rules. The course will draw on a rich body of readings, including Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell, The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halberstam and For an Imperfect Cinema by Julio García Espinosa. Through individual tutorials, group discussion, in-class critique and collaborative exercises, students will develop their video art practice by translating theory and technique into their own language and individual voice.​ Prerequisite: Graduate Students or Undergraduate students who have completed at least one video and one sound component.

 

Faculty

Lighting Design I

Component—Year

This class meets once a week.

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 assist other designers as a way of developing a greater understanding of the design process.

Faculty

Lighting Design II

Component—Year

This class meets once a week. Completion of Lighting Design I or permission of the instructor is required.

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.

Faculty

Scenography I

Component—Year

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

This course is an introduction to theatrical scenic design. Students will learn how to look at the world with fresh eyes and use their imagination to create a theatrical world on stage. The class covers the fundamental ideas of scenic design and basic design technique, such as research, drawing, and scale-model making. We will start from small exercise projects and complete a final design project at the end. Students will present most of the projects to the class, followed by questions and comments from fellow students. Presentation and critique skills are important in this course. Students with no experience who are interested in other aspects of theatre making, as well as visual arts or architecture, will be able to learn from the basics. 

Faculty

Scenography II

Component—Year

This class meets once a week. There is a $50 course fee.  Prerequisite: Completion of Scenography I is required.

This course is advanced training in scenic design. Students apply knowledge and skills from Scenography I to complete design projects through extensive and detailed processes. Students will also learn the production process with examples of department productions. Students are required to present most of the projects to the class, followed by questions and comments from the fellow students.

Faculty

Sound Design

Component—Year

This course serves as an introduction to theatrical sound design. Students will learn about basic design principles, editing and playback software, content creation, basic system design, and sound theory. The course examines the function and execution of sound in theatre, dance, and interdisciplinary environments. Exercises in recording, editing, and designing sequences in performance software will provide students with the basic tools needed to execute sound designs in performance.

Faculty

Video and Media Design

Component—Year

This course, which serves as an introduction to theatrical video design, explores the use of moving images in live performance, basic design principles, editing and playback software, content creation, and basic system design. The course examines the function and execution of video and integrated media in theatre, dance, and interdisciplinary environments. Exercises in videography, nonlinear editing, and designing sequences in performance software will provide students with the basic tools needed to execute projection and video design in a live performance setting.

Faculty

Costume Design I (Section 1)

Component—Year

This class meets once a week. There is a $20 materials fee.

This course is an introduction to the basics of designing costumes and will cover various concepts and ideas, such as the language of clothes, script analysis, the elements of design, color theory, fashion history and figure drawing. We will work on various theoretical design projects while exploring how to develop a design concept. This course also covers various design room sewing techniques, as well as the basics of wardrobe technician duties; students will become familiar with all of the various tools and equipment in the costume shop and wardrobe areas. Students will also have the opportunity to assist a Costume Design ll student on a departmental production to further their understanding of the design process when creating costumes. No previous experience is necessary. Actors, directors, choreographers, dancers, and theatre makers of all kinds are welcome.

Faculty

Costume Design I (Section 2)

Component—Year

This class meets once a week. There is a $20 materials fee.

This course is an introduction to the basics of designing costumes and will cover various concepts and ideas, such as: the language of clothes, script analysis, the elements of design, color theory, fashion history, and figure drawing. We will work on various theoretical design projects while exploring how to develop a design concept. This course also covers various design room sewing techniques, as well as the basics of wardrobe technician duties; students will become familiar with all of the various tools and equipment in the costume shop and wardrobe areas. Students will also have the opportunity to assist a Costume Design ll student on a departmental production to further their understanding of the design process when creating costumes. No previous experience is necessary. Actors, directors, choreographers, dancers, and theatre makers of all kinds are welcome.

Faculty

Costume Design II

Component—Year

Completion of Costume Design I or permission of the instructor is required.

This course expands upon the ideas and concepts set forth in Costume Design l in order to hone and advance the student’s existing skill sets. Students will further develop their design and construction abilities as they research and realize design concepts for a variety of theoretical design projects, as well as develop their communication skills through class discussions and presentations. Students will also have the likely opportunity to design costumes for a departmental production, assisted by a Costume Design l student. This design opportunity allows for a unique learning experience, as the student collaborates with a director and creative team to produce a fully realized theatrical production.

Faculty

Puppet Theatre

Component—Year

This class meets once a week for two hours.

This course will explore a variety of puppetry techniques, including bunraku-style, marionette, shadow puppetry, and toy theatre. We will begin with a detailed look at those forms through individual and group research projects. Students will then have the opportunity to develop their puppet-manipulation skills, as well as to gain an understanding of how to prepare the puppeteer’s body for performance. We will further our exploration with hands-on learning in various techniques of construction. The class will culminate with the creation and presentation of puppetry pieces of their own making.

Faculty

Advanced Costume Conference

Component—Year

This class meets once a week. Completion of Costume Design l and Costume Design ll or permission of instructor is required.

This course is designed for students who have completed Costume Design l and Costume Design ll and would like to further explore any aspect of designing costumes by researching and realizing a special costume design project of their own choosing.

Faculty

Directing

Advanced Directing MFA Studio

Graduate Component

This component offers a vital technique in the art and craft of directing. AD Studio encompasses the full expression of a director’s job, and establishes a way of working. The class provides a framework for determining how a director’s experiences, influences and point of view shape their productions. In a series of hands-on projects, students de-construct all aspects of the director’s job, moving from abstract ideas to concrete expression. AD Studio begins with the text. The class offers directors an outline for dissecting plot and story, and techniques for dynamic staging. Students work with a variety of texts, ranging from published plays, in poetic and realistic language, to original work from non-traditional sources. AD Studio is a self-contained ensemble. Students will act in their classmates’ productions, as they direct their own. The class takes a director through the processes of production, from first read and dramaturgical research, to casting, design meetings, mock production meetings, and rehearsals, to staged work. AD Studio will include guests from a range of design and technical backgrounds who will discuss their own ways of working, and the collaborative aspects of staging a production. Students will make presentations on artists who particularly inspire their own ways of thinking about art. Emphasis in AD Studio is on the ideas and practices of artist/directors like Bertolt Brecht, who approached theatre as a means of activism, and contemporary theatre-makers like Anna Deavere Smith, Anne Bogart, and Moises Kaufman, among others, who forge a personalized approach to directing built upon dynamic analysis and an expansive point of view. Graduate or undergraduates who have taken the intermediate directing component Directing Brechting or Expanded Directing.

Faculty

Actor’s/Director’s Lab

Component—Year

Class size is not limited.

This is a class for actors and directors to work together on new or published work. Students may choose to work as a director, an actor, or both on all class projects and may change their choice on each of the next projects as the year progresses. The fall semester will focus on scene work; the spring semester, on short plays and one-acts. There will be inside-of-class and outside-of-class rehearsals. Some of the pieces will be assigned; most will be the student director’s choice.

Faculty

Directing Workshop

Component—Year

This class meets twice a week.

Directors will study the processes necessary to bring a written text to life, along with 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 direct a short play of their choice. This workshop is open to beginning directors and any interested student. 

Faculty

Movement and Voice

Musical Theater MFA Studio: Sound, Storytelling and Society

Graduate Component

This is a graduate studio focused on interrogating the link between music and storytelling traditions in and beyond the musical theater industry. Special attention will be paid to how these forms intersect with wider social structures such as labor and economy, and identity and oppression. Black and queer musical theater with be essential to our research and inquiry. In-class lectures will range, for example, from hands-on experimentation with instruments and music-making technologies to an in-depth analysis of current trends within the industry. Our approach will blend theory, practice, and theater history. This course is suited for students who are interested in sound as essential to their work or are drawing connections between their sound-based theater practice through broader academic disciplines such as theater studies or musicology. Students will develop and share a portfolio of work that is unique to their own interests and skills based on assignments. Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduate students who have taken Songwriting For A New Musical Theater. 3 hr class with additional weekly time for office hours.

 

Faculty

The Articulate Instrument: Suzuki Training for the Actor

Component—Year

As performers and storytellers, it is our work to transmit information or data to our audiences. In this course, we will explore how the body, as our instrument, can be a powerful tool used to amplify our ability to communicate point of view and meaning in art marking. Supplementing the Suzuki Method of Actors Training, we will also draw upon trainings such as (but not limited to) Viewpoints, Michael Chekov Technique, and Miller Voice Method. Through these vocal and physical techniques, we will develop an increased sense of bodily awareness and practice how we can use this awareness to inform expressive choice making. We will learn how to honor and navigate our habitual psychological and physical mannerisms, as we approach character and/or generative work. We will do all this while we unpack a collection of common aesthetics to help us approach any work environment in a “front-footed” manner.

Faculty

Singing Workshop

Component—Year

This class meets once a week. Audition required.

We will explore the 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. Students perform new or returning material each week in class and have outside class time scheduled with the musical director to arrange and rehearse their material. Students enrolled in the course also have priority placement for voice lessons with faculty in the music program and enrollment in Alexander Technique classes or other movement courses of their choosing.

Faculty

Choreographic Strategies in Theatre

Component—Year

This course will explore methods of creating original theatre through a choreographic lens as a way of assembling the various building blocks that theatre is made from (sound, image, movement, language, design, etc.), as well as through the influence and manipulation of time. The semester will begin with structured prompts and assignments largely completed in class, eventually moving into self-generated collaborative projects, with some work to be completed outside of class. One of the main focuses of this course is the attempt to articulate, through open discussions, one’s creative process and choices therein. Through analysis of said exercises, students will come to more clearly know one another’s work and methods. Students will be asked to create movement sequences, collaborative projects, and other studies as a way of encountering the use of assembly, juxtaposition, unison, framing, interruption, deconstruction, and other time-based art practices. Readings will include manifestos and selections from an array of artists, essays and excerpts of various theatre practices from around the world, as well as examples on video. As students will be working within various levels of physicality, wearing loose, comfortable clothing is encouraged. No dance or movement experience is necessary; to find value in this course, one only needs curiosity and willingness to jump in.

Faculty

Introduction to Stage Combat (Section 1, Unarmed)

Component—Year

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.

Faculty

Introduction to Stage Combat (Section 2, Unarmed)

Component—Year

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.

Faculty

Introduction to Stage Combat (Section 3, Knife)

Component—Year

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.

Faculty

Advanced Stage Combat

Component—Year

Completion of Introduction to Stage Combat (Section 1, 2, or 3) is required.

As a continuation of stage combat, this course deals with more complex weapon styles. The “double-fence,” or two-handed forms (rapier and dagger, sword and shield) are taught. Students are asked to go more deeply into choreography and aspects of the industry. Critical thinking is encouraged, and students will be asked to create their own short video showing an understanding of basic principles (use of distance, point of view, storytelling). The function of the stunt coordinator, essential in a growing film industry, will also be explored.

Faculty

Playwriting

Creative Impulse MFA Studio: The Process of Writing for the Stage

Graduate Component

In this graduate studio, the vectors of pure creative impulse hold sway over the process of writing for the stage and we write ourselves into unknown territory. Students are encouraged to set aside received and preconceived notions of what it means to write plays, or be a writer, along with ideas of what a play is “supposed to” or “should” look like, in order to locate their own authentic ways of seeing and making. In other words, disarming the rational, the judgmental thinking that is rooted in a concept of a final product and empowering the chaotic, spatial, associative processes that put us in immediate formal contact with our direct experience, impressions and perceptions of reality. Emphasis on detail, texture and contiguity will be favored over the more widely accepted, reliable, yet sometimes limiting Aristotelian virtues of structure and continuity in the making of meaningful live performance. Readings will be tailored to fit the thinking of the class. We will likely look at theoretical and creative writings of Gertrude Stein, George Steiner, Mac Wellman, Maria Irene Fornes, Adrienne Kennedy, Mircea Eliade, Kristen Kosmas, Richard Maxwell, Roland Barthes, as well as work that crosses into visual art realms and radical scientific thought from physicists David Bohm and F. David Peat. The course will be conducted in workshop fashion with strong emphasis on the tracking and documenting of process. This class meets once a week for three hours. Graduates and open to undergraduate juniors and seniors.

 

Faculty

Act One, Scene One: Beginning to Find Yourself in the World of Diverse, Modern Playwriting

Component—Year

If you’re new to playwrighting and looking for a safe, warm classroom to experiment with your burgeoning love of the craft, this is the place for you. We’ll make our own plays, but we’ll do it informed by the diversity that is on our stages right here, right now. Playwrights like David Henry Hwang, Sarah Ruhl, Dominique Morisseau, Nilaja Sun, C. Julian Jimenez, and many others will be the voices that we elevate as we find our own. A combination of analysis and (primarily) creative workshop, Act One, Scene One is a great place to start your first (or second, or third, or fourth) play.

Faculty

Playwriting Techniques

Component—Year

This course meets once a week.

In this course, you will investigate the mystery of how to release your creative process while also discovering the fundamentals of dramatic structure that will help you tell the story of your play. In the first term, you will write a short scene every week taken from The Playwright’s Guidebook, which we will use as a basic text. At the end of the first term, you will write a short, but complete, play based on one of these short assignments. In the second term, you’ll go on to adapt a short story of your choice and then write a play based on a historical character, event, or period. The focus in all instances will be on the writer’s deepest connection to the material—where the drama lies. Work will be read aloud and discussed in class and discussed each week. Students will also read and discuss plays that mirror the challenges presented by their own assignments.

Faculty

Queering Stages With Trans and Non-Binary Pages: Advanced Playwrighting with a Focus on Trans and Non-Binary Work

Component—Year

Completion of at least one yearlong playwriting class is required.

If you’re a playwright searching for a safe place to create and/or engage trans and non-binary work, perhaps inventing your own along the way, then this is a class for you. We’ll look to myriad texts—from Alok’s Instagram posts, to C. Julian Jimenez’s plays, to She-Ra, to Joseph Campbell (critically), to K. Woodzick’s Non-Binary Monologues Project, to Disclosure, to Vivek Shraya...to much, much more—in order to synthesize what already informs some trans and non-binary work with our own creative desires. As long as you feel invested in trans and non-binary work and a classroom of respect, you’re welcome here. Before I came out as non-binary, survey classes about trans and non-binary work showed me the breadth of the umbrella. I hope to do the same here.

Faculty

Playwrights Workshop

Component—Year

This class meets twice a week. Students must have, at minimum, an idea of the play that they plan to work on; ideally they will bring in a partial draft or even a completed draft that they wish to revise.

Who are you as a writer? What do you write about, and why? Are you writing the play that you want to write or 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 will play in real time before a live audience? This course is designed for playwriting students who have a solid knowledge of dramatic structure and an understanding of their own creative process—and who are ready to create a complete dramatic work of any length. (As Edward Albee observed, “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. We read great plays and analyze them dramaturgically; it’s indispensable for the playwright. We will read some existent texts, time allowing. Finally, your interest in the workshop indicates a high level of seriousness about playwriting—and all serious playwrights should take the History and Histrionics course.

Faculty

Production

Creative Practice, Organizing, and Producing

Graduate Component—Fall

This graduate level component is an intensive in artistic planning and production. From conceiving a project, planning, budgeting, and fundraising for its creation, promoting the premiere, taking a work on the road, and archiving it for the long term, this class will prepare students with a basic knowledge of what it takes to put your work into the world. In addition the class will look at the national and international contemporary performance field with a ground level introduction to working artists, residencies, presenting organizations,festivals, museums, and more. This class meets on zoom. Open to graduate students and undergraduate seniors.

 

Faculty

Grants and Fundraising for Independent Artists

Graduate Component—Spring

This class will serve as an introduction to grants and fundraising for independent artists. We will explore managing a grants and individual giving calendar, local, state, and federal funding sources, and delve deep info project based grants for independent artists including The MAP Fund, Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Ats National Dance & Theater Projects, National Performance Network's Creation and Development fund and more. In addition we will explore crowdfunding methods and individual solicitation. Classes will be a mix of lectures via case studies of successful grants, guest appearances from foundation program officers, and workshop sessions through which students share progress and challenges in completing mock grant applications throughout the semester. Grad Component open to undergrad Juniors and Senior.

Faculty

Production Management

Component—Year

Production managers bridge the gap between artistic and logistic elements of production. They must be problem solvers, big-picture thinkers, and well-versed in all aspects of theatre—blending technical, artistic, and managerial skills. This course is a study of theatre management, with an emphasis on real-world applications to production-management concepts. Students will develop an understanding of the relationships between and among the creative, administrative, and production departments of a theatre company and how these funtion collectively to achive common organizational and artistic goals. Through project-based activities, production-management students will develop a working knowledge of the artistic and managerial elements of a theatre company and how these function together to deliver a cohesive season. Students will dialogue with innovators in the field and analyze real-world applications of production-management concepts. A theatre-management practicum is embedded in the course curriculum; all students will be assigned as a student production manager for an SLC Theatre production.

Faculty

Stage Management

Component—Year

Stage management is a practice grounded in supporting communication across all departments. A stage manager acts as a liaison between and among all members of the company—the cast, director, designers, producers, and technical crew. Stage managers also support the director and company by helping to set the tone of the room; they establish clear and specific expectations, develop and implement systems to help move the process forward, and manage all technical elements throughout the process. Good stage managers are flexible and exhibit transparency and empathy as they hold space for everyone, curating a culture of trust and professionalism through their work. This course will explore the basic techniques and skills of stage management via the five stages of production: preproduction, rehearsals, tech, performance, and close/strike. Students will practice script analysis and develop systems for rehearsal/performance organization and the maintenance and running of a production. A theatre- management practicum is embedded in the course curriculum; all students will be assigned as a stage manager or assistant stage manager for an SLC Theatre production.

Faculty

Tools of the Trade

Component—Year

This class meets once a week.

This is a stagehand course that focuses on the nuts and bolts of light and sound-board operation and projection technology, as well as the use of basic stage carpentry. This is not a design class but, rather, a class about reading, drafting, light plots, assembly and troubleshooting, and basic electrical repair. Students who take this course will be eligible for additional paid work as technical assistants in the theatre department.

Faculty

DownStage

Component—Year

This class meets twice a week. Open to both graduate and undergraduate students, sophomore and above.

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.

Faculty

Theatre and Civic Engagement

The Stories We Could Tell: Theatre Through Memory

Small seminar—Spring

This course can be taken as a 2-3 credit course or a 5 credit course. Students who wish to take it as a 5 credit course must meet on Mondays for conferences throughout the semester.

All stories can enlighten us, all can transform the listener, and all can allow the storyteller to see and experience things they have forgotten. The stories we could tell are limitless. In this course, eight-to-10 students would be trained in improvisational exercises used for building community and narrative storytelling. The students would begin the course practicing and learning the varied theories connected to the work of Community and Social Practice Programs and Theatre of the Oppressed. Once the students feel comfortable using the exercises, we will spend one afternoon a week visiting and discovering the stories of the residents of the senior low-income housing and assisted-living communities at Wartburg Rehabilitation Center in Yonkers. We would listen to, invest in, and develop the stories from the lives of the residents. Some will be dramatic reflections of their life events; others will be simple adventures of everyday existence. Students do not need any background in theatre, just a desire to connect to the Wartburg culture and explore memory through storytelling. As we gather these stories, we will develop a theatre project with and for the residents. The goal of the collaboration is to motivate, expand, and create more vivid memories in us all.

Faculty

Theatre and Civic Engagement: Methods of Civic Engagement

Component—Year

This course is for undergraduate theatre artists interested in learning and sharing theatre skills in the community. Using the vocabulary of theatre, we will investigate methods and techniques, styles, and forms to create and develop theatre projects designed for specific community work. The course develops individual collaboration, experimentation, and understanding of specific community needs. Students will explore the essentials of constructing a creative practice for community engagement. In addition, students will learn to extend their personal theatre skills by developing detailed interdisciplinary lesson plans for specific workshops. Each community project is unique. Lesson plans may include a combination of theatre games, acting, music, story making, movement, and drawing. Participants are encouraged to teach what they already know, step outside their comfort zone, and learn more as they become aware of their placement’s educational and psychological needs. The course focuses on teaching methods, making mistakes, and becoming aware of individual and personal processes. This ideal combination explores education and community problems for those considering a career in early-childhood, middle-school, and/or high-school education and beyond. Course topics will explore community self-care, lesson planning, curriculum development, and approaches to learning. Students will experience crucial connections between theory and practice through a weekly community placement. Students will learn by doing, gaining hands-on experience by collaborating as a team member at an area school, senior home, museum, or the long-running SLC Saturday Lunchbox Theatre program, which is open to the Sarah Lawrence and Yonkers communities. In addition, students will gain valuable experience as prospective teachers and teaching artists by taking this course and developing lesson plans that will be useful and valuable beyond the College experience. Students will better understand how civic-engagement practices encourage essential dialogues that deepen community connections and may lead to change. Many former students of this course are teaching and running educational programs at schools, theatres, and museums across the globe. Course readings will include the work of Paolo Freire, Augusto Boal, Viola Spolin, M. C. Richards, Vivian Gussin Paley, Pablo Helguera, and others. Placements may offer an hourly stipend.

Faculty

Theatre and Civic Engagement: Curriculum Lab

Component—Year

The Curriculum Lab is a required weekly course for students who are sharing their theatre and creative skills in the Saturday Lunchbox Theatre Program. The Curriculum Lab will explore the creation and development of an interdisciplinary teaching curriculum for children ages six through 18. Through this weekly lab, directly connected to Lunchbox Theatre, students will gain insight into child-development principles, lesson-planning skills, and classroom-management strategies. Through inquiry and reflection, students will expand their critical-thinking processes while utilizing practical teaching methods and techniques suitable for multiple learning types and levels.

Faculty

Theatre and Civic Engagement: Teaching Artist Pedagogy

Component—Year

Undergraduate students must have completed Theatre and Civic Engagement: Methods of Civic Engagement.

Theatre and Civic Engagement teaching artists students will develop valuable creative resources while investigating the intersection of theatre and community. This course is open to graduate and upper-level undergraduate students interested in sharing theatre skills with the community. We will explore interdisciplinary creative processes, social-justice issues, and curriculum development focusing on the individual. We will analyze the crossovers between various teaching theories, pedagogies, and philosophies. In addition, students will explore creating theatre in the community that investigates the connection of art practices in education while respecting the emotional aspects of learning. Students will analyze, explore, and investigate social-justice pedagogies and philosophies and explore various practices and creative techniques to deepen awareness of critical thinking. We will look at strategies for classroom management and teaching methods suitable for different ways of learning. Students will actively create, develop, and share collaborative theatre lessons while building community with artists, teachers, and community organizations. Active class work will explore ideas for projects that will support lesson planning and the growth of curriculum concepts. In addition, students will hold yearlong placements at schools, community centers, area colleges, museums, LGBTQIA youth centers, and the long-running SLC Saturday Lunchbox Theatre program that combines the Sarah Lawrence and Yonkers communities. As a result of this course, students will have a portfolio of designed lesson plans and educational ideas that will serve as a creative template for current and future projects. We will explore the work of Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal, Suzanne Lacy, Ana Mendieta, bell hooks, and others. Placements may offer an hourly stipend.

Faculty

Theatre, History, Survey

Performance Research

Graduate Component—Year

How do we as artists engage with an accelerating, fractured, technology-infused world? How do we as creators produce our work under current economic pressures? Contemporary Practice is a year-long course that focuses on artists and thinkers dealing with these questions and looks at how we situate our practice in the field. Students will investigate current and emerging practices in Performing Care, Contemporary Choreography, Speculative Theater, Immersive Theatre, Co-Presence, Performance Cabaret, Post-Digital Strategies, Socially Engaged Art, and Mixed Reality Performance. Classes will be structured around weekly readings/discussions. Through field research, embodied laboratories, and creative/professional development we will build a skill set, network, and knowledge base for articulating and supporting our work and engaging with collaborators, organizations, and audiences. This class meets once a week. Open to Graduates, Seniors or by permission of the professor.

 

Faculty

Historic Survey of Formal Aesthetics for Contemporary Performance Practice

Component—Year

Once upon a time, a playwright said in a rehearsal, “I just think that this is the most Cubist moment of this play.” Everyone in the room fell silent and grew uncomfortable, because...what in the heck did she mean by that? And aren’t we already supposed to know? This interactive lecture course surveys the aesthetic movements throughout history and teaches you to track their impact on your work. Ideas behind each movement are examined in relation to the historical moment of their occurrence and in their formal manifestations across visual-art, musical, architectural, and performance disciplines. Each student then places his/her own work within a wider context of formal aesthetic discourse—locating hidden influence and making conscious and purposeful the political resonance that is subsequently uncovered. Students are encouraged to find ways of acknowledging the responsibility that one carries for one’s own work’s impact on the world and to start using terms like “Post-Modernism” and “Futurist” with confidence.

Faculty

In Gratitude for the Dream: Theatre and Performance in African Diasporas

Component—Year

In this lecture, we will focus on theatre and performance in the African diasporas. This class will discuss some of the different experiences of what it means to be of an African diaspora and to create for performance. How do you express yourself when, structurally, your environment is inhospitable to such a self? We understand that the most commonly expressed histories tend to favor Western perspectives. How, then, do we understand and trust what we learn of the history of Black performance? How do we understand and trust what we hear/read about contemporary Black theatre and performance? What IS theatre, and how does that word relate to non-Western traditions of performance? This class is interested in the connection between ritual and performance, mythology and truth, house and home; it holds space for oral traditions and modes of performance not necessarily called theatre while also maintaining a weekly practice of reading and discussing published plays, theory, and criticism.

Faculty

History and Histrionics: A Survey of Western Drama

Component—Year

This course explores 2,500 years of Western drama and how dramaturgical ideas can be traced from their origins in fifth-century Greece to 20th-century Nigeria—with many stops in between. We will try to understand how a play is constructed, rather than simply written, and how how each succeeding epoch has both embraced and rejected what has come before it in order to create its own unique identity. We will study the major genres of Western drama, including the idea of a classically structured play, Elizabethan drama, neoclassicism, realism, naturalism, expressionism, comedy, musical theatre, theatre of cruelty, and existentialism. And we will look at the social, cultural, architectural, and biographical context for the plays in question to better understand how and why they were written as they were. Classroom discussion will focus on a new play each week, with occasional written projects that explore these ideas more closely.

Faculty

The Broadway Musical: Something Great is Coming

Component—Year

For some 60 years, roughly from 1920 to 1980, the Broadway musical was in its Golden Age. The subjects were for adults, the lyrics were for the literate, and the music had a richness and depth of expression never since equaled in American composition. In the first term, we’ll focus mostly on the “integrated musical”—shows that tell a story, with the songs woven seamlessly into the plot, like Show Boat, Carousel, South Pacific, My Fair Lady, The Music Man, Fiddler on the Roof, and Sweeney Todd. But we’ll also spend some time looking at the much more chaotic zaniness of musical comedies, like The Boys From Syracuse, Guys and Dolls, and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. In the second term, we move on to the “concept musical,” Broadway’s answer to cubist painting, which took a subject and looked at it from every conceivable angle except that of a conventional plot. These will include Cabaret, Company, Candide, Follies, Chicago, Pacific Overtures, and Merrily We Roll Along. And we’ll end the year by looking at two great Broadway operas: Porgy and Bess and West Side Story. Creative projects will be assigned for students to more deeply investigate the ideas presented by the course.

Faculty

Far Off, Off-Off, Off, and On Broadway: Experiencing the 2023 Theatre Season

Component—Fall

This class meets once a week. There is a class fee of $350 for tickets to shows.

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 the company. Students will be given access to all available group and student discounts when purchasing tickets.

Faculty