Theatre

The Sarah Lawrence College theatre program is a community of generous and engaged artists who value diverse, intentional, and rigorous research, process, and creation. We hold each other and ourselves accountable to responsibly challenge ourselves and each other to foster our growth as both individuals and collaborative artists. We support innovation, not only in the art that we produce but also in the systems that we make to learn, share, and create. Through an interdisciplinary curriculum that prioritizes equality, care, and experimentation, we aim to create an artistic environment steeped in joy in order to envision and build a better future. This is an open and inclusive community where everyone is welcome.

The theatre program is focused on deep collaboration, community building, and interdisciplinarity. We support performance and theatre artists through a curriculum crossing the boundaries of design, acting, directing, management, performing, writing, technology, producing, voice, movement, and much more. Classes are taught by working professionals, with the advantage of additional classes in the music and dance programs.

We encourage students to bring their own histories, experiences, and stories into the ecosystem of the program and to share in the development of new questions, political urgencies, and social engagement. Together, we will research and practice theatre and performance to expand the possibilities of critical togetherness through body, story, and experience.

Curriculum

Students create an individualized Theatre Third with the guidance of their don and the theatre faculty. Components are chosen to extend skills and interests, to explore new areas of the art, and to develop performing and/or practical experience. Students are encouraged to find the links between their academic and arts courses, creating a holistic educational process.

Students have many opportunities to synthesize their learning by taking part in the Theatre Program Season. Student-written and/or -created work is a primary focus, while productions of published plays and classical texts are also encouraged. A proposal system for student-directed, -written, and -devised work within the Theatre Program Season’s production schedule emphasizes the development of student artists. There are also opportunities in the seasons and projects organized by DownStage (a theatre program component) and by independent, student-run companies. Auditions for faculty-, student-, and guest-directed productions are open to the entire SLC community.

Practicum

Classes provide a rigorous intellectual and practical framework, and students are continually engaged in the process of examining and creating theatre. The theatre program helps students build a solid technique based on established methodologies while also being encouraged to discover and develop their individual artistic selves. Students can earn credits from internships or fieldwork in many New York City theatres and theatre organizations. The Theatre and Civic Engagement program is a training program that uses writing, theatre techniques, music, and the visual arts to embody social and community issues. Civic Engagement courses have been a vibrant component in the curriculum for more than three decades, encouraging the development of original material created inclusively with local partner institutions, communities, and neighbors. Several theatre components include an open class showing or performance in addition to the multiple performance, design, and production opportunities that are available to students throughout the academic year. The College’s performance venues include productions in the Suzanne Werner Wright Theatre and the Frances Ann Cannon Workshop Theatre, as well as work in the student-run DownStage Theatre. Workshops, readings, and productions are also mounted in the PAC OpenSpace Theatre, the Film Viewing Room, the Remy Theatre outdoor stage, and various other performance spaces throughout the campus.​

Theatre 2023-2024 Courses

First-Year Studies: Power Plays: Theatre in Action

FYS—Year | 10 credits

This FYS course looks at the greater role of theatre in our culture. The class will examine how theatre responds to the events and movements that shape our lives. Students will read and discuss a variety of plays in a diverse collection of styles and forms. The class looks at how theatre frames political discourse and its distinct role as a means of social activism in this country over the past 50 years. Texts range from those that address issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement of the last few years and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s to the form-bending techniques of contemporary theatre makers and artists like Anna Deavere Smith, Lynn Nottage, Young Jean Lee, Jackie Sibbles Drury, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Annie Baker, Tony Kushner, Dominque Morisseau, and works from queer and trans playwrights, among many others. Power Plays looks at the innovations of mid-20th-century theatre artists like Bertolt Brecht and Samuel Beckett and at the political theatre of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights eras. The class will discuss how groundbreaking guerrilla theatre groups like ACT UP and El Teatro Campesino laid the foundation for much of the devised and immersive work that we see today. Students will read aloud from plays, screen documentaries, and related films and see productions in New York City over the course of the year. Guest artists will join Power Plays for designated classes. Students will meet with the teacher to devise conference projects to serve their distinct interests. Projects may range from acting and staging scenes to design work, dramaturgical presentations, and original plays written in the style of the events of the period and plays that we study, among other options. In addition to conference projects, students are required to submit written essays and participate fully in the discussion. Power Plays will alternate biweekly conferences with small-group meetings/conferences to include screenings, field trips, performances, and workshops.

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First-Year Studies: The Art of Comic Performance

FYS—Year | 10 credits

Life is a tragedy when seen close up, a comedy when a long shot. To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it. —Charlie Chaplin

What makes something funny? What does it take to make an audience laugh? An exploration of the evolution of modern comedy, we will uncover the roots of comedy in our culture through improvisation and the analysis of early texts. We will study the political comedies of Aristophanes, the characters of commedia dell’arte, the language of high British comedy, and the sources of African American humor in vaudeville. How are these historical constructs realized in modern-day comedies? “Laughter connects you to people. It’s impossible to maintain a kind of distance when you are howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy,” accordng to John Cleese. The students will use the forms of the past to create their own material. The work will include exercises to discover your clown, the comical partnering of vaudeville, timing exercises for heightened language, and character creations of the commedia dell’arte. As we investigate these classic comic structures, our goal will be to discover our own unique comic perspective as writers, actors, and theatre artists. Conferences will be weekly for the first six weeks and then biweekly thereafter. As Wanda Sykes says, “What drives the creative person is that we see it all.”

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Acting and Performance

Voice-Over Acting Technique

Open, 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.

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Actor’s Workshop: Acting the Kilroys

Open, Component—Year

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.

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Solo Performance

Open, 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.

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Acting Shakespeare

Open, Component—Year

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.

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Actor’s Workshop

Open, 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.

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Actor’s Workshop: Craft and Character

Open, 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.

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Acting and Directing for Camera

Intermediate, Component—Year

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).

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Filming With Actors: A Workshop for Directors and Actors

Component—Fall

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.

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Auditioning

Open, Component—Spring

In this study of the skills necessary for a successful audition, actors will practice cold readings and prepare monologues to the performance level. Emphasis will be placed on how best to present oneself in the audition situation.

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Collaborative

Beyond the Proscenium: Radical Acting, Directing, and Design in the Post-Internet Age

Open, Component—Year

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.

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Songwriting for a New Musical Theatre (Section 1)

Open, 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.

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Songwriting for a New Musical Theatre (Section 2)

Open, 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.

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Think Tank

Component—Year

Think Tank is a component for all Theatre Thirds. Theatre Meeting/Think Tanks are held once monthly and are intended to expose students to guests from different areas of the theatre, who will join us to share their expertise.

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Design and Media

Lighting Design I

Open, Component—Year

Lighting Design I will introduce the student to the basic elements of stage lighting—including tools and equipment, color theory, reading scripts for design elements, operation of lighting consoles and construction of lighting cues—and basic elements of lighting drawings and schedules. Students will be offered hands-on experience in hanging and focusing lighting instruments and 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.

Scenography I

Open, Component—Year

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. 

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Sound Design

Open, 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.

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Video and Media Design

Open, 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.

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Costume Design I (Section 1)

Open, Component—Year

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.

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Costume Design I (Section 2)

Open, Component—Year

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.

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Puppet Theatre

Open, Component—Year

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.

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Lighting Design II

Intermediate, Component—Year

Lighting Design II will build on the basics introduced in Lighting Design I to help develop the students’ abilities in designing complex productions. The course will focus primarily on CAD and other computer programs related to lighting design, script analysis, advanced console operation, and communication with directors and other designers. Students will be expected to design actual productions and in-class projects for evaluation and discussion and will be offered the opportunity to increase their experience in design by assisting Mr. MacPherson and others, when possible.

Scenography II

Intermediate, Component—Year

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.

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Costume Design II

Intermediate, Component—Year

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.

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Advanced Costume Conference

Advanced, Component—Year

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.

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Directing

Directing Workshop

Open, Component—Year

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. 

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Movement and Voice

Introduction to Intimacy in Performance

Component—Fall

This semester-long class will provide students with an introduction to the language, processes, and best practices of intimacy training for stage and screen. The class will meet once per week, during which time students will engage in discussions of terms and theory, learn fundamentals of approaching scene work or material that is intimate in nature, and work collaboratively to simulate artistic settings where best practices can be enacted and assessed. Toward the end of the term, students will work with text, scenes, or breakdowns to practice their approach to solving challenges around intimacy choreography.

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The Articulate Instrument: Suzuki Training for the Actor

Open, 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.

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Singing Workshop

Open, Component—Year

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.

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Introduction to Stage Combat (Section 1, Unarmed)

Open, Component—Year

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.

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Introduction to Stage Combat (Section 2, Unarmed)

Open, Component—Year

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.

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Introduction to Stage Combat (Section 3, Knife)

Open, Component—Year

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.

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Advanced Stage Combat

Advanced, Component—Year

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.

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Playwriting

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

Open, 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.

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Playwriting Techniques

Open, Component—Year

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.

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

Advanced, Component—Year

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.

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Playwrights Workshop

Advanced, Component—Year

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.

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Production

Stage Management

Open, 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.

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Production Management

Open, 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.

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Tools of the Trade

Open, Component—Year

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.

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DownStage

Sophomore and Above, Component—Year

DownStage is an intensive, hands-on conference in theatrical production. DownStage student producers administrate and run their own theatre company. They are responsible for all aspects of production, including determining 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.

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Theatre and Civic Engagement

The Stories We Could Tell: Theatre Through Memory

Open, Small seminar—Spring | 5 credits

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.

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Theatre and Civic Engagement: Methods of Civic Engagement

Open, 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.

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Theatre and Civic Engagement: Curriculum Lab

Open, 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.

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Theatre and Civic Engagement: Teaching Artist Pedagogy

Advanced, Component—Year

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.

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Theatre, History, Survey

Historic Survey of Formal Aesthetics for Contemporary Performance Practice

Open, 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.

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

Open, 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.

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History and Histrionics: A Survey of Western Drama

Open, 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.

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The Broadway Musical: Something Great is Coming

Open, 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.

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

Open, Component—Fall

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. This class meets once a week. Ticket fees for this class are covered by the Theatre Program.

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Anthropology and Images

Open, Seminar—Fall

Images wavered in the sunlit trim of appliances, something always moving, a brightness flying, so much to know in the world.—Don Delillo, Libra

A few cartoons lead to cataclysmic events in Europe. A photograph printed in a newspaper moves a solitary reader. A snapshot posted on the internet leads to dreams of fanciful places. Memories of a past year haunt us like ghosts. What each of these occurrences has in common is that they all entail the force of images in our lives, whether these images are visual or acoustic in nature, made by hand or machine, circulated by word of mouth, or simply imagined. In this seminar, we will consider the role that images play in the lives of people in various settings throughout the world. In delving into terrains at once actual and virtual, we will develop an understanding of how people throughout the world create, use, circulate, and perceive images and how such efforts tie into ideas and practices of sensory perception, time, memory, affect, imagination, sociality, history, politics, and personal and collective imaginings. Through these engagements, we will reflect on the fundamental human need for images, the complicated politics and ethics of images, aesthetic and cultural sensibilities, dynamics of time and memory, the intricate play between the actual and the imagined, and the circulation of digital images in an age of globalization. Readings will include a number of writings in anthropology, art history, philosophy, psychology, cultural studies, and critical theory. Images will be drawn from photographs, paintings, sculptures, drawings, films, videos, graffiti, religion, rituals, tattoos, inscriptions, novels, poems, road signs, advertisements, dreams, fantasies, phantasms, and any number of fabulations in the worlds in which we live and imagine.

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First-Year Studies in Dance

FYS—Year

Students will enroll in a combination of component classes in dance, including an academic study in dance, improvisation, and a selection of movement practice classes at the appropriate level and with various instructors throughout the week. Together, these studies will make up the First-Year Studies in Dance. (Please refer to the component class descriptions.) The Improvisation course, taught by John Jasperse in the fall, is a required component for all FYS in Dance students. This course will include other students at the College and the entire FYS cohort; it is the heart of FYS in Dance. Here, we will explore making dance, starting with real-time composition in improvisation and progressing through the year to create short pieces of choreography in the spring. Students will be dancing in the studio every day. Throughout the fall semester, we’ll meet occasionally in sessions that bring us into exchanges with other creative arts-based FYS cohorts. Students will also meet in individual conferences with John Jasperse each week throughout the fall semester and in biweekly conferences in the spring semester to develop individual conference projects based on their particular interests and the materials explored in their classes.

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Movement Studio Practice

Component—Year

These classes will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher's technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change at either the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

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Ballet

Component—Year

Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

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West African Dance

Component—Spring

This course will use physical embodiment as a mode of learning about and understanding various West African cultures. In addition to physical practice, supplementary study materials will be used to explore the breadth, diversity, history, and technique of dances found in West Africa. Traditional and social/contemporary dances from countries such as Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast will be explored. Participation in end-of-semester or year-end showings will provide students with the opportunity to apply studies in a performative context.

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Hip-Hop

Component—Fall

In this open-level course, teaching and facilitating the practice of hip-hop/urban dance technique and performance, the class will examine the theory, technique, and vocabulary of hip-hop dance. The course will facilitate the student’s development and ability to execute and perform hip-hop/urban dance steps.

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Guest Artist Lab

Component—Year

This course is an experimental laboratory that aims to expose students to a diverse set of current voices and approaches to contemporary dance making. Each guest artist will lead a module of three-to-seven class sessions. These mini-workshops will introduce students to that artist and his/her creative process. Guests will present both emergent and established voices and a wide range of approaches to contemporary artistic practice.

Live Time-Based Art

Component—Year

In this class, graduates and upper-class undergraduates with a special interest and experience in the creation of time-based artworks that include live performance will design and direct individual projects. Students and faculty will meet weekly to view works-in-progress and discuss relevant artistic and practical problems, both in class on Tuesday evenings and in conferences taking place on Thursday afternoons. Attributes of the work across multiple disciplines of artistic endeavor will be discussed as integral and interdependent elements in the work. Participation in mentored, critical-response feedback sessions with your peers is a key aspect of the course. The engagement with the medium of time in live performance, the constraints of presentation of the works, both in works-in-progress and in a shared program of events, and the need to respect the classroom and presentation space of the dance studio will be the constraints imposed on the students’ artistic proposals. Students working within any number of live performance traditions are as welcome in this course as those seeking to transgress orthodox conventions. While all of the works will engage in some way with embodied action, student proposals need not fall neatly into a traditional notion of what constitutes dance. The cultivation of open discourse across traditional disciplinary artistic boundaries, both in the process of developing the works and in the context of presentation to the public, is a central goal of the course. The faculty members leading this course have roots in dance practice but also have practiced expansive definitions of dance within their own creative work. This course will culminate in performances of the works toward the end of the semester in a shared program with all enrolled students and within the context of winter and spring time-based art events. Performances of the works will take place in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Theatre or elsewhere on campus in the case of site-specific work.

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Performance Project

Component—Year

Performance Project is a component in which a visiting artist or company is invited to create a work with students or to set an existing piece of choreography. The works are performed for the College community at the end of the semester.

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Anatomy

Component—Year

Throughout the year, we will use movement as a powerful vehicle for experiencing, in detail, our profoundly adaptable musculoskeletal anatomy. In the fall semester, students will learn sections of Irene Dowd’s Spirals, a comprehensive warm-up/cool-down for dancing that coordinates all joints and muscles through their fullest range of motion, facilitating study of the musculoskeletal system. In addition to movement practice, drawings are made as part of each week’s lecture (drawing materials provided); problem-solving activities are incorporated throughout the semester. Several short readings and responses will provide opportunities for students to engage primary texts in the field of functional anatomy. In the spring semester, a weekly lecture with definitions, palpation of bony landmarks, and accompanying movement-based activities will support an in-depth understanding of each anatomical component. Development and refinement of technical training, as well as addressing injury prevention and rehabilitation, are central to this semester’s work. Students will be expected to show critical-thinking skills around the concepts presented in class through discussion and written reflection. New perspectives and skills developed in this course will benefit technical development for dancers and movers, as well as provide inspiration in the process of movement invention and composition.

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Choreographing Light for the Stage

Component—Year

This course will examine the fundamentals of design and how to both think compositionally and work collaboratively as an artist. The medium of light will be used to explore the relationship of art, technology, and movement. Discussion and experimentation will reveal how light defines and shapes an environment. Students will learn a vocabulary to speak about light and to express their artistic ideas. Through hands-on experience, students will practice installing, programming, and operating lighting fixtures and consoles. The artistic and technical skills that they build will then be demonstrated together by creating original lighting designs for the works developed in the Live Time-Based Art course.

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Yoga

Component—Spring

This yoga class is designed with the interests of dancers and theatre students in mind. Various categories of postures will be practiced, with attention to alignment, breath awareness, strength, and flexibility. The physical practice includes seated and standing poses, twists, forward bends and backbends, traditional yogic breathing practices, and short meditations. Emphasis is placed on mindfulness and presence. This approach allows the student to gain tools for reducing stress and addressing unsupportive habits to carry into other aspects of their lives. Attention will be given to the chakra system as a means and metaphor for postural, movement, and character choices. The instructor has a background in dance and object theatre, in addition to various somatically-based practices that she draws upon for designing the classes to meet the individual needs of the class members.

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The Movie Musical

Open, Lecture—Spring

Long dismissed as shallow mass entertainment, the movie musical remains an understudied genre despite its century-long popularity, global scope, and recurring role in film history. This lecture course offers a layered cultural history of the movie musical from the 1920s to the present, approaching it as a uniquely intermedial, transnational perspective from which to study film. Students will learn to read movie musicals through a mixture of formal analysis and material history. We will read canonical scholars, as well as more recent multidisciplinary work on the movie musical as a site for ideological contestation; performance politics; and aesthetic, narrative, and technological experimentation. In particular, we will highlight the genre’s power for hiding labor behind spectacles of seemingly spontaneous mass performance and rehearsing modern social conflicts through heterosexual couple-driven, dual-focus plots (Jets vs. Sharks, town vs. city, etc.). Other topics include: the roots of the movie musical in vaudeville, minstrelsy, opera, and ballet; the musical’s relationship to new cinematic technologies, labor forms, and industrial practices; the musical’s relationship to questions of gender, sexuality, and race; and the musical as a globally circulating and mutating “mass” cultural form. While much of our focus will be on classical Hollywood (1920s-1960s), we will also watch films from France, the Soviet Union, England, East Germany, Mexico, India, and Australia.

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Producing for Film and Television

Open, Seminar—Fall

In film, while significant attention is inevitably paid to the director and his/her vision, the actualization of any project—whether documentary, fiction, or hybrid—rests in the ability of the producer to realize and even enhance a director’s vision all the way from development through to distribution. The job of the producer is to support a project’s creative direction and to make the project happen on schedule, on budget, within legal compliance, and toward the desired educational, distribution, impact or even commercial goals of the film. It is also to ensure a production environment informed and dictated by inclusive, safe, and ethical practices. In an ideal scenario, the director and producer work hand-in-hand, constantly weighing creative concerns against producing realities. Producing for Film and Television is a foundation course, designed to ground students in the fundamentals of the producing craft. The course will be organized around a semester-long project—the execution of a proposal (treatment, rough schedule, and budget) for a short film. In this way, students will experience firsthand the role of the producer through the development stage of a project—from the germ of an idea to its research, development, and final proposal presentation and pitch. While students will experience producing firsthand as it relates to their own project, instruction will extend the applicability of lessons learned to best filmmaking practices and include recent and current examples or conversations underway in the US film industry. Watching, screening, and analyzing films from a producing lens will be an ongoing aspect of the course. Although the “hard skills” of producing are the core of this class—budgeting, scheduling, and fundraising—the softer skills of producing in terms of team building, clear communications, and time management will be ongoing themes, as will issues of accountability, inclusion, safety, and representation. Ultimately, the producer is accountable to many people—the subjects of your film and the people with whom you work, including funders, executive producers, distributors, and others. An understanding of a whole panoply of skills are paramount to the role of producer, to your success in this class, and to your future as a filmmaker if that is your focus. Conferences will be held in small groups.

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Filming With Actors: A Workshop for Directors and Actors

Intermediate, Large seminar—Fall

Learning how to communicate with actors is the number-one job of a budding director. It has often been said, however, that “directing is 85-90 percent casting.” A successful actor/director collaboration can create magic on the screen. How does one choose the right actor for a role? How does one get a great performance from an actor? What are the tools needed for the director to have an effective and successful collaboration with an actor? How do actors communicate effectively with directors? In this workshop/seminar, open to both FMIA and theatre students, we will explore the dynamics of the collaborative relationship between actors and directors, from casting to filming. For the directors (FMIA students), we will explore the various stages of the directing process: the role of the director, casting, script analysis, rehearsals, and communication with actors. Directors will be assigned one or two scenes to rehearse and film in class with actors, with feedback provided by the instructor. 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. Students will leave class with a strong set of tools that will assist them in their continued work as directors and actors.

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Beginning French

Open, Large seminar—Year

This class is designed primarily for students who haven’t had any exposure to French and will allow them to develop, over the course of the year, an active command of the fundamentals of spoken and written French. We will use grammar lessons to learn how to speak, read, and write in French. In-class dialogue will center on the study of theatre, cinema, and short texts, including poems, newspaper articles, and short stories from French and francophone cultures. During the spring semester, students will be able to conduct a small-scale project in French on a topic of their choice. There are no individual conference meetings for this level. The class meets three times a week, and a weekly conversation session with a French language tutor is required. Attendance at the weekly French lunch table and French film screenings are both highly encouraged. Students who successfully complete a beginning and an intermediate-level French course are eligible to study in Paris with Sarah Lawrence College during their junior year.

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Feminist and Queer Waves: Reading Canon in Context

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall

In Waves, we’ll move backward through feminist and queer time, as we revisit “classic” pieces within their original historical contexts. We will locate theory in place and time, naming how they respond to specific political, intellectual, and social exigencies. Our goal is to read these texts with close attention and care, asking how they reflect the urgent desires and needs of multiple overlapping communities. The texts represent a large breadth of topics, disciplines, and values of feminist and queer thought and are far from exhaustive history of any of these conversations. Likewise, our authors—folks such as Joshua Chambers-Letson, Saidiya Hartman, Martin Manalansan, Jennifer Nash, Claudia Rankine, Gayle Rubin, Eve Sedgwick, and Barbara Smith—each write from the specifics of their own experience, offering frequently contradictory arguments about the way the world does—and should—work. Together, we’ll build narratives about queer and feminist theoretical history that honor these complexities. We’ll build a co-authored public website that will house a timeline, theory cloud, and a digital exhibit of images from your archival research. You’ll be responsible for curating discussion for one class period. For your final conference work, you’ll conduct an independent project at either the Yonkers Public Library or the Sarah Lawrence College Archives, with an optional opportunity to help curate a final community event in spring 2024. As an interdisciplinary theory course, expect to draw on theory from gender and sexuality studies; LGBT studies; and Africana studies.

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Shakespeare and the Semiotics of Performance

Open, Lecture—Year

The performance of a play is a complex cultural event that involves far more than the literary text upon which it is grounded. First, there is the theatre itself—a building of a certain shape and utility within a certain neighborhood of a certain city. On stage, we have actors and their training, gesture, staging, music, dance, costumes, possibly scenery and lighting. Offstage, we have the audience, its makeup, and its reactions; the people who run the theatre and the reasons why they do it; and finally the social milieu in which the theatre exists. In this course, we study all of these elements as a system of signs that convey meaning (semiotics)—a world of meaning whose lifespan is a few hours but whose significances are ageless. The plays of Shakespeare are our texts. Reconstructing the performances of those plays in the England of Elizabeth I and James I is our starting place. Seeing how those plays have been approached and re-envisioned over the centuries is our journey. Tracing their elusive meanings—from within Shakespeare’s Wooden O to their adaptation in contemporary film—is our work.

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Ancient Eros: Love in Classical Literature

Open, Seminar—Fall

The theme of love in classical literature is a profoundly influential topic, appearing in genres as diverse as epic and lyric poetry, tragedy, philosophy, and even the earliest novels. The attitudes toward love expressed in these texts vary considerably: Sometimes, it is personified as a beautiful and playful god; often, too, it appears as a powerful, destructive force that can lead to irrational behavior and life-changing disaster. The literary motif of love is a catalyst, as well as a resolution of many narrative and poetic arcs; its transformative nature is deeply engaged with aspects of gender, sexuality, and identity throughout the Classical era. In this course, we will read a wide-ranging selection of ancient texts, as well as look ahead to the reception of the theme of Classical Eros in later art and literature. Along with readings, assignments will include regular low-stakes writing practice, a presentation to the class, and a major conference project. Conference work may take the form of a paper or a creative writing project. The reading list will be selected from the following works in English translation, sometimes comprising the entire work and sometimes parts TBD): Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Sappho; Euripides, Hippolytus, Euripedes; Symposium, Phaedrus, Plato; Argonautica, Apollonius of Rhodes; Idylls, Theocritus; Eclogues, Catullus, Vergil; Amores, Ovid; Golden Ass, Apuleius; Apology, Apollonius; late antique era love spells, letters, and curse tablets.

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The Stories We Could Tell: Theatre Through Memory

Open, Small seminar—Spring

All stories can enlighten us, all can transform the listener, and all can allow the storyteller to see and experience things that they have forgotten. The stories we could tell are limitless. In this course, 8-10 students will be trained in improvisational exercises used for building community and narrative storytelling. They will 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 will listen to, invest in, and develop the stories from the lives of the residents. Some stories 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.

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Senior Studio

Advanced, Seminar—Year

This course is intended for seniors interested in pursuing their own art-making practice more deeply and for a prolonged period of time. Students will maintain their own studio spaces and will be expected to work independently and creatively and to challenge themselves and their peers to explore new ways of thinking and making. The course will incorporate prompts that encourage students to make art across disciplines and will culminate in a solo gallery exhibition during the spring semester, accompanied by a printed book that documents the exhibition. We will have regular critiques with visiting artists and our faculty, discuss readings and myriad artists, take trips to galleries and artist’s studios, and participate in the Visual Arts Lecture Series. Your art-making practice will be supplemented with other aspects of presenting your work—writing an artist statement, writing exhibition proposals, interviewing artists, and documenting your art—along with a series of professional-practices workshops. This is an immersive studio course meant for disciplined art students interested in making work in an interdisciplinary environment. 

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Visual Arts Fundamentals: Materials and Play

Open, Seminar—Fall

This class is open to all students of any experience level, including those currently enrolled in a creative arts FYS, and serves as an introduction to fundamental areas of the visual arts, including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography, collage, and related mixed-media processes. We’ll discuss these mediums through image presentations, videos, and a gallery/museum visit. Students will then make art in each of those areas via open-ended prompts, experimenting with new materials, processes, techniques, and ideas. Materials will be provided, and you’ll be encouraged to discover through play. Emphasis will focus on developing your creative imagination and building visual literacy. This class culminates in an end-of-semester exhibition.

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Painting Pop

Open, Concept—Fall

In this experimental studio class, we will explore how to digest, appropriate, reconfigure, and rewrite popular media using mostly, but not limited to, painting, drawing, and collage and open to video, animation, sculpture, and performance. We will examine how artists operate as consumers, catalysts, motors, and destroyers of TV, film, music, social media, and advertisement. Slideshows, readings, and presentations will exemplify the tight relationship between art and popular media throughout history and contemporary art and will serve as inspiration for students to create their own works. Students will be encouraged to deconstruct their own spectacles of adoration and critique and celebrate images that are impactful to them. We will promote generative group conversations, studio time, experimentation, collaboration, creativity, and improvisation.

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Performance-Art Tactics

Open, Seminar—Fall

Experiment and explore contemporary performance art. Through surveying a range of important artworks and movements, we will review the histories, concepts, and practices of performance art. Born from anti-art, performance art challenges the boundaries of artistic expression through implementing as material the concepts of space, time, and the body. Examples of artists that we will review are John Cage, Joan Jonas, Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Pope.L, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Janine Antoni, Suzanne Lacy, Aki Sasamoto, and Anna Halprin, to name a few. Reviewing dialogues and movements introducing performance art—such as sculpture, installation art, protest art, social media, video art, happenings, dada, comedy, sound art, graphic notation, scores, collaboration, and movement—students will be able to relate the form and function of performance art through research, workshopping ideas, experimentation, improvisation, and movement, thereby developing the ability to confidently implement any method of the performance-art genre.

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Performance Art

Open, Seminar—Spring

Since the early 20th century, artists have explored performance art as a radical means of expression. In both form and function, performance pushes the boundaries of contemporary art. Artists use the medium for institutional critique, social activism, and to address the personal politics of gender, sexuality, and race. This course approaches performance art as a porous, transdisciplinary medium open to students from all disciplines, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, video, filmmaking, theatre, dance, music, creative writing, and digital art. Students learn about the legacy of performance art from the 1970s to the present and explore some of the concepts and aesthetic strategies used to create works of performance. Through texts, artists’ writings, video screenings, and slide lectures, students are introduced to a range of performance-based artists and art movements.

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First-Year Studies: Poetry: The Human Song

FYS—Year

In this FYS class, we will study the art, the mystery, and the power of poetry. In our first semester, we will learn to pay attention. We will become intimate with the skills of the art: with the sounds of sense, the way a word feels in the mouth, the where-it-is in a sentence (diction, syntax). We will wonder: What is a line of poetry? What part does silence play in a poem? How is poetry experienced out loud—or read silently to oneself? Why use a metaphor? How important are forms? How do we know when a poem is “finished”? How do we write into what we don’t know? We will read the work of many published poets. We will read essays, watch films, take field trips, and meet in weekly poetry dates and in conferences. You will write a poem every week and bring it to class to share; then, you will revise each poem that you bring. At the end of the first semester, you will collect your revised poems into a chapbook. Expect to spend a great deal of time every week reading the poems written by other people—both dead and living. Expect to read the poems of your class community. Expect to spend time dwelling with your own writing—without preoccupations. In our second semester, we will concentrate on ecopoetry, poetry that concerns itself with the living world and the current planetary emergency. We will read ecopoems in order to come to an understanding of the possibilities. Each of you will choose a topic to learn about (an animal? a river? a forest?) and write into that knowledge, into a new understanding. At the end of the second semester, you will collect your poems into a chapbook. We will create a community together of trust and care so that every writer feels free to share work. We will delight in each other’s voices, in reading together, in wandering into the power of poetry. And we will have a wonderful time. This course will have biweekly conferences. During conferences, we will check on your well-being, go over your recent poems and revisions, review your responses to your reading of weekly poetry packets, and take a look at your weekly observations.

Faculty

Episodes

Open, Seminar—Fall

The use of the episode is both ancient and modern and is central to storytelling in everything from The Arabian Nights to telenovelas, from The Canterbury Tales to Netflix, from comics to true-crime podcasts. Episodes differ from chapters in a novel and from short stories and can have many changing characters and plot lines. Episodes are disinclined toward resolution but love time, hunks of it, and do well depicting both the daily, including work, and the historical. We will be reading, looking at, discussing, and writing episodes in several forms and, for conference work, writing or rewriting six or so related episodes supported by small brainstorming conference groups as we go forward.

Faculty

Nonfiction Laboratory

Open, Seminar—Fall

This course is for students who want to break free from the conventions of the traditional essay and memoir and discover a broader range of narrative and stylistic possibilities available to nonfiction writers. During the first half of the semester, students will read and discuss examples of formally innovative nonfiction by writers such as Claudia Rankine, Nathalie Sarraute and George W. S. Trow. These readings will serve as the inspiration for brief assignments that will be read aloud and discussed each week. During the second half of the semester, students will workshop longer pieces that they will have written in consultation with the instructor as a part of their conference work. Required texts: The Next American Essay, edited by John D’Agata, and Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra. All other readings are in the PDF packet.

Faculty

Dream Logic

Open, Seminar—Spring

Dream logic stories are immensely complex mechanisms. When we talk about how they work, we often confine our discussion to their most straightforward elements: the relationship between conflict and suspense, for example, or between verisimilitude and believability. But stories also derive a substantial proportion of their meaning and force from elements not so easily pinned down: from the potency of their images, from their surprising and suggestive juxtapositions, or from other qualities apprehended more easily by the unconscious rather than the conscious mind. The villagers in Kafka’s A Country Doctor strip the doctor naked and place him in bed with his grotesquely wounded patient—an action with little clear connection to the conflicts established in the story and little to recommend it in regard to verisimilitude. And yet, it is precisely weird, suggestive, and not entirely interpretable images such as this that make Kafka’s writing so feverishly compelling and that grant it its measure of beauty and truth. During the first half of the semester, students will read, discuss, and write two- to three-page imitations of folk tales and myths, as well as short stories by some of the great fabulists of the modern era—including Gogol, Kafka, Garcia-Marquez, George Saunders, Jeanette Winterson, Helen Oyeyemi, and Karen Russell. The second half of the semester will be devoted to workshopping students’ own stories.

Faculty

Creative Nonfiction

Intermediate/Advanced, Seminar—Fall

This is a course for creative writers who are interested in exploring nonfiction as an art form. We will focus on reading and interpreting outside work—essays, articles, and journalism by some of our best writers—in order to understand what good nonfiction is and how it is created. During the first part of the semester, writing will be comprised mostly of exercises and short pieces aimed at putting into practice what is being illuminated in the readings; in the second half of the semester, students will create longer, formal essays to be presented in workshop.

Faculty