Theater and Dance 241 - Fire in the Script: Creating Theatre for Social Change

This course explores the power of writing and performance as tools for civic dialogue, community engagement, and social justice. Students will investigate documentary and participatory theatre practices, drawing from real-world issues, interviews, and local communities to collaboratively develop performance pieces rooted in lived experience. Through fieldwork, archival research, and group devising processes, students will create original solo and ensemble performances that respond to pressing social and political themes. Emphasis will be placed on ethical storytelling, collaborative authorship, and performing in nontraditional spaces such as public parks, community centers, and online platforms. Students will engage with the works of artists and activists who use theatre to provoke change, and will be encouraged to explore their own positionalities as citizen-artists. Topics may include documentary and verbatim theatre, Theatre of the Oppressed, as well as site-specific and community-based storytelling, and performance as protest, memorial and dialogue. Works to be studied include those by Augusto Boal, Moisés Kaufman, Anna Devere Smith, bell hooks, Eve Enseler, and Michael Rohd. The course culminates in a final community-informed performance project. 

Spring Semester. Visiting Professor SEVAN.

How to handle overenrollment: THDA Majors and those with prior coursework in THDA given priority

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: This course will involve regular attendance and class participation, class discussion, reading, and possible viewing and writing assignments. Additional assignments may include work with peers outside of class, rehearsal or other artistic assignments, as well as physical or vocal performance work and/or visual, aural, and physical analysis as applicable. Attendance at performances outside of class may also be required.