Theater 365 - Technical Direction

This class will offer students the opportunities to learn how scenery, props, and other technical elements are created for theater and other entertainment venues. Students will gain practical experience working with various materials and techniques while fabricating elements for the theater department's main-stage productions. Instructions will include lectures and hands-on demonstrations on topics such as project management, wood and metal joinery, material choices, and the making of non-toxic goo. Students will work in pairs and in teams within a safe and creative environment. Individuals in the fields of design, art, sculpture, architecture, construction, engineering, and project management may find this class beneficial.

Students with no testing agreement are not allowed to enroll in this course. SPECIAL TOPIC: This co-taught, project-based course disrupts the disciplinary boundary between scenic design and technical design and fabrication in order to highlight the synergy between these aspects of creating. Opportunities to explore the capacity for visual and mathematical order, for the aesthetics of realizations, are created by combining the study of these mutually supportive actions. Each student will engage in the full process of design and construction of real scenic elements and structures through the processes of research, drafting, scale model-building, and full-scale fabrication and finishing. This hands-on course will draw from productions currently on the Theater Department's main stage and is an opportunity to discover and blossom the Renaissance person in you.
Lec & Lab. Lab hours will be scheduled for M - F afternoons between 1 - 5 p.m., for 40 hours in the semester, plus show load-ins and strikes. Each student must have at least one afternoon per week, 1-5 p.m. available for Lab.