The materials, techniques and concepts which underlie the design and creation of the theatrical environment.

Requisite: THDA 112 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 8 students. Spring semester. Professor Dougan.

This course will provide students with tools and techniques for deepening and expanding their ability to express movement and help them create original choreography through a range of compositional structures. Using different improvisational methods based on diverse sources, the class will experiment with ways to generate personal movement and structure this material into choreographic works. The course will also help students develop clarity in their choreographic and performance intention and tools for discussing and analyzing the art of choreography.

“All theatre is about paying attention.”  Andrei Serban

This studio course will offer techniques that foster expansive physical and emotional concentration as well as the development of character through improvisation scores and within scene work.  As performers of theater, students will explore issues of voice, body and imagination by refining inherent resources with specificity of action and articulate expression.

In this second course in the craft of speaking, students learn to shape and speak text to powerful effect. Students build on prior work to extend vocal range and capacity while learning component principles of spoken expression. Articulation, inflection, methods of contrast and interpretation, tone, verbal imaging and aural structures of poetry and rhetoric are practiced in a studio setting. Emphasis is placed on personal engagement and presence to others while speaking. Assignments in text scoring and memorization support class work.

This course provides an opportunity for intermediate/advanced dancers to refine technical skills in contemporary dance and deepen the understanding of the body as an instrument of expression.  The class will combine a technical warm-up focusing on virtuosity and strength to improve the dancer's physical abilities, alertness and performance quality.

The study and practice of contemporary movement vocabularies, including regional dance forms, contact improvisation and various modern dance techniques. Objectives include the intellectual and physical introduction to this discipline as well as increased body awareness, alignment, flexibility, coordination, strength, musical phrasing and the expressive potential of movement. The course material is presented at the beginning/intermediate level.  A half course.  Because the specific genres and techniques will vary from semester to semester, the course may be repeated for credit.

Technical investigations of weight sharing, body-part manipulations, off-balance support, lifting and being lifted, negative space, resistance, and various ways of harnessing forces of momentum. How can we move with confidence, spatial awareness, and fearless agency when in close proximity and in contact with other bodies?  Duets, trios, and groups will be challenged to kinetically build set partner dances with repeated opportunities in the last part of class to perform, often with the added challenge of speeding up. 

Spring semester. Visiting Lecturer Nugent.

This course examines what happens on stage (‘action’) and ‘how’ that action happens (the character) from the points of view of  both the playwright and the actor.  The course assumes that the creative process of the playwright and the actor are similar.  Therefore the students will write scenes and one short play, which will be rehearsed as homework for presentation in class. A series of acting and playwriting exercises designed to assist in developing craft and giving students a feeling for the creative processes are presented in class.

An introduction to design, directing, and performance conducted in a combined discussion/workshop format. Students will be exposed to visual methods of interpreting a text. Early class discussions focus on a theoretical exploration of theater as an art form and seek to establish a vocabulary for and understanding of basic theatrical conventions, with readings from Aristotle through Robert Wilson. Students will spend the bulk of the semester testing these theories for themselves, ultimately designing their own performances for two plays.