3 credits This course, intended for prospective theater majors, focuses on accessing the beginning actor's imagination and creative energy. Using theater games, movement work, and improvisational techniques, the intent is to expand the boundaries of accepted logic and to encourage risk-taking in the actor. Course work includes intensive classroom sessions, individual projects designed to promote self-discovery, and group projects focused on the process of collaborative work.

Scene preparation and beginning scene technique. Emphasis on relaxation, breathing, and concentration. Teaching the actor to make choices and implement them using sense memory and to integrate this work with the text. Group and individual exercises and improvisations. Continuous work on the acting instrument stressing freedom, spontaneity, and individual attention. Materials: poems, monologues, stories, and scenes. Reading of American plays, 1930 to present.

3 credits A course intended for students who have taken one semester of Intro to Acting and would like to continue their study. The course deals with a movement from a games oriented curriculum into work with theatrical texts and discovery of the processes of scene study.

3 credits Konstantin Stanislavsky strove to systematize the acting profession in order to elevate theatre above dilettantism and predictability. Always searching for new truths, he posed difficult questions. How to get rid of deadening cliches? How to consciously awaken one's subconscious creative impulses? How to communicate the hidden life of a human spirit rather than to imitate life's externals? How to form an exciting ensemble of actors? It is crucial to understand that Stanislavsky's approach is not just a craft but a philosophy and an ethic, stressing our spiritual responsibility as theatre artists. Before any serious artist can create, he or she must be physically and spiritually ready for the creative process, argues Stanislavsky in An Actor Prepares. This course will provide a practical introduction to the core steps of such preparation and will include group exercises and advanced scene work.

3 credits Scene technique with work on specific rehearsal tasks as preparation and approach to each rehearsal and practice of their application. Continued work on the acting instrument, understanding the actor as artist and deepening the physical, emotional, and intellectual availability of each actor. Advanced individual exercises, scenes, and monologues from all dramatic literature. Intended for Upper College Theater students. Repeatable for credit.

2 credits This course develops awareness of physical equipment, natural pitch, purity of vowels and consonants, tone, inflection, diction, agility, nuance and vocal imagination.

2 credits Verse is a significant part of drama and learning to interpret it and speak it is essential for the performer. This course deals with verse from the great poets and dramatists. Prerequisite: THTR 131

2 credits The roots of masks come from a diverse system of traditions: the Balinese, the great teachers and the theorists Michel St. Denis and Jacques LeCoq, Francis Delsarte. Two courses are intended to be taken in sequence; in Neutral Masks, students learn to identify physical elements that contribute to a range of characters and physical expression. Prerequisite: Introduction to Acting

2 credits Students will work with masks that have very stylized and recognizable expressions, leading the actor to a liberation behind the mask, developing character in the body and the story of the person in the mask. Prerequisite: THTR 227

1 credit A world respected technique for body investigation, alignment, and relaxation, the Alexander Technique is a valuable tool for performers, writers, scholars, and artists. This is a kinesthetic reeducation that provides a means of monitoring and eliminating self-created tension in order not to interfere with creative process.

1 credit A continuation of the study of body investigation, alignment and relaxation, as begun in Alexander Technique I.

Survey of Drama courses study the major styles and periods in drama from a literary, stylistic, and performance perspective, and are at the center of the Theater Program. They are practical courses, applying text to scene work. All theater majors are expected to take four courses over two years from the Survey of Drama.

4 credits The three great Greek playwrights - Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides - created drama that is the greatest source of inspiration in the history of theater. They are the inventors of Western drama. Beginning with The Oresteia, the oldest existing dramatic trilogy, they created a unique form of epic theater that combines music, theater, poetry, chorus and characters who tell powerful stories of family, love, blood feuds, human sacrifice and transformation. This dramatic form, using central characters and chorus, has never been duplicated. This course will study Athenian tragedy in the context of playwrights who commanded the attention of the entire community and dramatized visions of issues that affected their society. Readings will be: Aeschylus' The Oresteia, Sophocles' The Oedipus Cycle and Philoctetes; and Euripedes' Ipheginia at Aulis, Medea, The Bacchae and The Trojan Women. Additional readings include Aristotle's The Poetics as well as contemporary commentary on Greek drama. Writing: papers and scene study.

Cross-listed: Integrated Arts 4 credits Performance Studies is an inter-discipline which considers the diverse issues raised by different forms of performance. In this course we will analyze performance art (Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Coco Fusco's Couple in a Cage, and Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror), religious ritual (mudiyettu - a form of Kali worship from South India), environmental performance (Plimoth Plantation and the Ramlila of Ramnagar), performances of self in everyday life, amateur performance (the Hasty Pudding Show and the Civil War Re-Enacters), tourist productions (Disneyworld) and various spectacles. Our primary focus will be to determine the demands these different genres place on us as audience members and citizens. In addition, we will read some of the seminal texts in the field of performance studies, and will consider the ways in which performance practice and theory inform one another. Fieldwork and papers will be required.

4 credits A year-long studio course that covers the practice of directing from text analysis, "table work", imagining the world of the play, design, casting, space, rehearsal and blocking in different configurations. The work will proceed from scenes to a full-length work for public presentation.

4 credits An introductory course that focuses on discovering the writer's voice. Through writing exercises based on dreams, visual images, poetry, social issues, found text, and music, each writer is encouraged to find his or her unique language, style, and vision. A group project will explore the nature of collaborative works. Students learn elements of playwriting through writing a one-act play, reading assignments, and class discussions.

4 credits This course will function as a writer's workshop. After writing a short play, students focus on developing a full-length play, with sections of the work-in-progress presented in class for discussions. Students grow as playwrights by being exposed to diverse dramatic literature and doing a short adaptation project, either of a classic play or a short story. Prerequisite: Playwrighting I

2 credits Beginning with exercises in broad physicality, balance, rhythm, discovery, physical mask and surprise, this class explores what about the individual student is unique and funny. When we begin to forget what is an appropriate response, and imagine what we would be like if we were never socialized, we begin to discover "the clown" that lives in each of us. By embracing the archetypes of childhood and reclaiming the "internal response" without the diminishing filter of socialization, we start to lose the inhibitions that block us from being purely expressive. This class encourages openness, invention, playfulness, generosity, sensitivity, and courage Prerequisite: Introduction to Acting

Cross-listed: Integrated Arts 2 credits A course taught by leading designers and directors in the field. It examines the explosive prominence of visionary visual ideas on the stage in the past 30 years, the emergence of a new form of collaboration between directors and designers and the inclusion of the new media on the stage. This course is required for upper-college theater students.

No credit. The junior seminar is a requirement of all juniors majoring in Theater. The seminar meets on a bi-weekly basis.

2 credits This course offers an opportunity for theater majors to receive formal faculty supervision and credit for work that is vital to the study of theater arts and required towards major studies. Theater majors and prospective theater majors are required to perform work outside of the classroom, regular course-work, and in addition to normal homework activities in order to broaden their understanding and appreciation of all areas of theatrical activity. By designing for theater productions and working on crews (costume, scenery, lighting, sound, etc.), students will interact with professional directors, designers, stage managers and crews, working with them in the intense crucible of theatrical activity that surrounds all such artistic production endeavors, and they will receive invaluable hands-on training in the technical aspects of making theater. This practical applied work is not only highly desired, but also required for prospective majors to moderate into the theater department. Professional-student relationships will be determined and administered by the course professor. The course will meet weekly to discuss projects, planning, and problem-solving with the course professor. Not for work associated with moderation or senior projects. Repeatable for credit by special arrangement with adviser and instructor.