THTR V 2002x and y New York Theatre

Students attend a variety of performances as well as a weekly lab meeting. Emphasis on expanding students' critical vocabulary and understanding of current New York theatre and its history. Section on contemporary New York theatre management and production practices.

THTR V 2003y Voice and Speech

Techniques of vocal production tailored to the individual problems and potential of the student. Exercises for use in warm-up, relaxation, breathing, and rehearsal; daily work with poetry and dramatic texts.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 14 students. Audition required. Not offered in 2009-2010.
3 points

THTR V 2004x Movement for Actors

Exploration of the actor's physical performance. Classical and contemporary approaches to theatre movement.

THTR V 2005xy Acting Workshop

Course develops the processes and tools an actor needs to approach the text of a play. Students develop their physical, vocal, and imaginative range and skills through voice and speech exercises, work on non-verbal behavior, improvisation, and character development. IN THE FALL SEMESTER OPEN ONLY TO FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS. Course encouraged for prospective BC Theatre and CU Drama and Theatre Arts majors.

THTR V 2006x Scene Lab

Scenes from the classic and modern repertory, which are directed by advanced directing students, and performed and critiqued in a weekly workshop. Lab participants are expected to rehearse for two hours a week outside of class, and to participate in group discussions about the plays, playwrights, and performances.

THTR V 2007y Scene Lab

Provides an overview of the creative process of acting: text analysis, circumstance, establishment of place, pursuit of intention in coordination with exercises and improvisation designed to enhance concentration, imagination, resonance, movement, and projection. Rehearsal 2 hours per week outside class, participation in discussion of plays, playwrights, and performances required.

THTR V 2120x Technical Production

Introduction to the equipment, terms, and procedures employed in the creation of scenery, lighting, and sound for the stage. Classroom exercises and field visits emphasize approaches to collaborative process and production management.

THTR V 3000x World Theatre

Provides a broad introduction to several traditions of nonwestern drama and theatrical practice, often placing recent and contemporary writing in relation to established conventions. Taking up plays and performance traditions from Asia, South Asia, and various African traditions, it may also consider the relation between elite and popular culture (adaptations of Shakespeare, for example), and between drama, theatre, and film.

THTR V 3004x-V3005y Acting Lab

This is an umbrella course whose offerings will change each year. Some are narrow, some broad; all are designed with four objectives in common:

a. To focus on a particular genre, playwright, or approach to live performance.

b. To combine theory and practice. Each class will have an ongoing balance of academic and on one's-feet work throughout the term. Homework assignments will include scene preparation, reading, research, and both individual and group projects.

c. To explore the social and political context of the work at hand.

d. To realize the integration required in all acting: ultimately, this is an acting course, and the end goal is what happens on stage.

The acting lab courses are intentionally non-sequential. Students come to the study of acting with widely varying talents and backgrounds. The mix of levels enriches the collaborative experience and offers greater flexibility for students. No more than six courses can be taken from the Acting Lab/Advanced Acting Lab offerings during a student's Barnard career. Auditions are required for all Acting Labs and will take place the first two evenings of each semester. Please check with the Theatre Department office for specific offerings and audition sign-up. Courses will rotate regularly and may include the following:

Acting Solo Performance Physical and vocal techniques for solo performance. Selection and performance of classic and modern texts, development of original material suitable to each student.

Acting Improvisation Students will develop skills for ensemble work through improvisation, transformation, storytelling, and scene creation.

Acting Commedia dell'arte A practical approach to the comedy of class conflict, both classic and modern, based primarily on the techniques and characters of commedia dell'arte.

Acting Puppets and Masks Focuses on an approach to acting that emphasizes physical awareness and communication through posture, gesture, and movement. Masks and puppets will be used for character exploration, scenario development, and chorus work. Includes coordination of text and movement with exploration of 20th Century Expressionist and Surrealist texts.

Acting Chinese Opera Training in the four performance skills of Chinese opera: song, speech, stylized movement/acting, and stage combat. Looks at Chinese opera in its historical context in order to understand the nature of the performance tradition.

Acting Shakespeare An exploration of character, language, and action through sonnets, monologues, and scenes.

Acting Social Comedy The presentation of scenes from a variety of plays spanning a three hundred year period, from Wycherly to Wilde, as a means of investigating developments in the use of comic language. Epigram, antithesis, set-up, punchline: has their use changed? Emphasis on performance, with a consideration of the historical, social and theatrical context.

Acting Naturalism An eclectic approach to naturalistic acting techniques; an examination of performance practice through scene study; emphasis will be placed on works by Williams, Miller, and others.

Acting Chekhov Scene study, improvisation, and character and monologue work. An examination of the artistic and social context of Chekhov's work, including the acting theories of Stanislavski and the politics of naturalism.

Acting Brecht Intensive scene work, along with theoretical reading, analysis, and discussion. In-depth work on three or more major plays, poetry, and selected short pieces. Practical applications of the "alienation effect" and other Brechtian ideas.

Acting the Avant-Garde Intensive monologue and scene work, along with theoretical reading and discussion, exploring the particular performance skills needed for experimental drama, beginning with Jarry, and including Beckett, Artaud, Ionesco, Genet, Stein, and others.

Acting The Song Song as it emerges from scene, and as an individual entity. Technique and lyrical analysis. Porter, Gershwin, Berlin, Hammerstein, and others.

Acting in the Musical Scene An advanced scene-work technique class tailored to Musical Theatre performance. Classroom material will include composers such as Rodgers, Loesser, Sondheim, Coleman, Schmidt, Flaherty,and others. Previous instruction in voice and scene study is required.

Acting Suzuki and Viewpoints Introduces students to Suzuki actor training, which develops a physical approach to training the actor's expressive abilities; it combines Suzuki work with Viewpoints, an approach to group collaboration on dramatic texts, composition conceived temporally and spatially.
Prerequisites: Enrollment in each section limited to 14 students. Audition Required. General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART).
3 points

THTR V 3006x or y Advanced Acting Lab

Special problems of performance. In-class scene work, extensive outside research, rehearsals, and reading.

THTR V 3122x and y Rehearsal and Performance

Students take part in the full production of a play as actors, designers, dramaturgs, or stage managers. Emphasizes the collaborative nature of production. Appropriate research and reading will be required in addition to artistic assignments.

THTR V 3132x or y Sound Design

Studies the art and practice of designing sound and scoring music for dramatic performance. Students study the relationship between concert and incidental music, and read plays toward the production of a score for live theatre. Students also read broadly in the fields of sound, music, acoustics, and the cultural analysis of sound as a component of performance. Background in music or composition not essential.

THTR V 3133y Costume Design

Studio course exploring designing costumes for the stage. Students become familiar with textual and character analysis, research, sketching and rendering, swatching and introductory costume history.

THTR V 3134x Lighting Design

Focuses on both the technical and creative aspects of theatrical lighting design. Students will learn the role of lighting within the larger design and performance collaboration through individual and group projects, readings, hands-on workshops, and critique of actual designs.

THTR V 3135x Scene Design

Introduction to designing for the theatre. The course will focus on set design, developing skills in script analysis, sketching, model making, storyboarding and design presentation. Some investigation into theatre architecture, scenic techniques and materials, and costume and lighting design.

ENTH BC 3136y Shakespeare in Performance

The dramatic text as theatrical event. Differing performance spaces, production practices, and cultural conventions promote differing modes of engagement with dramatic texts. Explores Shakespeare's plays in the context of actual and possible performances from the Renaissance to the 20th century.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students.
4 points

THTR V 3136y Costume and Mask Workshop

Visual interpretation of script and character through costume and mask construction, drawing, painting, and sculpting. Final project based on design and performance of Medieval and Renaissance texts.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 14 students. Not offered in 2009-2010.
3 points

ENTH BC 3137y Restoration and 18th-Century Drama

Performance conventions, dramatic techniques, and cultural contexts from 1660 to 1800. Playwrights include Wycherley, Etherege, Behn, Trotter, Centlivre, Dryden, Congreve, Gay, Goldsmith, and Sheridan.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students.
4 points

ENTH BC 3139y Modern American Drama and Performance

Modern American drama in the context of theatrical exploration and cultural contestation.Playwrights include Glaspell, O'Neill, Odets, Johnson, Hurston, Hansberry, Williams, Hellman, Stein, Miller, and Fornes.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students. Lab fee $60.
4 points

ENTH BC 3140y Women and Theatre

Exploration of the impact of women in theatre history-with special emphasis on American theatre history-including how dramatic texts and theatre practice have reflected the ever-changing roles of women in society. Playwrights include Glaspell, Crothers, Hellman, Finley, Hughes, and Smith.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students. General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT). General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART). Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points

THTR V 3141xy Performing Dissidence in Eastern Europe

Analyzes dramatic texts and performances under the Communist regimes behind the Iron Curtain before 1989. Principal focus is on Czech, Polish, and East German playwrights and their productions; we will consider their work in both legal and illegal contexts. In order to gain a wider understanding of the diversity of underground performative cultures, works from Hungary, Romania, and Slovenia will be considered as well. The seminar also attends to dissident performative activities in the framework of the 1980s revolutions, and reflects on works by western authors and emigrant/diasporic writers produced on stages behind the Iron Curtain.

THTR V 3143y Drama and Film

Study of formal and historical relations between two primary means of producing drama: theatre and film. Readings and viewings of work by Bergman, Brecht, Chaplin, Eisenstein, Fellini, Kurosawa, Marlowe, Moliere, Mnouchkine, Shakespeare, and Williams, among others.

ENTH BC 3144x Black Theatre

Exploration of Black Theater, specifically African-American performance traditions, as an intervening agent in racial, cultural, and national identity. African-American theatre artists to be examined include Amiri Baraka, Kia Corthron, W.E.B. Du Bois, Angelina Grimke, Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan-Lori Parks, Adrian Piper, and August Wilson.

THTR V 3146x or y American Drama in the 1990s

Examines American drama in the period between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, considering a range of aesthetic (epic theatre, performance art), social (AIDS), and political (Reaganomics) issues of the period.

THTR V 3150x Theatre History I

Dialectical approach to reading and thinking about the history of dramatic theatre in the west, interrogating the ways poetry inflects, and is inflected by, the material dynamics of performance. We will undertake careful study of the practices of performance, and of the sociocultural, economic, political, and aesthetic conditions animating representative plays of the Western tradition from the classical theatre through the early modern period; course will also emphasize development of important critical concepts for the analysis of drama, theatre, and performance. Specific attention will be given to classical Athens, medieval cycle drama, the professional theatre of early modern England, and the rival theatres of seventeenth century France and Spain. Writing: 2-3 papers; Reading: 1-2 plays, critical and historical reading per week; final examination.

THTR V 3151y Theatre History II

Study of European and American theatre history from 1700 to the present. Approaches include those listed in BC 3150, as well as studying constructions of race and examining the relationships among theatrical theory, playwriting, and performance.

THTR V 3152y Theatre Studies: Performative Cultures of the Third Reich

Explores the cultivation of national and transnational performances as a significant force of National Socialism, at the same time as challenging the notion of "Nazi Theatre" as monolithic formation. The core of the course inquires into the dialectical analysis of artistic creations in diverse art genres, while working towards an understanding of the social dramaturgy of such events as staging the Führer and the racialized body of the privileged people. Nazism did not harbor ideologies without benefits for the allied nations. Thus, the dynamic performance of transnationalism among the "brothers in arms" will be included as well, in order to elucidate how works of art crossing into the Third Reich were reimagined, sometimes in ways challenging to the presumed values of the state stage.

THTR V 3166x Drama, Theatre, and Theory

Intensive immersion in fundamental principles and practices of world drama, theatre, and performance, past and present. Close readings of plays and other texts keyed to selected works of visual art, music, video, film, and digital media. Artists and authors covered include Plato, Aristotle, Zeami, Nietzsche, Stanislavski, Maeterlinck, Craig, Brecht, Artaud, Stein, Grotowski, Soyinka, Boal. Assignments include presentations, performance projects, and critical writing.

ENTH BC 3186x Modern Drama

Covers the development of drama and theatre from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth, addressing the ways writing and the physical, presentational instrument of performance has worked to frame theatre as an ideological instrument. Playwrights typically include a selection from: Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, Shaw, Chekhov, Pirandello, Brecht, Dürrenmatt, Handke, Churchill, Beckett, Kane. Essays by Zola, Freud, Nietzsche, Brecht, Eagleton, Derrida, Artaud, Stanislavsky, Grotowski, Jameson, etc. Course typically requires two papers and final examination.

THTR V 3200x History and Practice of Directing

Exploration of the questions and challenges that contsitute the practice of directing, the relationship of the director to the actor, the playwright and/or dramaturg, the designers, and the producer; evolution of the role of the director and the pioneering work of the great directors of the twentieth century.

THTR V 3201y Directing Lab

Approaches to staging a play, with an emphasis on physical, visual, and rhythmic techniques. Students will direct one short piece for public performance.

THTR V 3202x Advanced Directing

Students will work on a variety of plays from the world theatre repertory and direct scenes using members of the first-year lab. Directorial analysis, preparation, working with actors, and production planning.

THTR V 3250y Alternative Theatre Lab

Students create a new play through a collaborative process that may include interviews and conversations, written accounts and newspaper articles, improvisations and rehearsals. The play will tour to community venues that might not ordinarily house live theatre.

THTR V 3300y Playwriting Lab

Students will create and workshop plays, with a focus on learning new approaches to language and structure. The class will culminate in the writing and staged-readings of 30 page plays and performance texts.

THTR V 3301x Play Development

Students will focus on rewriting and bringing an existing script to a production-ready state. Students will also read drafts of writers currently produced on New York stages to understand why changes and rewrites were made. Writing projects will culminate in staged readings and possible submissions to theatres. Recommended for senior thesis in playwriting.

THTR V 3510y Problems in Design

Studio-based course explores the main elements of theatrical design: sets, costumes, lighting, and sound. Students examine these design elements as both individual and interrelated components of a production. A series of guest artists contribute to understanding the design process, collaboration, and making a design idea a reality on stage.
Prerequisites: Some design experience is helpful, though not required. Enrollment limited to 12 students. Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points not offered 2009-10

THTR V 3600x and y The Theatre Workshop

Various topics presented by visiting theatre scholars, artists, and practioners in a lecture/seminar/workshop series that will meet for at least four sessions during each semester. Topics, times, and visiting instructors will be announced by the department. Students must attend all classes to receive credit for the course.
Prerequisites: To be taken only for P/D/F. Departmental registration required. See www.barnard.edu/theatre for details.
1 point

ENTA W 3702y Drama, Theatre, and Theory
- K. Biers
4 points

THTR V 3737y Modernism and 20th Century Theatre

Interdisciplinary study of major European and American theatrical trends since the mid-19th century through readings of drama, theory, and criticism; music listening; video viewings; study of visual art; and excursions to New York performances and museums.

THTR V 3750y The History Play

Study of plays that treat historical themes. Investigates suggestive parallels between the disciplines of theatre and history that arise when artists adapt the story of the past for dramatic purposes. Plays by Aeschylus, Cervantes, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Brecht, Weiss, Churchill, Parks, and others.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students. General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT). General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART). Not offered in 2009-2010.
4 points

THTR V 3997x and y Senior Thesis: Performance

Students will direct, design, or write a short play that will be produced (according to departmental guidelines) in the Senior Thesis Festival. Collaboration is expected and students will meet weekly with faculty and other seniors. A written proposal should be submitted in the Autumn term, and a final paper is required. Students wishing to do a thesis in acting will work with a faculty or guest director on suitable dramatic material for performance.

THTR V 3998x and y Senior Thesis: History, Theory, Dramaturgy, Criticism

In-depth research project culminating in a substantial written thesis on any aspect of theatre history, theory, or criticism; or a production dramaturgy assignment, either with a professional New York theatre or with a faculty-directed production, including the compilation of a dramaturgical casebook.

THTR V 3999x and y Independent Study

Students submit, before the semester begins, a detailed proposal for independent research to a faculty sponsor.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor and the chair required.
1-4 points.

THTR V 4001y Visual Scenography

Examines the visual and aural vocabulary of dramatic texts and related opera and film adaptations. Readings and discussions focus on directors and playwrights including Vsevolod Meyerhold, Tadeusz Kantor, Robert Wilson, Georg Buchner, Frank Wedekind, and Gertrude Stein. Skill in expressing content through form is gained by weekly exercise in story board creation and the performance of original visual scripts.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15 students. Lab Fee $35. General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART). Not offered in 2009-2010.
3 points