Spring 2010 Courses

THR 201
Beginning Studies in Acting: Scene Study
An introduction to the craft of acting through scene study monologues and, finally, a longer scene drawn from a play, to develop a method of working on a script. Emphasis will be placed on honesty, spontaneity, and establishing a personal connection with the scene's substance.

THR 205
Introductory Playwriting
This is a workshop in the fundamentals of writing plays. Emphasis will be on solving problems of structure, dramatic action, and character. Attention will also be given to innerlife, language, atmosphere on stage, creating living dialogue, and examining the sources to be used in writing, etc.

THR 302
Introduction to Interdisciplinary Theater
Practicing thinking like a writer-who-thinks-like-an-actor-thinking-like-a-dancer-who-thinks-like-a-musician-thinking-like-a-painter-who-thinks-like-a-composer-who-directs. Exploring the Faust legend from all theatrical angles (words, music, movement, sculpture, design), we build a multi-dimensional theatrical logic over the course of the semester. We will explore, provoke, invent, and analyze the phenomenal, the poetic, the sententious, the informative, the confrontational, and the entertaining.

THR 311
Intermediate Studies in Acting: Creating Character and Text
Students will create a pantomimic performance based on KRAZY KAT, a 1921 musical composition by John Alden Carpenter inspired by one of the most popular comic strips of the day. The piece will be performed as part of a double bill in the Berlind Theatre on April 9-10, with music direction by Anthony Branker of the Princeton Jazz Program.

THR 330/VIS 373
Special Topics in Performance Practice: Devised Theater
Devised Theater is a form of contemporary theater-making in which, more often than not, the final theatrical product originates not from a rehearsal process during which a director and a group of actors spend weeks interpreting an already-written script provided by a playwright, but instead from a collaborative, usually improvisatory, process involving a large collective of theater practitioners, not all of them performers. Among our subjects, largely American: The Civilians, who will be in residence doing a Princeton Atelier in conjunction with the Princeton Environmental Institute; the Pig Iron Theatre; the Tectonic Theatre Project.

THR 331/AMS 332
Special Topics in Performance History and Theory: Performance and Politics in the 1960's
This course will explore performance of the 1960s American theater -- Broadway, the avant-garde, political theaters -- in the context of the social, cultural, and intellectual politics of the decade. We'll consider production practices and intentions, "texts" (both scripted and unscripted), and reception, both critical and popular. Our goal will be to construct a complex and nuanced "thick description" of performance and politics during this volatile period, while also questioning the value and limitations of decade-oriented historiography.

THR 365/HLS 365
Re:Staging the Greeks
Re:Staging the Greeks, a collaboration between the Theater Program of the Lewis Center for the Arts and the Program in Hellenic Studies, will begin with this acting/directing workshop investigating how to stage ancient Greek plays on the contemporary stage. On Mondays, we will study some of the plays, the contexts in which they were first performed, and approaches taken by theater directors over the last few decades. On Fridays, we'll be on our feet, exploring the play's performative possibilities for ourselves.

THR 377/ENG 319
Pulp Fictions: Jacobean Tragedy and American Film Noir
This course juxtaposes two genres distant in time from one another but sharing a dark and violent imaginative space: Jacobean tragedy and classic American film noir. Looking at plays staged in the first decades of the seventeenth century and movies produced between 1944 and 1955, we'll focus on the alienated heroes, witty murderers, femme fatales and other sexual outlaws they have in common, as well as their shared melancholia, louche locales, and moral ambiguities.

THR 401
Advanced Studies in Acting: Scene Study and Style
This workshop will use mask work to train students to find the “Neutral State,” to tweak that state toward character work and eventually toward the idiosyncratic and personal world of the Clown. Neutral Mask trains actors to find an elusive yet simple physical state rid of background noise in order to engage the theater at its roots: physical, spatial, rhythmic, dynamic and expressive. We’ll then explore some of the infinite possibilities of creating masked comic characters, based on variations from neutrality. The final step will be the discovery of the Clown, through the use of the smallest mask in the world – the red nose.

THR 441/MUS 367/ENG 411
Topics in Musical Theater: The Musical Theater of Stephen Sondheim
Examines the musicals of Stephen Sondheim from page to stage. Focusing on a different musical each week, from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum to Road Show, we will ask, How do musical theatre's elements of music, lyrics, script, dance, and design cohere in Sondheim's musicals? We will explore influences on his art, both personal and cultural, his collaborators, and the historical and theatrical milieu. We'll study the musicals themselves by reading libretti, listening to music, seeing taped and live performances, researching production histories, and analyzing popular, critical, and scholarly reception.

THR 448/CWR 448/VIS 448
Screenwriting II: Creating Visual and Emotional Unity
An advanced-level course in screenwriting. This class will build upon the techniques introduced in Screenwriting I – familiarizing students with the complex use of metaphorical, emotional and visual threads in screenplay writing. Analyzing examples of international, independent and classical structures, students will be exposed to the rhythms and demands of the process of conceiving and writing a long form narrative film.

ATL 496/THR 496
Environmental Documentary Theater
Steve Cosson, Michael Friedman
Theater director Steve Cosson and composer/lyricist Michael Friedman will lead an Atelier on investigative and musical theater. They will develop a new project, "The Great Immensity", through a network of collaborative partnerships with scholars and researchers at the Princeton Environmental Institute as well as with directors, writers, actors, designers, choreographers and composers, and Atelier students. "The Great Immensity" tackles the monumental topic of the environment and our planet's future, exploring themes of climate change, deforestation and extinction by using interviews with researchers working in these areas.
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Fall 2009 Courses

THR 201
Beginning Studies in Acting: Scene Study
Tim Vasen
An introduction to the craft of acting through scene study monologues and, finally, a longer scene drawn from a play, to develop a method of working on a script. Emphasis will be placed on honesty, spontaneity, and establishing a personal connection with the scene's substance.

THR 300/COM 359/ENG 359
Acting, Being, Doing and Making: An Introduction to Performance Studies
Jill Dolan, Stacy Wolf
A hands-on approach to this interdisciplinary field. In addition to key readings in performance theory, we will attend theater concerts and sporting events, visit museums, attend community celebrations, observe people's behaviors in restaurants and on the street. We will analyze live performance, adapting techniques applied to written texts to space- and time-based events. We will also practice ethnographic methods to collect stories to adapt for performance and address the role of the participant-observer as a corollary to the scholar-artist, which requires thinking about ethics and the inherent social responsibilities of this work.

THR 301
Intermediate Studies in Acting: Creating Character and Text
Mark Nelson
A continuation of THR 201: Guide students in ways to develop a role and to explore important texts and characters in an imaginative and honest manner.

THR 305
Playwriting II: Intermediate Playwriting
A continuation of work begun in Introductory Playwriting.

THR 317 / VIS 372
Theatrical Design
Riccardo Hernandez
An exploration of the various aspects of theatrical design: lighting, set design, costuming. Emphasis will depend to some degree on instructor's area of interest and/or student interest. Studio projects will be designed to coincide with other theater and dance courses and currently scheduled productions. Critical discussion will explore the relationship between dramatic texts and design ideas. The Fall 2009 class will focus on set design.

THR 341
Acting and Directing in Musical Theater
A practical hands-on introduction to acting and directing in musical theater, this workshop will require students to prepare songs and scenes from selected musicals with an eye to how best to approach the particular challenges the scene presents.

THR 348/CWR 348/VIS 348
Screenwriting as a Visual Medium
Christina Lazaridi
The course will introduce students to basic screenwriting techniques and principles, using cross-cultural film examples of European/Asian and U.S. classics. Course will examine the visual power of story movement in film and the use of visual moments/behavior in creating memorable characters. Students will be asked to write one short silent film and two narrative films using cross-cultural examples of European, Middle Eastern and U.S. Cinema.

THR 366/MUS 366
American Musical Theater History
Stacy Wolf
This seminar explores one of the most quintessentially "American" forms of performance- the Broadway musical theater- in the context of U.S. culture from the mid- 20th-Century until today. We will begin in 1949 with Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, move through the "Golden Age" of the "integrated" Broadway musical in the 1950s, the "concept" musicals of the mid-1960s, the so-called "death" of the musical in the 1970s, megamusicals of the 1980s, and end with some contemporary musicals.

THR 411
Directing Workshop
Tim Vasen
Special directing assignments will be made for each student, whose work will be analyzed by the instructor and other members of the workshop. Students will be aided in their preparations by the instructor; they will also study the spectrum of responsibilities and forms of research involved in directing plays of different styles.

THR 494 / ATL 494
History Re-Staged: Experimental Theater
Whit MacLaughlin, Adriano Shaplin
Is history a fixed story or a collaborative work of art constantly in flux? Join playwright Adriano Shaplin (Riot Group) and director Whit MacLaughlin (New Paradise Laboratories) for an experimental theater laboratory dedicated to re-writing and re-staging history. Emphasis will be placed on disobeying literary traditions, vandalizing familiar narratives, and forging potent theatrical images. This Atelier will culminate in the performance of a new theatrical work. Auditions will be held on Thursday, April 16 at 2:30 PM in Room 313 (third floor dance studio) at The Lewis Center for the Arts at 185 Nassau St.

THR 499 / ATL 499
Script Development, Puppetry, Short Film Production
Wakka Wakka Productions company
Led by members of the international Wakka Wakka Productions company, students will collaborate as an ensemble with company members to develop a screenplay for the puppet film Juniper, an original comic book adaptation about U.S.-launched monkey space flights between 1948-1961. Students will be involved in every step of the creative process from developing scenes through designing and building sets, puppets, and props, to shooting test scenes for the film. This Atelier will culminate in a staged reading of the script, a presentation of test shoots and an exhibit of all visuals created during the semester.