Spring 2012 Courses

THR 201
Beginning Studies in Acting: Scene Study
Tim Vasen, Tracy Bersley
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 301
Intermediate Studies in Acting: Scene Study II
Robert N. Sandberg
A scene study course focused on creating characters, making choices and turning text analysis into acting. Students will work on a variety of scenes from Williams, Wilde, Shakespeare, Beckett, Brecht and others. Scenes will be performed for an English Dramatic Literature course.

THR 302
Introduction to Interdisciplinary Theater
Rinde Eckert
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 theater from all angles (words, music, movement, sculpture, design), we will be building an understanding of 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 305
Playwriting II: Intermediate Playwriting
Staff 
A continuation of work begun in Introductory Playwriting, focusing on the writing of a major play. Prerequisite: 205. Staff

GER 301 / THR 308
Topics in German Drama and Theater - Stage and Performance from the Avant-Garde to the Present
Devin Fore
Beginning with the work of Wagner and Brecht, this course offers an overview of major techniques and themes developed in theater and performance genres of Germany and Austria from the end of the 19th century until today. After examining the experiments of the interwar avant-garde, this seminar focuses on postwar practices, where we will discuss the legacy of Nazi spectacle, the intersection of theater with the new media, the human body in Actionist performance art, tensions between melodrama and post-dramatic theater, and finally, current work that explores performance as a mode of labor within today's so-called post-industrial economy.

THR 311
Intermediate Studies in Acting: Creative Character and Text
Kate Whoriskey
The group will theatricalize narratives of Burmese refugees regarding women's survival in a war-torn country, the indoctrination of boys into the Burmese military or orders of monks, the Saffron revolution, Aung San Suu Kyi, etc. Students will work as actors, writers and directors in an ensemble setting.

FRE 311 / THR 312
Advanced French Theater Workshop
Florent Masse
Advanced French Theater Workshop is a continuation of FRE/THR 211, French Theater Workshop. Students focus their work on three French playwrights: one classical, one modern, and one contemporary. The course will place emphasis on refining and improving students' acting and oral skills. It will culminate in the presentation of the students 'Travaux' at the end of the semester.

THR 318 / VIS 318
Lighting Design
Jane Cox
An introduction to the art and craft of lighting design for the stage and an exploration of light as a medium for expression. Students will develop an ability to observe lighting in the world and on the stage; to learn to make lighting choices based on text, space, research, and their own responses; to practice being creative, responsive and communicative under pressure and in company; to prepare well to create under pressure using the designer's visual toolbox; and to play well with others-working creatively and communicating with directors, writers, performers, fellow designers, the crew and others.

THR 326 / ENG 334
Criticism Workshop
Fintan O'Toole
This workshop is devoted to the development of the student's critical sensibility. Through extensive in-class analysis of their own reviews of and other kinds of writing about professional theater and dance productions, students will come to learn what makes a good critic of the performing arts.

THR 337
Community-Based Performance
Erica Nagel
This hands-on seminar will explore contemporary theories and practices of community-based performance, investigating contemporary theatre, dance, and music groups that use these methods. The course will also interrogate the sometimes fraught politics of community-based performance, including questions of authorship, authority, authenticity, and artistry. Offered in partnership with the Community-Based Learning Initiative, this course will offer hands-on experience in the process of creating community-based performance projects, and facilitate opportunities to build artistic relationships with local community organizations.

THR 341
Acting and Directing in Musical Theater
John Rando
A practical, hands-on introduction to acting and directing in musical theater. The course 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.

CWR 349/THR 349/VIS 349
Screenwriting: Creating Visual and Emotional Unity
Christina Lazaridi
This class will familiarize 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.

THR 361
The Art of Producing Theater
Mara Isaacs
This course will cultivate an understanding of the reciprocal relationship between reading and producing plays. Students will learn to read plays as literature written for production, by developing an appreciation for what production entails. This course will offer a candid exploration of the wide-ranging role of artistic producing in professional theater and its relationship to the produced work. Using the season planning process at McCarter and other professional venues as a catalyst for discussion, we will explore the process of creating work for the stage, both classic and contemporary, and the context in which it is produced.

THR 369/GSS 365/ENG 365/AMS 365
Isn't It Romantic? The Broadway Musical from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Sondheim
Stacy Wolf
Song. Dance. Man. Woman. These are the basic components of the Broadway musical theatre. How have musical theatre artists, composers, lyricists, librettists, directors, choreographers, and designers worked with these building blocks to create this quintessentially American form of art and entertainment? Why are musicals structured by love and romance? This course will explore conventional and resistant performances of gender and sexuality in the Broadway musical since the 1940s.

THR 401
Advanced Studies in Acting: Scene Study and Style
Tim Vasen
Post-Shakesperean writers such as John Webster, George Chapman, Thomas Middleton and John Ford pushed the age's obsession with sex and death to the extreme in the years before Cromwell's revolution shut down the English stage. This course will focus on the challenges and opportunities inherent in performing the darkness these plays seek to embody. Modern as well as historical approaches to performance will be explored in a workshop environment.

ENG 412 / THR 412
Tom Stoppard and Intertextuality
Michael Cadden
Stoppard's comic juxtaposition of styles of theater, writing, thinking, speaking and living has made him one of the most beloved and most challenging of contemporary playwrights. This course will explore one aspect of the his plays: the ways in which he draws attention to the work of other writers and artists in his own work. Well before the advent of mashup culture, Stoppard married Hamlet, Waiting for Godot and Six Characters in Search of an Author to give birth to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. This ongoing dramaturgical methodology raises important questions about originality, canonicity, identity, and accessibility.

ATL 499 / THR 499
Princeton Atelier - Que Sera Sarraute: Performing Nathalie Sarraute
Dan Safer, Dave Malloy
Director / Choreographer Dan Safer (from the dance/theater company Witness Relocation) and composer Dave Malloy will collaborate with students to explore new methods of devising a theatrical event, using the work of French author Nathalie Sarraute as a springboard. Sarraute was a leading figure of the "Nouveau Roman" movement, wherein authors sought to re-invent the concept of the novel. We will make scenes, dances and songs and collide them into a new whole, discovering what can happen in the collision of this material, our ideas, and our selves. The course will culminate in public presentations of the work generated.

Fall 2011 Courses

THR 201
Beginning Studies in Acting: Scene Study
Suzanne Agins, Tracy Bersley
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
Robert N. Sandberg
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.

FRE 211 / THR 211
French Theater Workshop
Florent Masse
L'Avant-Scène will offer students the opportunity to put their language skills in motion by discovering French theater in general and by acting in French, in particular. The course will introduce students to acting techniques while allowing them to discover the richness of the French dramatic canon. Particular emphasis will be placed on improving students' oral skills through pronunciation and diction exercises. At the end of the semester, the course will culminate in the performance of the students' work.

THR 300/ COM 359/ ENG 373/ ANT 359
Acting, Being, Doing, and Making: 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 theatre and 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: Scene Study II
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 318 / VIS 318
Lighting Design
Jane Cox
CANCELLED An introduction to the art and craft of lighting design for the stage and an exploration of light as a medium for expression. Students will develop an ability to observe lighting in the world and on the stage; to learn to make lighting choices based on text, space, research, and their own responses; to practice being creative, responsive and communicative under pressure and in company; to prepare well to create under pressure using the designer's visual toolbox; and to play well with others-working creatively and communicating with directors, writers, performers, fellow designers, the crew and others.

THR 319 / VIS 319
Scenic Design
Riccardo Hernandez
An introduction to the art and craft of scenic design for the stage and and exploration of the use of space as a medium of textual interpretation. Students will develop an ability to think about scenography as a way deepening and reinforcing an interpretation of a play or other form of performance event. While no experience in scenic design is anticipated, students will learn to create model renderings in order to acquire the creative, theatrical vocabulary needed to work with collaborators to turn a vision of text into a fully articulated visual world.

THR 330 / ENG 421
Special Topics in Performance Practice - Tennessee Williams at 100: How To Take A Streetcar Named Desire
Michael Cadden
Taking its cue from the centennial of the playwright's birth, this course will focus on how and why a Streetcar Named Desire has been and continues to be staged. We'll look at the play, its sources, its first production (actors, director, composer, designers), revivals, film and operatic versions. Among our subjects: the tension between the objective world and subjective experience, the political and the psychological, as embodied in the text as well as in elements of the first production; the performance of gender, class, and race required by the play; what production history can teach us about a/this play.

THR 341
Acting and Directing in Musical Theater
John Rando
CANCELLED A practical, hands-on introduction to acting and directing in musical theater. The course 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.

CWR 348 / VIS 348 / THR 348
Screenwriting I: Screenwriting as a Visual Medium
Christina Lazaridi, Patricia Marx
The course will introduce students to basic screenwriting techniques and principles, using cross-cultural film examples of European/Asian and US 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.

SLA 381 / THR 381
Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Petersburg 1823-31/Moscow 1936/Princeton 2012)
Caryl Emerson, Tim Vasen
The seminar is designed for the actors (12-16 undergraduates) in an adaptation of Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" which will be mounted in February 2012. Time will be divided among Pushkin's novel-in-verse, the Stalinist stage, the Pushkin Jubilee, Russian folklore, dream psychology, and the duel of honor. The definitive playscript will emerge throughout the semester.

THR 411
Directing Workshop
Kate Whoriskey
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.

CWR 448 / VIS 448 / THR 448
Screenwriting II: Adaptation
Christina Lazaridi
This course will introduce students to Screenwriting Adaptation techniques, focusing on adapting "true stories" pulled from historical sources or the news. Issues of documentary technique versus fiction, the ethics of adaptation, how to turn facts into dramatic structure and the questions surrounding the need to fictionalize truth for dramatic purposes will accompany the analysis of World Cinema examples of film adaptations through the 20th century. Students will be asked to write one short silent film and one 30 minute film, adapted from a story they find in the news.

THR 451
The Fall Show
Suzanne Agins
The Fall Show provides students with a rigorous and challenging experience of creating theater under near-professional circumstances. A professional director, design team, and stage manager, as well as two weeks of performances in the Berlind Theatre, are key components.The Fall Show involves an extensive rehearsal period and a concentrated tech week,often requiring more time and focus than a typical student-produced production might. For the first time, students cast in the Fall Show, or those who take on major production roles (such as Assistant Stage Manager, Assistant Designer, or Assistant Director), will receive course credit.

THR 318 / VIS 318
Lighting Design
Jane Cox
CANCELLED An introduction to the art and craft of lighting design for the stage and an exploration of light as a medium for expression. Students will develop an ability to observe lighting in the world and on the stage; to learn to make lighting choices based on text, space, research, and their own responses; to practice being creative, responsive and communicative under pressure and in company; to prepare well to create under pressure using the designer's visual toolbox; and to play well with others-working creatively and communicating with directors, writers, performers, fellow designers, the crew and others.