Syllabi
This course is a survey of selected topics in Classical and Contemporary Asian Theatre from India, China, and Japan. Although the course emphasizes these three countries, we will also look at theories and examples of intercultural performance, i.e., Asian Theatre influences on the West, Western influences on the East, and other “fusion performances,” as well as other areas of Asia.
This is a course in Directing. In the theatre, the director is responsible for unifying all of the aspects of a production by providing artistic vision, collaborating with designers, and mobilizing actors. While the director may different levels of authority and responsibility depending on the theatrical company they work in, they are an integral part of contemporary theatre.
This course examines the intersection of science and theatre. After examining ways in which theatre has constructively (or destructively) interacted with the scientific world, we will write our own “science plays”, incorporating feedback from faculty advisors in the science disciplines. In the process, we will understand more ways in which the arts and humanities can support science and vice versa.
This is an introductory course in Playwriting. Playwriting is about not only writing plays but also reading LOTS of plays, so that you can see the various ways that successful playwrights have written for millennia. We will write a 10-minute play as well as a one-act play during the course of the quarter.
This sophomore seminar will survey the “first theatres” of many different areas of the (mostly) pre-modern world – including Yoruba ritual, ancient Greek & Rome, Japanese Noh Theatre, Chinese Zaju Drama, European Medieval theatre, Elizabethan England, and Sanskrit theatre of India. Through research, discussion, and critical thinking exercises, students will be encouraged to view performance as an intercultural and continually developing phenomenon in both art and daily life.
There are two major purposes of this course. One is to study issues of race, gender, and class in society through works written by marginalized peoples in America and beyond. We will be looking at a variety of theatre, including feminist, African-American, Latinx, Asian-American, Arab-American, Indigenous American, and LGBTQ theatre. A basic assumption of the course is that theatre and drama in the Americas reflects the plurality of culture in the Western Hemisphere and that the plays reflect the values of the society.
This particular iteration of the course explored methods of gamifying the classroom, teaching students how to read theatre texts as if it were part of a tabletop game where they took on different roles and gained experience for completing assignments. Student response was not incredibly positive but the positive reinforcement grading strategy did raise average grade by an entire letter grade for this section compared to others.
We will become some of those people practicing Theatre of the Oppressed to bring more peace to Bloomington, Indiana and the Indiana University campus. After spending some time reading Boal’s theories and studying how psychologists, educators, politicians, and others have applied his theories, we will spend the greater portion of the semester learning to use our bodies as theatrical tools and practicing the theories we have learned. This process will include the students identifying oppressive situations confronting members of the community, writing and rehearsing scenarios that involve that situation and then facilitating the community in overcoming that oppression. Theatre of the Oppressed offers one of the most interactive forms of activism available and this is a great opportunity for you to participate.
This course will follow the beginnings of myths and legends, what kind of characters populate these stories, and how a singular core story can have many adaptations that inform us of each particular culture that appropriates it. We will look at retellings of Greek myths, Middle Eastern and Asian epic stories, English folklore, Aboriginal stories, among others.
This course is required of all theatre majors and minors, but it is also open to students of any other major. The course objectives for students include the following:
- Understanding theatre as a collaborative act
- Developing and enhancing critical skills to enhance participation as a theatre practitioner and an audience member
- Developing an appreciation and understanding of the jobs of theatre artists and technicians and other contributors to theatrical production
- Developing an awareness of the relationship of theatrical experiences of the past with those of the present
It is hoped that students will leave this course with a better understanding of theatre and drama in its larger cultural and historical context, and with the ability to make important connections between theatre of the past with current experiences with theatre, with the other fine and performing arts, and with our contemporary social fabric and myriad life styles.
Before the advent of audiovisual reproduction, all production was live, or more accurately, no production was live, because liveness only exists in opposition to things that are otherwise reproduced. For the last century, an ongoing argument over the value of live performance has dominated the discourse about the “conflict” between live theatre and other forms of mediatized performance. In this course, we will talk about these various forms of performances and their differing degrees of liveness, from theatre and film to TV and radio to Twitch and social media. In doing so, we will see the intersections between digital culture and “high” culture across virtual and “real” boundaries.