35 courses with the subject THEA, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
This course offers, through classroom exercises, improvisations and performance of scenes from plays, an approach to understanding, appreciating, and practicing the art of acting and theatre. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Weekly lab work introduces students to tools and techniques in costumes, scenery, properties, and lighting. Student participation in Department of Theatre and Dance major productions gives them the opportunity to put those skills into practice. GPA Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
American plays from the early work of Eugene O'Neill through that of contemporary dramatists are explored as theatre (through film and video) and as dramatic literature. This course looks at drama in historical and thematic contexts and as the expression of major American playwrights. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts, Literature Typically Offered: Alternate Years
Asia on Stage focuses on the intricate classical performance traditions of theatre, dance, and music of South and Southeast Asia and how contemporary artists have borrowed from these traditions to create new or avant-garde work. Students develop analytical skill through observation of similarities and differences between counterparts in other Asian nations and the West. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts, Cross-Cultural Studies Typically Offered: Alternate Years
This course examines how artists and activists have used film and plays to explore complex and unsettling issues such as war, gender, race, sexuality, industrialism and labor, the Holocaust, and the struggles of distinct cultures to define themselves. Films and plays about politics and social issues can take up arms in a cause; they can also clarify and illuminate. In either case, what makes it exciting and sometimes moving is that it always presents an argument. This discussion course begins with a brief look at some classical texts but focuses on the plays and movies of the 20th and 21st centuries.. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Every Third Year
Television Comedy is designed to introduce students to the history of television comedy, key artists and situation comedies, and theoretical frameworks for examining these works both in and out of context. The goal is for students to learn to analyze television from a variety of standpoints as well as the ways it has both influenced and been influenced by time, place, and culture. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Alternate Years
This course is designed to introduce students to a variety of comic styles as represented in theatre and film from the Classical period to the present with an emphasis on twentieth-century works. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Fall
This course is designed to examine the horror film using Queer, Gender, and Feminist theory. The course will explore seminal works from the genre and examine the horror film's evolution using these critical lenses. The goal is for students to develop a foundational understanding of the conventions of the genre and its relationship to evolving notions of identity. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Alternate Years
This course is designed to introduce students significant film actors who embody different approaches to acting. Students will study acting theory and film criticism, applying those concepts to films of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts
Queer Film and Theatre is designed to examine how art (specifically film and theatre) helps us define ourselves, both collectively and individually. Films and plays from different periods and cultures allow the students to examine the evolution of the human condition for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered populations. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Alternate Years
This introductory course teaches the student how to read a movie. Films are presented by genre and conventional examples of each genre are paired with movies that play with, undercut, or expand the conventions. The syllabus includes American movies from 1930 to the present. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts
Focuses on theatre in Europe, Asia and North America from the classical period until the mid-1800s. Readings include: Euripides, Moliere, Calderon, Montzaemon, Behn, and Boucicault. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts, Historical Studies Typically Offered: Alternate Years
Like American Film, this is an introductory course that teaches the student how to read a movie. However, the content is exclusively non- American films, viewed thematically and historically, as well as in their cultural contexts. The syllabus typically includes films from France, Italy, England, Japan, Sweden, Ireland, Spain, Mexico, Germany, Canada, and other countries. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Annually Fall
Surveys the major aesthetic movements of the last century, employing dramatic texts and theoretical writings to illustrate successive ideas. Movements such as naturalism, symbolism, expressionism, surrealism, and the absurd are examined through a close reading of works by Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Wedekind, Pirandello, Brecht, Beckett, and others. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts, Literature Typically Offered: Alternate Years
Modern British Drama uses literary texts and movies to explore how English playwrights have grappled with the post-war loss of empire; the search for a new national identity, the emergence of Thatcherism, the vapid materialism of the Sloane Rangers, the challenges of multiculturalism, and the impending catastrophe of Brexit. In a seminar setting, students will read, reflect and critically analyze a series of challenging (and often disturbing) works of contemporary British literature. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts
This course explores the history and aesthetics of theatre and performance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), challenging dominant Western narratives that have often marginalized the region. Through plays, films, and critical theory, students examine how artists from across the MENA region and its diasporas have used performance to engage with questions of identity, politics, gender, and resistance ove the past century. The course emphasizes the intersections of history, culture, and power, while also considering the global circulation of MENA performance traditions. By situating these works within broader theoretical frameworks, students will gain tools to critically analyze performance as both an artistic and political practice. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts
This course explores the history and aesthetics of theatre and performance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), challenging dominant Western narratives that have often marginalized the region. Through plays, films, and critical theory, students examine how artists from across the MENA region and its diasporas have used performance to engage with questions of identity, politics, gender, and resistance over the past century. The course emphasizes the intersections of history, culture, and power, while also considering the global circulation of MENA performance traditions. By situating these works within broader theoretical frameworks, students will gain tools to critically analyze performance as both an artistic and political practice.
Students learn how to correct regionalisms, support the voice, and increase range in songs and dramatic texts. Healthy vocal production, flexibility, relaxation, and power are emphasized. GPA units: 1 Typically Offered: Annually
An intensive scene study class. Plays ranging in style from contemporary to Restoration are analyzed and performed. Physical and vocal exercises from Basic Acting and Voice in Acting will be continued with the addition of period style work. GPA units: 1 Typically Offered: Annually
Students will develop an approach to learning and performing pieces from musical theatre with equal focus on musicianship, vocal technique, and physical interpretation. Students will be assigned both solo and ensemble pieces and the course will culminate in a public showing of the work. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Fall 2026-2027 Catalog 285
This course explores techniques of effective communication. Topics covered include creating clear intentions and objectives for moments of public speaking; connecting to others and listening actively in both casual and formal interactions; and cultivating strong, flexible vocal production. To develop these skills, interactive exercises inspired by theatre techniques serve as building blocks. Both impromptu and prepared speech techniques are explored with projects encompassing academic presentations, interview techniques, and presenting personal stories. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Alternate Years, Spring
Students participate in Department of Theatre major productions through crew assignments in scenery and props, lighting, costumes, sound, and stage management. Schedule for the course is determined by the r production schedule. This course is taken pass/fail as an overload and may be taken multiple times. Theatre majors must take it twice. GPA Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Students will refine their approach to learning and performing musical theatre repertoire with equal focus on musicianship, vocal technique, and physical interpretation, building on the foundation established in the first level of the course. Particular attention will be given to building an audition book of diverse repertoire. The course will also dig deeper into exploring the history of musical theatre and examining its great composers. Students will be assigned both solo and ensemble pieces and the course will culminate in a public showing of the work. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts
Principles of scenic design and script analysis are used to create an environment for the action of the play. Includes a historical survey of scenic design, theatre architecture, period style, drafting, and rendering techniques. Work on a set for a Fenwick Theatre production provides practical experience. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Alternate Years, Spring
A study of the properties of light and the objectives of stage lighting in drama and dance, this course includes basic electricity and its control, lighting equipment, and drafting. Practical experience is obtained through designing and running a production. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Alternate Years, Spring
An introductory course which involves the student in the process of script and character analysis as it relates to costumes. It develops sketching and painting techniques as well as research of Greek, Renaissance, and 18th- and 19th-century fashion. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Alternate Years
Introduces students to the craft and theory of theatrical production. Students function as autonomous artists-writers, dramaturgs, and directors, producing a series of dramatic pieces in a workshop environment. This practical work is augmented by extensive scholarly research that provides a theoretical underpinning. Emphasis is placed upon conceptualization, composition, blocking, textual analysis, and working with actors. the department. GPA units: 1 Typically Offered: Fall
This advanced course is an intensive study of the work of two playwrights and/or filmmakers. The authors on the syllabus vary, according to the current offerings of the Fenwick Theatre season and other considerations. By permission. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Every Third Year
This course is designed to examine films created outside the studio system or those whose unique, marginal qualities have led to significant critical and cultural discourse and reappraisal. The course will use readings and viewings to reframe analysis of film narratives, challenge canonical thinking, and develop students unique critical voices. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Every Third Year
Explores advanced theories and practices of theatrical direction. The course begins with a series of lectures that introduces the avant-garde ideas and practices of artists such as Grotowski, Beck, Chaikin, Serban, Wilson, Akalaitis, Bogart, and Boal. Students are expected to put some of these ideas into production as they tackle a short classical piece (Greek or Elizabethan) and then mount a full-length one-act by a major figure of the modern theatre (e.g., Chekhov, Strindberg, O'Neill, Pirandello, Beckett) GPA units: 1 Typically Offered: Spring
Functioning as scholarly artists in a laboratory setting, students - working from both the Folio and modern editions - master the rudiments of Shakespearean performance, become acquainted with historical and contemporary staging conventions, investigate the notion of textual integrity, and explore dramaturgical issues. Particular emphasis is placed upon the desirability and/or need to subvert problematic texts through performance. year students. GPA units: 1 Typically Offered: Spring
This advanced course deals with narrative issues in film (point of view, time, structure, style, tone, adaptation). The syllabus includes American, British, French, Italian, Japanese and Scandinavian movies. GPA units: 1 Common Area: Arts Typically Offered: Every Third Year
Students write, coach, design, and act in original work that they develop. Directors, actors, and theorists who stretch the limits of performance stylistically, socially, or conceptually serve as models for students. GPA units: 1 Typically Offered: Alternate Years
Tutorials consist of directed study in selected theatre, dance, and film topics such as acting, directing, play- writing, literature, dance, stage management, set, costume, lighting and sound design, film, and screenwriting. GPA units: 1 Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Advanced acting work in a major role. GPA units: 1 Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Source: College of the Holy Cross's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
