22 courses with the subject ARTT B, 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.
ARTT B150INTRODUCTION TO THEATER1.0
This course offers an introduction to a number of significant dramatic works from Shakespeare, to Ibsen, to Suzan-Lori Parks, alongside seminal figures in the theorization of theater and performance from Aristotle, to Nietzsche, to Artaud. We will concentrate on the intersection of interpretation and enactment, asking how these texts appear on stage and why. This is not merely descriptive work, but interpretive and physical work. Students will be challenged to engage theater both on an embodied and conceptual level and ask: what thoughts does this particular performance or method enable us to think that we wouldn’t have thought otherwise?
ARTT B214PLAYWRITING: ADAPTATION AS TEXT & CRAFT1.0
What is an adaptation? In what ways are adaptations in conversation with source materials? How does one articulate a politics of adaptation? This course explores the theory and practice of dramatic adaptation. Students will study texts, representations, and receptions of adaptations. Building on this dramaturgical foundation, students will write their own adaptations.
This course explores provocative portraits of women in plays written by women. Students begin with a tenth-century nun and read their way right up to the present day. This is the subversive side of dramatic literature—the plays not included in most anthologies. We will investigate the objectification and reclamation of the female body, gendered language, intersectionality, and the politics of drama by and about women in their socio-historical contexts.
This class is an introduction to the process of lighting design for the theatre. We will explore the steps and skills necessary to navigate the designer’s path from text to production. This course will focus on how to think about light, how light can function as a dramaturgical tool, and how we can communicate lighting ideas to our collaborators.
Stage properties is a varied discipline encompassing dozens of crafting/building challenges as well as textual analysis, historical and object research, cost estimation and planning, design analysis, and, most of all, the ability to think critically and creatively about some of the performing arts' weirdest challenges. This class will be part lectures and demos by the instructors, and a good part reading, research, presentations, and hands-on design and building work by the students. We'll explore a wide variety of construction and craft techniques as we learn about organizing, researching, acquiring, designing, and building the objects required to create the worlds in which the plays we read are set. This class will exercise students' abilities to think creatively about unexpected and unusual design issues and give them a chance to solve problems in an experiential way.
We will look at and engage with the tradition of revolutionary acts of theater, such as Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theatre, which used plays to critique social issues and incite change, The Living Theatre's performances protesting war and capitalism, Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed empowering marginalized communities, and more recently, the movement started by We See You W.A.T. (White American Theater). Our readings will also include plays by Vaclav Haval, that influenced Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution. We will create our own piece of revolutionary theater to be performed both at Bryn Mawr and in Prague, asking if theater can provoke revolution, or if is it, as Boal says, merely rehearsal for revolution.
This studio course provides an introduction to the basic processes of acting to students of various experience levels. We develop tools and a shared vocabulary using performance exercises, games, improvisation and scene work.
This course is an introduction to the building blocks of technical theater production and covers a wide range of topics in various technical disciplines. Through a combination of lectures, in-class demonstrations, and hands-on experience, students gain a basic understanding of terminology, materials, techniques, personnel, and processes involved in technical theater production. Students will gain some proficiency with tools and technology that will be useful in both theatrical and non-theatrical environments.
An intensive workshop in the methodologies and aesthetics of theater performance, this course is open to students with significant experience in performance. In collaboration with the director of theater, students will explore a range of performance techniques and styles in the context of rehearsing a performance project. Admission to the class is by audition or permission of the instructor. The class is offered for a half-unit of credit.
An introduction to the creative process of visual design for theater, exploring dramatic context and influence of cultural, social, and ideological forces on theater and examining practical applications of various technical elements such as scenery, costume, and lighting while emphasizing their aesthetic integration.
This is an entry-level course in the study and practice of costume design for the theatre. Students will explore the role of the designer within the larger context of the theatrical environment, analyze ideas as they are reflected in conception and reading of a play, and examine how these ideas about interpretation and aesthetic can be reflected in production. Students will leave with an understanding of research methods and practices, sketching and rendering techniques, and execution of a costume design from both aesthetic and practical standpoints. We will also emphasize the role of collaboration and communication in the design process.
ARTT B258INTERMEDIATE TOPICS IN TECHNICAL THEATER PRODUCTION1.0
This course is a deeper exploration of the process of technical theater production introduced in ARTT B252 – Fundamentals of Technical Theater Production. Through a combination of lecture, in-class and out-of-class analysis, and hands-on experience students will gain a more thorough understanding of the processes of technical theatrical production. The course focuses on five sections of technical production: basic technical drawing, advanced scenic construction techniques, electricity for the entertainment industry (lighting, sound, motors), basic rigging, and basic sound system design and execution. While mathematics is not the focus of the class, basic math and some algebra and trigonometry will be necessary. Prerequisite: ARTT B252 or Permission of Instructor
ARTT B265SPACES OF POSSIBILITY: SHAKESPEARE AND THE CLASSROOM1.0
Focused on creating and collaborating, this course examines how we access Shakespeare and make Shakespeare accessible while working with 8th graders in Philadelphia. We will work as performers, creators, directors, designers, mentors and audience members. This course will be collaborative, sharing ideas and working as an ensemble comprised of college students and 8th graders. Prerequisite: ARTT B251 Fundamentals of Acting or permission of the instructor.
ARTT B311FABULATION, ERASURE AND DISTORTION: FEMINISM ON STAGE1.0
This course asks students to take up feminism (and its numerous intersections) as a method for theatrical presentation and composition, rather than merely a question of representation. We will not only interrogate the criteria by which a performance is deemed “feminist” but will also identify, analyze, and put into practice specific strategies and techniques for staging feminist questions and provocations onstage. Such techniques may range from erasure, to saturation, to fabulation, to distortion—a list that we will build upon as throughout our course. We will apply critical texts across feminist philosophy, critical race studies, and queer theory (including Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Iris Marion Young, and bell hooks among others) and analyze how these approaches to feminism are taken up by playwrights, performance artists, and dancers (including Caryl Churchill, Suzan-Lori Parks, Judy Chicago, and Narcissister among others).
This seminar explores provocative portraits of queer life in modern drama including the evolution, reclamation, and employment of gender- and sexuality-specific language and stereotypes within and outside of queer communities. How does the socio-historical environment in which a queer play is written inform its content and reception? Are plays about or written by queer individuals necessarily political? Does queer theater intervene in culture differently from the manner in which other theater does?
A continuation of the methods of inquiry in Fundamentals of Acting, this course is structured as a series of project-based learning explorations in acting. Recommended preparation: Prior experience in theater is recommended but not required, ARTT B251 (Fundamentals of Acting) or permission of instructor.
An intensive workshop in the methodologies and aesthetics of theater performance, this course is open to students by audition or, in specific cases, by permission of the instructor. In collaboration with the director, students will explore a range of performance techniques and styles in the context of rehearsing a performance project. The class is offered for one full unit of credit.
An exploration of Shakespeare’s texts from the point of view of the performer. A historical survey of the various approaches to producing Shakespeare from Elizabethan to contemporary times, with intensive scene work culminating in on-campus performances. Prerequisite: ARTT B251 Fundamentals of Acting or permission of the instructor.
An exploration of Beckett’s theater work conducted through both reading and practical exercises in performance techniques. Points of special interest include the monologue form of the early novels and its translation into theater, Beckett’s influences (particularly silent film) and collaborations, and the relationship between the texts of the major dramatic works and the development of both modern and postmodern performance techniques.
Over the semester, the student will attend all auditions, rehearsals, and performances of the Bi-College Theater Program production, and will be responsible for managing all the details of same. With the guidance of a mentor and through reading and research, the student will learn to perform the many organizational and communications tasks involved in stage management. Students will be required to read a number of texts with the goal of understanding the vast scope of the job, the artistry and authority expected of a stage manager, the variations in styles of stage management, and the standard procedures a student stage manager can incorporate into a college setting. Each student will be expected to keep a daily journal of their experience—intellectual, artistic, and practical. The journal is their own and is meant to stimulate and deepen their thinking about the process. This practicum requires that a student be willing to engage in the production process both as an artist with an intellectual stake in the work and as an adult with a position of real authority in the group. The student will be expected to use that authority while always remaining calm, polite, kind, and generous to the artists with whom they are working. Prerequisites: Prior academic work in theater and the permission of the instructor
