Emphasis in our courses is placed on seeing theater as a performing art. Students take part in play reading or writing, doing scene work, discussion and written analysis of what they read, or learning to design and build sets, depending on the course. All courses are half-credit offerings. Students have numerous opportunities, outside of academic courses, to work as stage performers and off-stage technicians on any of the four yearly major productions and the student-directed One-Act Play Festival staged each year.
Related Courses
Cocurricular Options (Performing Groups)
ATT 400 Theatre Immersion
This course is an introduction to the fundamental elements of technical theater: stagecraft, scenic design, lighting design, and set construction. Students divide their time between regular classes and practical, hands-on work in the theater program’s various shop and work spaces. Students apply what they are learning by helping to develop and construct the actual elements of each term’s major production and/or one-act productions.
This course gives students a structured opportunity to write original one-act plays, some of which may be performed in the annual student-directed One-Act Play Festival. In Playwriting, students consider various one-act models exemplified in the works of Chekhov, Mamet, Durang, Henley, and others, as they create three successive drafts of their own original scripts. Daily class work involves both writing exercises and the collective critique of each others’ material. Final scripts must be capable of production in the NMH theater.
This course offers students an opportunity to develop new skills and refine or extend existing ones in such performance areas as stage movement, voice, scene study, character development, improvisation, and ensemble technique. Students are responsible for the preparation and presentation of monologues and scenes, as well as for participation in class critiques and specific exercises. Readings include selections from Stanislavsky, Mamet, Hagen, and others. The course may be repeated for credit.
See description for THE 114.
This course examines developments in both theater and film from the latter part of the 19th century to the present. Questions fundamental to the course include: How have acting styles evolved within each medium, and how do they differ between the two media? How has the role of the director evolved? What have been the major influences of technology? The course entails reading and discussing both screenplays and stage scripts, viewing live productions and/or films of assigned material, preparing specific scenes for both live and videotaped performance, and writing on a regular basis.
This course offers an opportunity for students to learn and apply intermediate to advanced design theory in one of three major technical areas: scenic design, lighting design, and costume design. Classroom theory is applied first to conceptual design projects in the student’s chosen area of concentration; this work culminates in a practical project, perhaps one as ambitious as creating the actual design of a major production. This course may be repeated for credit in a different design area.
Students in this class learn the fundamental principles and skills of play directing. These include script selection, casting, blocking, rehearsing, and production. Each student applies these skills to the staging of a scene or one-act play of between ten and 40 minutes in length. The course requirement is satisfied by a “low-tech” production of this material at semester’s end for an invited audience. Any student may elect to have her or his production reviewed for possible inclusion in the annual student-directed One-Act Play Festival.
This course offers students the opportunity to learn in a practical setting not only how to operate, but how to design for the technology that runs on the surface of and behind the scenes for productions on stage. This is a hands-on course in which students will learn the operation of sound boards, microphones, lighting consoles, lighting instruments, and video projection equipment, as well as have opportunities to design light plots, soundscapes, and multimedia presentations. Course is offered every other year.
Students will look at the role contemporary theater has in current culture and society by studying plays that have been written since 2000. What are the playwrights trying to say? How are they representing their own cultures and ethnicities? Students will read plays with diverse world views through the lens of producers, evaluating the decisions a design team (director, costume, lighting and sound designers as well as dramaturge) would have to make. Students will learn how to create their own interpretations and how they might be brought to life on stage.