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Fall 2009 »
Spring 2010 »
Class Schedule - updated Nov 22, 2009
For courses offered in other departments, see the complete class schedule from the Registrar.
Fall 2009
| Number/Section/Name |
Days |
Time |
Room |
Instructor |
| THDA 110-01 |
Intro to Theatre Studies |
TR |
01:20 pm-02:50 pm |
THEATR 205 |
Lara Nielsen |
| *First day attendance required* This course provides an introduction to studies in theatre and performance by way of critical dramatic and performance frameworks, from antiquity to present. This is an initiation, in other words, for the student of Theatre and Performance into a selection of global sources of performance forms, histories, and research methods. Around the world, artists have deployed written and embodied crafts for performance, and we will examine interpretational practices for engaging with written as well as performance texts. Key important terms include: representation, mediation, historiography, politics, philosophy, theory, performance -- as well as Theatre, Drama, and Audience. Students engage with the critical tools necessary to begin exploring histories of the critical arts, addressing methodologies of thinking, writing, reading, and researching works in the theater and the performing arts. The organizing project is to carefully consider the question of Mimesis (imitation): how it continues to inform conceptualizations of the field of Theatre and Performance Studies, and what it is that disciplines our research activities in it. In asking 'what is theatre, what is performance? How have they worked?' we also consider Methexis (participation). How are performance practices located? What are the imperatives of difference and repetition for thinking sources of global performance? Sources include Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Everyman, Shakespeare, Islamic and Golden Age Spain, Aztec ritual, Mayan theatres, and other indigenous performance practices. |
| THDA 115-01 |
Cultures of Dance |
MWF |
12:00 pm-01:00 pm |
THEATR 205 |
Wynn Fricke |
|
| THDA 120-01 |
Acting Theory/Performance I |
MWF |
12:00 pm-02:10 pm |
THEATR STUDIO |
Cheryl Brinkley |
| *First day attendance required* |
| THDA 120-02 |
Acting Theory/Performance I |
MWF |
02:20 pm-04:30 pm |
THEATR 3 |
Harry Waters |
| *First Year Course only* |
| THDA 125-01 |
Technical Theater |
MWF |
09:40 am-10:40 am |
THEATR 205 |
Daniel Keyser |
| *$30 materials fee will be charged.* |
| THDA 125-L1 |
Technical Theater lab |
T |
08:00 am-11:10 am |
THEATR 206 |
Daniel Keyser |
|
| THDA 125-L2 |
Technical Theater Lab |
R |
08:00 am-11:10 am |
THEATR 206 |
Daniel Keyser |
|
| THDA 145-01 |
Make-Up Design and Application |
TR |
08:00 am-11:10 am |
THEATR 205 |
Thomas Barrett |
| *$45 materials fee will be charged.* |
| THDA 194-01 |
Theatre and Performance in the Twin Cities |
W |
07:00 pm-10:00 pm |
THEATR 205 |
Lara Nielsen |
| *First Year Course only; first day attendance required.* The Twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are second only to New York City for the number of theatre and performance tickets sold annually, supporting an active creative community, and artistic institutions. In this class we attend to many aspects of performance in the vibrant Theatre and Performance communities -- including Dance -- of the Twin Cities. We will attend theatre and dance performances throughout the city as a group, and study the genres of their crafts through the examination of texts and performance in the classroom. The course meets once a week (Wednesday night), in order to facilitate a schedule of evening excursions, and on-campus seminars. The viewing of performances alternates with campus classroom seminars (sometimes every other week, or every second or third week), in which we discuss play and other kinds of performance practices, reflect on their enactments in performance, learn about the key terminologies for the poetics of work in performance, and develop our capacities for interpretational strategies in the performing arts. We will also study the distinctive missions (and audiences) of such acclaimed institutions as the Walker Art Center, the Southern Theatre, the Penumbra Theatre, the Ten Thousand Things Theatre Company, the Guthrie Theatre, The Theatre at the University of Minnesota, and Macalester¿s own mainstage theatre productions. In sum, we make Macalester's Fine Arts Division, and the Theatre and Dance Department, our critical home: they are our laboratory spaces for studies in artistic form in Theatre and Performance. |
| THDA 294-01 |
Topics in Acting: "Brain to Bone" Aliveness, From Rehearsal to Performance |
MWF |
02:20 pm-04:30 pm |
THEATR STUDIO |
Beth Cleary |
| *Permission of instructor required.* The performance experience, for both actor and spectator, is a collaboration in "aliveness:" switched-on cognition, participatory embodiment systems (muscles, nerves, organs, etc.), moment-to-moment discovery. This course will establish effective practices for character embodiment for curious and serious students, while bypassing the "head trips" that underlie much of naturalistic acting. Students will learn how to apply accurate and experiential knowledge of their own body -- from brain to bone, ligament to heart -- to the building of character: using playwrights' language as cues for physical responses; finding and sustaining characters' voices and physicalities; being able to inhabit characters' whole system(s), physical, emotional, social. The work of the class will involve anatomy study and research, exercises and explorations, original application of work to character, and ultimately scene and monologue work. The class will be highly physical, and meet six hours per week. Preference will be given to students who have taken a Theatre acting course, though well-described curiosity and commitment will be considered favorably. |
| THDA 294-02 |
Hip Hop Performance: REMIX2009 |
TR |
01:20 pm-02:50 pm |
THEATR 204 |
Harry Waters |
| *First day attendance required; cross-listed with HMCS 294-03 and AMST 294-03.* What is Hip Hop culture, what is Hip Hop performance, and can we stage such a performance here at Macalester? In line with these questions, the course is divided into sections. From the beginning we will read and discuss critical examinations of hip hop culture. We will learn about leading figures and events in the development of hip hop and talk about its¿ sexism, homophobia and consumerism. We will investigate the theory and practice of hip hop performance, including one person shows, theatrical performances, and various hybrid forms (such as the hip-opera).This will include a series of workshops with local and national hip hop artists on graffiti writing, spoken word, hip hop dance, and dj¿ing/producing, during which we will construct and present a class produced Hip Hop Performance. Limited Class enrollment. |
| THDA 294-03 |
Staging Hard Times: Global/Local Practices |
MWF |
10:50 am-11:50 am |
THEATR STUDIO |
Beth Cleary |
| n the 1930s in New York City, theater artists made galvanzing and legendary performances based on newspaper reports of repossessions and evictions. In Soweto and Johannesburg, South Africa, under the apartheid State of Emergency in the 1980s, theater activists rehearsed plays about police round-ups and passbook burnings. And in the streets of Indian cities, theater activists draw crowds to their short plays about food prices, government corruption, and housing shortages. We will look at the texts and practices of theater artists who made (and make) performance work about "hard times," through a comparative study of selected practices, contexts and time periods. How does a text read as not only reflective of its times but "resistant" or revolutionary? How do the persuasions of performance -- the action of text, body, collectivity, image -- constitute a discourse worthy of censorship or repression? Are these endeavors "merely" utopic? How does historical/political context affect such endeavors? And is it important for these endeavors to be "effective"? Who or what decides? Students will study texts (playscripts, accounts, designs, etc.) and reconstruct practices: performance research exercises, dramaturgical collectives, performer-audience relationships. Projects in the class will include several original works created in small groups, based in the practices studied, and performing contemporary "hard times." No prerequisites, though the Theatre/Dance course "Issues and Methods in Performance Studies," is recommended. |
| THDA 489-01 |
Performance Theory Seminar |
TR |
03:00 pm-04:30 pm |
THEATR 205 |
Lara Nielsen |
| *First day attendance required.* This seminar examines the vibrant and highly productive field of Performance Studies, and its attentions to theatrical, artistic, and cultural practices, focusing on the key theoretcial innovations which mobilize interest in Performance across many disciplines. In particular, we will pursue the question of performance, and performance theory, in the current era of globalization, ie: how do studies in theatre, performance, and dance engage with the many registers of thinking what Spivak calls `a planetary¿ arts and criticism? How do performance artists and theorists conceptualize and address formal artistic methodologies, culture, and globalization? Our premise is that all researchers are cultural producers, at once located within processes of globalization and mapping their terrains. Understanding theory as a method of doing (nothing more, nothing less) we examine some of the essential critical vocabularies for thinking the site-specific theories and practices of performance and globality together. Readings in Theatre and Performance research, in addition to Literary, Media, Anthropology, and Cultural Studies, contribute to our study of contemporary Performance Studies. |
| THDA 21-01 |
African Dance |
WF |
10:10 am-11:40 am |
THEATR 6 |
Patricia Brown |
|
| THDA 41-01 |
Modern Dance I |
TR |
03:00 pm-04:30 pm |
THEATR 6 |
Rebecca Heist |
|
| THDA 43-01 |
Modern Dance III |
MW |
03:50 pm-05:20 pm |
THEATR 6 |
Rebecca Heist |
|
| THDA 51-01 |
Ballet I |
MW |
02:20 pm-03:50 pm |
THEATR 6 |
Rebecca Stanchfield |
|
| THDA 53-01 |
Ballet III |
TR |
04:40 pm-06:10 pm |
THEATR 6 |
Sharon Varosh |
|
| THDA 60-01 |
Dance Ensemble |
TBA |
TBA |
THEATR 6 |
Rebecca Heist |
| *Permission of instructor required* |
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Spring 2010
| Number/Section/Name |
Days |
Time |
Room |
Instructor |
| THDA 120-01 |
Acting Theory/Performance I |
MWF |
12:00 pm-02:10 pm |
THEATR 3 |
Harry Waters |
| *First day attendance required* |
| THDA 121-01 |
Beginning Dance Composition |
TR |
09:40 am-11:10 am |
THEATR 6 |
Wynn Fricke |
|
| THDA 125-01 |
Technical Theater |
MWF |
09:40 am-10:40 am |
THEATR 204 |
Daniel Keyser |
|
| THDA 125-L1 |
Technical Theater Lab |
T |
08:00 am-11:10 am |
THEATR 206 |
Daniel Keyser |
|
| THDA 125-L2 |
Technical Theater Lab |
R |
08:00 am-11:10 am |
THEATR 206 |
Daniel Keyser |
|
| THDA 235-01 |
Fundamentals of Scene Design |
TR |
03:00 pm-04:30 pm |
THEATR 205 |
Daniel Keyser |
|
| THDA 242-01 |
Playwrighting/Textual Analysis |
MWF |
12:00 pm-01:00 pm |
THEATR 205 |
Beth Cleary |
| *Cross-listed with ENGL 294-06.* |
| THDA 250-01 |
Experiential Anatomy |
MWF |
09:40 am-10:40 am |
THEATR 6 |
Wynn Fricke |
|
| THDA 260-01 |
Performance Studies Praxis: Body and Performance Art |
TR |
01:20 pm-02:50 pm |
THEATR 205 |
Lara Nielsen |
| *Permission of instructor required; first day attendance required; course cross-listed with ART 294-02. * With this unique collaboration between Performance Studies and Art History, students of performance art, performance studies, visual arts and art history will examine the trajectory of body and performance art from early 20th century avant-garde practices through contemporary period in which performance has become a vehicle to explore identities of gender, sexuality, race and issues of power. The course will address the work of the major artists and theorists of performance, including Antonin Artaud, Marcel Duchamp, Roland Barthes, Jerzy Grotowski, Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, Allan Kaprow, Marina Abramovic, Peggy Phelan, Ana Mendieta, Judith Butler, Adrienne Piper, Yves Klein, Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneeman, Orlan, Amelia Jones, Joseph Beuys, Coco Fusco, Forced Entertainment, Ann Hamilton, James Luna, Nick Cave. Students must be ready to participate and perform in a workshop with an internationally renowned guest performance artist. Prerequisites: THDA 110 and/or an introductory level art history course. Enrollment limited: instructors' permission and first day attendance required. Students who register for this course should submit a letter of application to the instruction by Dec 4. Application should delineate 1) your interest in the course topic 2) your experience with erformance/visual arts 3) courses that you have taken which motivate further study of performances (1-2 pages total) |
| THDA 263-01 |
African American Theater |
MWF |
10:50 am-11:50 am |
THEATR 204 |
Harry Waters |
| *Cross-listed with ENGL 294-03; First day attendance required* |
| THDA 294-02 |
Performance/Documents/Rights |
TR |
03:00 pm-04:30 pm |
THEATR 204 |
Lara Nielsen |
| *Cross-listed with INTL 294-04.* While studies in the aesthetics of theatre, performance, literature, and film concerned with human rights often begin with the conventions of prison, courtroom, and testimonial 'dramas,' the goal of this course is to move beyond such genres, to examine experimental techniques in contemporary performing media arts that theorize the history and politics of human rights. Locating the avant-garde as a site for critical interdisciplinary work in performance and rights, we study the prevalence of contemporary uses of `the archive,¿ which works between database and narrative in order to think the interlinking challenges of memory, narrative, and documentation. Sections of the course address a re-thinking of the international avant-garde, and questions the deployments of documentation and evidence in performance media projects. Because human rights, like representations of war, are often constructed through gendered binaries, one section of the course focuses on women in the context of wars and rights in order to examine the uses of gender as an analytical tool amidst the incommensurabilities of violence and aesthetic representation. We read works from Theatre Studies, Performance Studies, Critical Theory, Legal Studies, Media and Documentary Studies, as well as plays, multimedia performance texts, literatures, and film. |
| THDA 294-03 |
Speaking Aloud: Voice and Speech |
MWF |
09:40 am-11:50 am |
THEATR 205 |
Cheryl Brinkley |
| *First day attendance required.* A highly experiential exploration of the fundamentals of spoken voice communication required for public speaking and the specialized demands of stage performance. Focusing on healthy voice production and projection through a body-based, Lessac-influenced system, clarity of articulation and enunciation are attained through identifying and practicing the structural specifics of Standard American English Pronunciation. Students develop practical skills for realizing individual vocal potential and enhanced expressiveness. No previous training or requirements necessary (anyone may play!). |
| THDA 340-01 |
Mask Improvisation |
MWF |
12:00 pm-02:20 pm |
THEATR STUDIO |
Paul Herwig |
|
| THDA 341-01 |
Intermediate Dance Composition |
TR |
09:40 am-11:10 am |
THEATR 6 |
Wynn Fricke |
|
| THDA 350-01 |
Directing Theory/Production I |
MWF |
02:20 pm-04:30 pm |
THEATR STUDIO |
Beth Cleary |
|
| THDA 394-01 |
Magic in Motion: Advanced Explorations in Technical Theater |
TR |
09:40 am-11:10 am |
THEATR 205 |
Thomas Barrett |
|
| THDA 475-01 |
Advanced Scene Design |
TBA |
TBA |
THEATR 206 |
Daniel Keyser |
|
| THDA 31-01 |
Dance Improvisation |
MWF |
10:50 am-11:50 am |
THEATR 6 |
Krista Langberg |
|
| THDA 42-01 |
Modern Dance II |
TR |
03:00 pm-04:30 pm |
THEATR 6 |
Wynn Fricke |
|
| THDA 45-01 |
Modern Dance IV |
MW |
03:50 pm-05:20 pm |
THEATR 6 |
Wynn Fricke |
|
| THDA 52-01 |
Ballet II |
MW |
02:20 pm-03:50 pm |
THEATR 6 |
Rebecca Stanchfield |
|
| THDA 53-01 |
Ballet III |
TR |
04:40 pm-06:10 pm |
THEATR 6 |
Sharon Varosh |
|
| THDA 60-01 |
Dance Ensemble |
TBA |
TBA |
THEATR 6 |
STAFF |
|
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