Theatre and Dance
Theatre
Explore the Theatre Program
Theatre at 海角社区 is an active, collaborative process that extends far beyond the stage. Students explore acting, directing, playwriting, devising, and performance while working alongside faculty, guest artists, and fellow students to bring productions to life. Through the Block Plan, you'll have the opportunity to immerse yourself in creative work, developing your skills in an environment that values experimentation, collaboration, and individual artistic growth.
Whether your interests lie in performance, directing, production, or simply discovering a new creative outlet, you'll find opportunities to challenge yourself both inside and outside the classroom. From mainstage productions and student-led projects to workshops and visiting artists, theatre at 海角社区 encourages students to think critically, create boldly, and tell meaningful stories.
Why Study Theatre?
海角社区's Block Plan allows students to fully immerse themselves in the creative process. Whether rehearsing for a production, developing a design concept, or collaborating on a performance, students have the opportunity to focus their time and energy on one course at a time.
Absolutely. Students from every major are encouraged to audition, work backstage, build scenery, assist with costumes, stage manage productions, and participate in many department activities. Theatre at 海角社区 is a collaborative community that welcomes students with a wide range of interests and experience levels.
Theatre is much more than what happens on stage. Students can explore directing, stage management, scenic construction, costume design, lighting, sound, props, dramaturgy, and other areas of theatrical production. Productions provide opportunities to gain hands-on experience while collaborating with faculty and fellow students.
Students have opportunities to participate in a variety of productions throughout the academic year. From classic plays to contemporary works and student-driven projects, productions provide valuable experience both on stage and behind the scenes while fostering collaboration across the department.
The department regularly welcomes guest artists, visiting directors, and industry professionals who enrich the student experience through workshops, master classes, lectures, and special projects. These opportunities expose students to a variety of artistic perspectives and professional practices.
Small class sizes allow students to work closely with faculty throughout rehearsals, productions, and coursework. Faculty provide individualized mentorship while encouraging students to take creative risks, develop technical skills, and grow as collaborative artists.
Theatre graduates pursue careers in performance, directing, design, arts administration, education, entertainment, communications, and many other fields. The critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication skills developed through theatre prepare students for success in a wide range of professions.
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Productions
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Theatre Courses
Fundamentals of Acting
An introduction to practices in acting through an exploration of movement, gesture, voice, imagination, and spoken word as they serve the actor and performer.
Playwriting
An exploration of the art and craft of playwriting through reading, writing, re-writing and self/peer critique. We will investigate the elements that comprise a script, including dialogue, monologue, subtext, character development, structure, and developing action through language and imagery.
Student Theatre Think Tank
Develops the dramaturgical skills and tools needed to read contemporary, modern, and classic plays towards crafting a theater season. Includes meetings with playwrights and reading/analyzing play scripts with an eye toward the annual Theatre Department season.
Feminist & Queer Performance
Examines how performances since 1960 by women and queer artists have challenged ideas about the body, sexuality, and selfhood. Uses theorists such as Judith Butler, E. Patrick Johnson, and José Esteban Muñoz to analyze the gender politics and strategic positions adopted by artists in drama, musical theatre, dance, and performance art.
Theatre and Social Justice
Students will focus on American playwrights from the 20th and 21st centuries whose plays interrogate inequitable social and political conditions to create a more just and equitable world on stage. Literary and historical analysis combined with creative writing exercises give students multiple entry points to recognize operations of socio-political power and to imagine creative actions for racial, ethnic, gender and sexuality, economic, and/or environmental justice.
Directing
A practical and theoretical introduction to the basics of directing. Begins with investigation of past and present directing practice and techniques through the work of influential directors from around the world. Considers the essential tools of directing, choosing the material; producing and conceptualizing the ideas; pre-production work of analysis, design and planning; casting;rehearsal management; rehearsal techniques with actors; and steering the production through its final stages to performance. The course involves directing actors in scenes.
Jokes, Skits, Pranks: New Comedy in Live Performance
More now than ever, comedy has become a vibrant platform for creativity and self-expression. This course explores the creative ingenuity and techniques used across multiple genres of live comedy, including stand-up, improv, performance art, and new plays. There will be opportunities for students to revisit their favorite go-to comedians while studying how new artists and writers think about jokes, pranks, gags, deadpan, slapstick, and other comic devices. Students will be asked to build an archive of comedy based on material developed during the block, drawing on personal inspirations, creative experiments, and individual research questions. In addition to regular reflective writing assignments, the course will also provide space for students to experiment with comedic writing and performance in response to workshops with theatre artists, stand-up comedians, and improv performers.
Classical Acting
Students will engage with the basics of classical acting, text analysis, choral movement, scene study, characterizations, and vocal and acting exercises. We will focus on the challenges of heightened dramatic language and movement and explore the specific implications of “style” in classical acting. Students will interrogate classical texts both as performers and as critical thinkers. We will consider Shakespeare as a seminal playwright and a cultural institution, engaging with questions of access, elitism, race, gender, and identity. The course fosters ensemble collaboration, daily practice, and critical reflection.
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