Students who enroll in this course work with a faculty member in the Theatre Arts department to develop an individualized learning plan that connects the actual internship site experience to study in the major. The learning plan will include required reading, writing assignments, as well as a culminating project or paper.

Independent study is available to those students who wish to continue their learning in an area after completing the regularly offered courses in that area.

Independent study is available to those students who wish to continue their learning in an area after completing the regularly offered courses in that area.

The second part of the Senior Theatre Festival series in which majors build from the work done in THTR 490 to collaboratively produce and promote a festival of full-length plays. In the festival, each student will undertake a supervised project in their main area of interest (dramaturgy, design, acting, or directing) as their thesis.

The place of this course in the curriculum is to allow the Theatre faculty to teach intensively in their particular fields of research and expertise and to allow students an in-depth study of one period or movement important in the history of drama. Students become familiar with research tools and methods of a particular period or movement and with the issues surrounding them.

In this seminar, students gain a better understanding of dramaturgy and the role it plays in the work of actors, designers, directors, dramaturgs, and playwrights. In addition to reading, writing, and talking about dramaturgy, students develop skills as theatre makers by participating in practical projects sponsored by the department that explore the relationship amongst dramaturgy, collaboration, community, and one or more of the following areas: devising, new play development, re-imagining the classics, and theatre education. This course may be repeated for credit.

The theory and fundamentals of costume design with practical application through rendering designs for specific characters in assigned plays are discussed. A general overview of costume history, period pattern drafting, and costume construction are examined.

A study of the history of architecture and interior design is combined with an exploration of techniques and styles of rendering and model construction. Contemporary theory and criticism within the field of scenography, methods of research, and play analysis are examined as tools for developing valid and original designs for the theatre.

In this advanced acting course, students must engage in rigorous text analysis, rehearsal, and performance of a variety of classical texts including the Greeks, French comedies, and Shakespeare. In the weekly lab, students train in Lecoq-based movement exercises, commedia mask work, voice, and stage combat. In doing so, students practice integration of language with the body and breath with thought. By acquiring skills in scansion, rhetoric, period movement, and vocal release, students develop tools for making engaging and honest acting choices with rich texts.

This course begins with a deeper exploration of the theories within the Stanislavsky system of acting, focusing on psychological, emotional, physical, and intellectual processes that aid the actor when entering the world of the realistic play. The course then moves to physical approaches to character based in clown traditions as a bridge toward absurdism. Over the semester students explore both physical and emotional approaches to developing characters and apply them to a range of dramatic styles in both lab and class work.