Academic Bulletin Theater - Course Descriptions - 2008-09

Designed for the liberal arts student, this course explores many aspects of the theater: the audience, the actor, the visual elements, the role of the director, theater history, and selected dramatic literature. The goal is to heighten the student’s appreciation and understanding of the art of the theater. Play readings may include Oedipus Rex, MacBeth, Tartuffe, An Enemy of he People, The Government Inspector, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Caucasian, Chalk Circle, Waiting for Godot, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Topdog/Underdog, andAngels in America .The student will be expected to attend and write critiques of the Wabash College Theater productions staged during the semester he is enrolled in the course. This course is intended for the non-major/minor and is most appropriately taken by freshmen and sophomores.

This beginning course traces the design and technical production of scenery as environments for theatrical performance from concept through opening night. Areas covered include set and lighting design, technical production, and costume design. This course will provide the liberal arts student with an exploration of the creative process. Lab arranged.

In plays written throughout the last half of the nineteenth century, the Norwegian playwright Henrik Isben (1828-1906) addressed societal ills, exposed Victorian hypocrisies, and shocked critics and audiences. He interrogated the major issues of his day: the conflict between science and religion, the role of the individual in society, and the “woman question.” This course will cover many of Ibsen’s major works: from the fantastical (Peer Gynt), to the realistic (A Doll House, An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler), to the experimental and avant-garde (The Master Builder and When we Dead Awaken). To place Ibsen in context, we will also consider the scholarship of his contemporaries George Bernard Shaw, Brander Matthews, and William Archer, while analyzing newer critical work by Raymond Williams, Joan Templeton, Marvin Charlson, and Rolf Fjelde. This course if offered the first half of the semester.

Throughout the years, Americans have turned to theater to express their political beliefs. Theater has served ass a way to educate audiences about pressing issues, express dissatisfaction with governmental policies, and to extol political ideologies. In this course, we will read the works of playwrights like Susan Glaspell, Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller, and Amiri Baraka. We will examine the performance histories of groups like the Federal Theatre Project, Bread and Puppet Theater, El Teatro Campesino, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Finally we will look at the performance conventions of the contemporary American political scene, from the staging of national party conventions to the performance actions at the grassroots (Hell Houses, Rev. Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, Billionaires for Bush/Kommunist for Kerry). In sum, we will explore how performance in its many forms helps shape American political values and worldviews. This course is offered the first half of the semester.

This course is intended to introduce students to film as an international art form and provide an historical survey of world cinema from its inception to the present. The course will focus on key films, filmmakers, and movements that have played a major role in pioneering and shaping film. Selected motion pictures will be screened, studied, and discussed with special emphasis placed on learning how to "read" a film in terms of its narrative structure, genre, and visual style. Specific filmic techniques such as mise en scene, montage, and cinematography will also be considered. Genre study, auteurism, and ideology will be explored in relation to specific films and filmmakers, as well as the practice of adaptation (from theater to film, and most recently, film to theater). This course is offered in the fall semester.

This course provides an introduction to the fundamentals of acting through physical and vocal exercises, improvisation, preparation of scenes, and text and character analysis. Students will prepare scenes from modern plays for classroom and public presentation. Plays to be studied and presented include Of Mice and Men, The Odd Couple, The Zoo Story, and original one-act plays written by Wabash College playwriting students.

The process of acting, its history, theory, and practice, are examined through classroom exercises, text analysis, and scoring. Students will explore various problems in acting styles and perform scenes from the extant works of Greek tragedy, Renaissance drama, commedia dell’arte, Neoclassical comedy, and modern and contemporary drama. This course is offered in the spring semester.

Prerequisite: Theater 105 or consent of instructor.

The history and practice of stage directing is studied in this course. Students will examine the theories and productions of major modern directors and, through in-class scene work, advance their skills in directing. The course will also involve directorial research and preparation for projects involving classical and modern plays. This course is offered in the fall semester.

Prerequisite: Theater 105 or consent of instructor.

This course is intended to bridge the gap between theater history/literature/theory and the performance areas of theater. Aimed primarily at the theater major and minor (though by no means excluding others), this course will focus on the process of textual and historical research/analysis and its collaborative impact on the creative process of the director (production concept), actor (characterization), playwright (play structure, narrative and character development) and designers (scenic, lighting, and costume design). Dramaturgy includes a study of various historical approaches to classic texts, as well as the process or research and investigation of material for new plays. Ideally, students enrolled in the course could be given dramaturgical responsibilities on mainstage and student-directed projects. This course is offered in the spring semester.

Principles of dramatic construction are explored through the practice of playwriting and the study of representative one-act plays. Students will have various creative writing assignments including monologues and short plays and they will engage in classroom-staged readings and discussion of scripts generated by other writers in the class. Selected plays from this course will be presented each fall semester as part of the Theater Department’s Studio One-Acts production. This course is offered in the spring semester.

The study of major theatrical works written between the golden age of classical Greek drama and the plays of the Spanish Golden Age will provide the main focus of this course. Attention will be paid to the history of the theater in these periods, the stage conventions and practices prevalent in these eras, along with discussion of varying interpretations and production problems inherent in each play. Among the works to be read and discussed are The Oresteia, Antigone, Medea, The Bacchae, The Eunuch, Dulcitus, The Second Shepherds’ Pageant, Everyman, Lady Han, The Mandrake, Doctor Faustus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, Volpone, The Masque of Blackness, and Life is a Dream. The plays will be discussed as instruments for theatrical production; as examples of dramatic structure, style, and genre; and, most importantly, as they reflect the moral, social, and political issues of their time. This course is offered in the fall semester, 2007-2008 and alternate years.

The class will study the history of theater and the diverse forms of drama written between 1660 and 1900. Representative plays from the era, as well as theoretical and critical response to the works, will be the major focus of the course. Attention will also be paid to theatrical conventions and practices, along with discussion of varying interpretations and production problems discovered in each play. The works to be studied include The Misanthrope, Phédre, The Rover, The Way of the World, The London Merchant, The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, She Stoops to Conquer, The Dog of Montargis, Woyzek, A Doll House, The Master Builder, Miss Julie, The Ghost Sonata, A Flea in Her Ear, and Ubu Roi. The plays will be discussed as instruments for theatrical production; as examples of dramatic structure, style, and genre; and, most importantly, as they reflect the moral, social, and political issues of their time. This course is offered in the spring semester, 2007-2008 and alternate years.

This course will examine the rich dramatic heritage of the United States from the American Revolution to the present, with emphasis on the history of the U.S. stage and the work of major dramatists including Eugene O’Neill, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Edward Albee, among others. Plays to be studied include The Contrast, Secret Service, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Awake and Sing!, The Little Foxes, Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, Mister Roberts, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Night of the Iquana, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A Raisin in the Sun, The Zoo Story, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Glengarry Glen Ross, True West, Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Colored Museum, A Perfect Ganesh, Fences, Angels in America, How I Learned to Drive, and The America Play. The plays will be discussed as instruments for theatrical production; as examples of dramatic style, structure, and genre; and, most importantly, as they reflect moral, social, and political issues throughout the history of the United States. This course is offered in the fall semester, 2008-2009 and alternate years.

This course will examine the history of the European stage, and significant dramatic literature, from 1870 to the present. Emphasis will be placed on an examination of the major theatrical movements of realism, expressionism, symbolism, epic theater, aburdism, and neo-realism, as well as on the work of major dramatists including Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw, August Strindberg, Luigi Pirandello, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett, among others. Plays to be studied include An Enemy of the People, Rosmersholm, The Three Sisters, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, Miss Julie, A Dybbuk, Six Characters in Search of an Author, The Rules of the Game, The Good Person of Setzuan, Galileo, Waiting for Godot, Krapp’s Last Tape, No Exit, The Visit, Look Back in Anger, Equus, Breaking the Code, Copenhagen, Mister Buffo, and Accidental Death of an Anarchist. The plays will be discussed as instruments for theatrical production; as examples of dramatic style, structure, and genre; and, most importantly, as they reflect the moral, social, and political issues in the 20th century and beyond. This course is offered in the spring semester, 2008-2009 and alternate years.

This course will survey the significant ideas that have shaped the way we create and think about theater. The objective of the course is to examine the evolution of dramatic theory and criticism and trace the influence of this evolution on the development of the theater. Ultimately the student will form his own critical and aesthetic awareness of theater as a unique and socially significant art form. Among the important works to be read are: Aristotle’s Poetics, Peter Brook’s The Open Door, Eric Bentley’s Thinking About the Playwright, Tony Kushner’s Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness, Robert Brustein’s Reimagining the American Theater, and Dario Fo’s The Tricks of the Trade, as well as selected essays from numerous writers including Horace, Ben Jonson, William Butler Yeats, Constantin Stanislavski, Vsevolod Meyerhold, George Bernard Shaw, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Gertrude Stein, Antonin Artaud, Eugene Ionesco, Peter Schumann, Robert Wilson, Athol Fugard, Ariane Mnouchkine, Edward Bond, Augusto Boal, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Eugenio Barba. This course is offered in the fall semester.

Prerequisite: at least one course in theater history or consent of the instructor.

Individual students will work with a faculty member and the production staff in the development and stage management of a Wabash stage production. Students will study the entire production process, develop a prompt book and production documentation, and complete all assignments related to the management of rehearsal and performance. This course is offered first and/or second half, each semester.

Prerequisite: Theater 102 or consent of instructor.

Any student may undertake an independent study project in theater after submission of a proposal to the department chair for approval. Students are urged to use this avenue to pursue creative ideas for academic credit outside the classroom or for topics not covered by existing courses. One-half or one course credit either semester.

Prerequisite: consent of theater department chair.

Any student may undertake an independent study project in theater after submission of a proposal to the department chair for approval. Students are urged to use this avenue to pursue creative ideas for academic credit outside the classroom or for topics not covered by existing courses. One-half or one course credit either semester.

Prerequisite: consent of theater department chair.

This course is designed as advanced study for theater majors and minors. Occasional special topics may be offered or students may petition the department for an advanced opportunity.

Prerequisite: consent of theater department chair.