Catalogue

Theater and Performance

theater.bard.edu

Faculty

Overview

The Theater and Performance Program aims to develop innovative thinkers and artists who use theatrical ideas from the past and present to imagine and instigate the theater of the future. The title, Theater and Performance, signals the program’s embrace of a wide range of dramatic, theatrical, and performance practices, from live art and interactive installation to classical theater from around the globe. Theater and performance are intrinsically collaborative, and collaboration is at the heart of students’ work in the program, which emphasizes process, cohort-building, and dialogue between theatrical work and the social, cultural, and political contexts in which it is made. Students study and perform in the landmark Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry. 

The Theater and Performance Program trains well-rounded theater makers who study the history, theory, and contemporary practice of theater and performance; hone their technical abilities as writers, performers, and directors; and create their own productions and performances under the mentorship of leading theater artists. Students are encouraged to explore the intersection of theater and performance with dance, music, the visual arts, film, and literature, as well as with the sciences and humanities. 

Areas of Study

Theater and Performance students take courses in context (theater history and analysis), technique (skills-building), and creative practice and research (advanced studio courses exploring specific methods of creation). Context courses examine the history of world theater traditions, delve into particular theater practices such as Noh theater, and investigate topics within contemporary practice such as theater in the digital world. Technique courses foster skills in playwriting, directing, acting, voice, and movement. Creative practice and research courses introduce students to specific topics and methods such as solo performance, theater and gender, and curating performance.

Requirements

The program’s curriculum emphasizes courses in context and technique, ensuring that a strong foundation is built in the first two years of study. The following courses are required before Moderation: Introduction to Playwriting: The Theatrical Voice; Introduction to Acting: The Actor and the Moment; Introduction to Contemporary Performance; Introduction to World Theater Traditions; and Theater Making. Students participate in the creation and performance of a collaboratively created Moderation project in the context of their Theater Making class. 

After Moderation, students are required to take two courses from a menu of options in each of the three areas of study—context, technique, and creative practice and research (for a total of six courses)—and complete a Senior Project. 

Senior Projects in Theater and Performance emphasize collaboration and process. Performance projects take the form of a two-semester sequence, in which students spend their fall semester creating a short piece, to be produced in a festival format in the Fisher Center, with the collaborative assistance of their senior cohort. In the spring semester, students may elect to individually create a longer piece to be staged in a second, more fully produced festival; to team up and collaboratively produce a project for the spring festival; or to self-produce elsewhere on campus. Projects produced in the Fisher Center receive technical and producing support from Fisher Center staff. 

In addition to performance projects, Theater and Performance majors may choose to write a research paper or a play as their Senior Project.

All members of the Theater and Performance senior class participate in the Senior Colloquium, which aims to facilitate dialogue, constructive feedback, and cohort-building among the group. 

Recent Senior Projects

• “Ala Ala! The Self-Love Play: The Creation of a Theatre for the Dreamers”
• “Directing Whitewashed and Dismantling Hierarchy”
• “Self-Reflections: Revisiting My 2019 Race Monologue”
• “Suburban Panic: Chaotic Contradictions in Girlhood”

Facilities

The Theater and Performance Program is located in Bard’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. The Center’s state-of-the-art facilities include studios, workshops, and two theaters, including the flexible LUMA Theater, which seats up to 200.

Courses

The descriptions below represent a sampling of courses from the past four years.

Introduction to Playwriting: The Theatrical Voice
Theater 107
CROSS-LISTED: WRITTEN ARTS
Through writing exercises based on dreams, visual images, poetry, social issues, found text, and music, students are encouraged to find their unique language, style, and vision. The class learns elements of playwriting through writing a one-act play and through reading assignments and class discussions. Additionally, a group project explores the nature of collaborative work.

Introduction to Acting: The Actor and the Moment
Theater 110
This course analyzes how an actor brings truth to the smallest unit of performance. The richness of the moment is created by the imaginative, physical, psychological, intellectual, and emotional qualities that the actor brings to it. Students explore ways to gain access to richly layered authenticity through games, improvisations, individual creations, and exercises in given circumstances.

Introduction to Contemporary Performance
Theater 145 
What is live performance, and how are contemporary artists using the space of the stage and the event of live theater to speak to their world today? This course considers modern and contemporary works of theater and performance art—by, among others, Bertolt Brecht, Yoko Ono, Aleshea Harris, and Faye Driscoll—as well as complex questions about political performance, the role of the audience, and the onstage relationship between fiction and reality. 

Introduction to Theater History
Theater 146
How did premodern models of theater change as successive societies revised, rejected, and appropriated the forms that had gone before? This course begins with the communal festivals of ancient Greece and culminates in the philosophical upheavals of the Enlightenment. Paying close attention to connections between drama, stagecraft, and modes of spectatorship, the course considers how the theater has shored up political power and how the stage has served as a scale model for the known world.

Introduction to World Theater Traditions
Theater 204
The theater has always been a a space where ritual practice and artistic practice meet and political and social power can be performed and contested. It has been a site of hierarchical power and resistance; a mode of enforcing racial, gendered, and colonial domination; and an artistic realm where subversion and dissent find form and alternate worlds can be imagined. The course traces these themes through selected traditions, texts, and performance practices created before 1700, including Greek tragedy, classical Sanskrit drama, Japanese Noh theater, Mayan performance traditions, and medieval European drama.

Writing Plays with Ghosts and Demons
Theater 207
CROSS-LISTED: WRITTEN ARTS
Why do all cultures believe in some form of ghosts? Why does society need demons and how does it create them? The class reads and adapts some Japanese ghost stories from the Edo era (1603–1868) and Noh plays (14th century) into short plays. They also write plays that feature ghosts and/or demons of their own creation. Prerequisite: Theater 107 or a previous creative writing workshop in any genre.

Intermediate Playwriting
Theater 208
CROSS-LISTED: WRITTEN ARTS
Students initially experiment with different forms and then focus on developing a one-act play, with sections of the work in progress presented for class discussion. Participants also read a wide range of dramatic literature, from the 20th century to today. Prerequisite: Theater 107, or a screenwriting or poetry workshop.

Intermediate Acting: Scene Study
Theater 209
Students learn, and put into practice, such essential tools as script analysis, physical actions, the construction of character, and the collaborative rehearsal process. They rehearse and perform two scenes drawn from the plays of a diverse group of contemporary writers as well as others from an earlier generation, including Suzan-Lori Parks, Tony Kushner, August Wilson, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Sam Shepard, Lorraine Hansberry, Clifford Odets, and Caryl Churchill. Students also research, rehearse, and perform a character study. Prerequisite: Theater 110.

Writing Political Theater
Theater 212
CROSS-LISTED: HUMAN RIGHTS
In recent years, we have been witness to the urgent need to speak up, especially in our art. This course asks students: “What do you believe?” and “How can you infuse those beliefs into your playwriting?” The class reads works from playwrights and theater makers—including Zora Neale Hurston, Caryl Churchill, Tony Kushner, Ayad Akhtar, and Jeremy O. Harris—who have used political discourse to send their message to the world. Students write several short one-acts and one longer play on issues of their political interest. Prerequisite: Theater 107. 

Introduction to Directing
Theater 219
Students in the course approach directing with a focus on different kinds of performance material, ranging from texts that have been performed historically to contemporary plays that are in development. Through each of these models the student-director practices structuring a rehearsal process, working with actors, script analysis, dramaturgy, and visual composition. Substantial time outside of class is spent organizing rehearsals. The semester culminates in a mini director fest.

Design Studio
Theater 224
CROSS-LISTED: ARCHITECTURE
An introduction to the conceptual framework and implementation of design for stage. Through a series of case studies, students explore the design choices of notable productions and discuss the technical apparatus at work. In parallel units, they engage in a rendering practice of scenic and costume designs based on classic and contemporary texts. Projection, sound, and lighting techniques are also introduced. The course culminates in a final project which combines dramaturgical research and rendering techniques. Readings from Walter Benjamin, Marshall McLuhan, Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky), Miranda July, others.

Basic Vocal Technique
Theater 234
Students in the course, intended for moderated and prospective theater majors, develop an awareness of the importance of physical relaxation, breath capacity and control, resonance, and placement. There is also an emphasis on clarity of articulation and the use of vocal range and inflection.

Voice and Text
Theater 243
An introduction to the fundamentals of voice work and text analysis. Students develop their vocal apparatus by applying several techniques (Fitzmaurice Voicework, Linklater, and yoga) to access greater range and vocal character, rid the body of ­tension, and free the authentic voice. Students are also taught to approach text by seeking out dynamic phrasing, operative words, and arc, creating a profound connection between body, breath, voice, and language.

Theater Making
Theater 244
This course follows Theater 145 as the second in a sequence exploring the intellectual and creative methods of making theater. All students take turns working collaboratively as performers, directors, writers, dramaturgs, and designers. The work created in this class is presented at the end of the semester and serves as the Moderation project for students intending to major in the program.

Black Experience in American Theater
Theater 249
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, LITERATURE
An overview of the history and dramatic literature of Black American theater, focusing on the ways Black playwrights have told their stories and woven them into the soul of American culture. Readings include the 20th-century plays of Zora Neale Hurston, August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Anna Deavere Smith, as well as works by more contemporary writers, such as Dominique Morisseau, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and Mfoniso Udofia. The course culminates with dramaturgical proposals for the plays read, with students collaborating as producers, directors, dramaturgs, and designers.

Dramatic Structure
Theater 250
CROSS-LISTED: LITERATURE
This seminar looks at the dynamics, mechanics, and fundamental building blocks of drama, as well as how analysis of a play’s structure can be revelatory for theater artists and scholars. The class investigates models of dramatic structure from Aristotle through Shakespeare, neoclassicism, modernism, and contemporary experimental and “postdramatic” theater. Also considered are practical methods for putting structural discoveries to use in rehearsal and production.

Advanced Acting: Clown
Theater 252
In each performer there is a clown. It exists on the other end of the tether that begins with generosity, honesty, vulnerability, and desire to be up on the stage and give to the audience what you value. The clown cannot be crafted but must be discovered. This course uses a pedagogy developed by Jacques Lecoq in his Paris school that helps the performer become more physically alive, grandly expressive, and ferociously honest on the stage. Prerequisite: Theater 110.

The Politics of Interactive Performance
Theater 253
CROSS-LISTED: AFRICANA STUDIES, HUMAN RIGHTS
What is the difference between creating art with communities and creating art about communities? Does a socially engaged artist necessarily produce socially engaged art? This seminar explores the political potential of contemporary interactive and socially engaged performance. Students read and present in class on the subjects of participatory art, relational aesthetics, social practice, and interactivity, studying the work of artists and collectives such as Hiwa K, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Center for Political Beauty, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, among others.

Physical Theater: Dance of the Banal
Theater 255
What is the ballet of the barbecue? The tango of typing? A minuet of the mundane? This course explores movement stemming from the ordinary. Playing with a Lecoq-based movement analysis, aspects of clown, burlesque physical comedy, and the absurd, the class creates dances inspired from the quiet corners of our domestic spheres and otherwise undiscovered dance studios called “the bedroom.” No dance experience necessary. Prerequisite: Theater 110.

Making Theater Out of Trash
Theater 256
This course approaches theatrical creation through the plastic arts: how does the material world open new spaces of response, new bodies, new worlds, new narratives? From keen observation (how does a plastic bag move?) and precise movement analysis (how does the reflective body respond to the natural world?), students learn the fundamentals of corporeal mime to mix with rudimentary puppetry and mask making, and a movement vocabulary largely inspired by the work of Jacques Lecoq.

Arendt in Dark Times
Theater 257
CROSS-LISTED: HUMAN RIGHTS, POLITICAL STUDIES
DESIGNATED: MIGRATION INITIATIVE
This interdisciplinary studio course investigates the writings and philosophy of Hannah Arendt on and around the questions of refugees, racism, and nation-states, and uses them as the basis for the creation of collaborative performance-based projects. Using Arendt’s archives and philosophy, alongside related texts, the class seeks to understand the current dark times through the lens of the refugee crisis. Students are divided into cross-disciplinary groups and create original performances using her texts.

Going Viral: Performance, Media, and Contagion from Modernism to the Present
Theater 259
CROSS-LISTED: EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES
In the current era of pandemic, “the virus” is also a profound and frightening force in the cultural imagination. For theater and performance artists, this is nothing new: contagion, virus, and the viral have long functioned as subject matter, metaphor, and method of disseminating work to audiences. This course investigates the viral as it mattered to modern and contemporary artists, from the French modernist Antonin Artaud to Orson Welles and his 1939 “War of the Worlds” broadcast and the 1970s collective General Idea.

Gender Theater
Theater 261
CROSS-LISTED: GSS
How can we use the tools of theater to interro­gate the way we perform gender—our own and other people’s? This creative practice course explores and challenges normative notions of gender. Through improvisation and performance exercises, students examine overt and covert societal rules surrounding the gender binary.

Multimedia Performance
Theater 262
CROSS-LISTED: FILM AND ELECTRONIC ARTS
As 2020 clearly taught us, multimedia theater is uniquely positioned to bridge the in-person and digital experiences of live performance. Students consider basic theories and practices of making multimedia performances as they create performances that are theatrical, yet grounded in technology as their “stage.” They develop skills in dramaturgical analysis; apply traditional theater, film, and performance making skills to both online and real-life (as possible) productions; and explore analytical and creative processes that cross perceived boundaries of what is “live.”

Theater of Freedom and Defiance
Theater 263
CROSS-LISTED: HUMAN RIGHTS
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
Theater and politics have been intertwined since their origins. In fact, in ancient Greece, theater attendance was a civic responsibility. In contemporary cultures theater may serve many functions: as entertainment, as cultural touchstone, and as intellectual and civic education. This course examines the relationship between theater as art, as civic duty, and as a form of protest. Artists investigated include Euripides, Brecht, the Freedom Theatre (Palestine), Fugard, the Belarus Free Theatre, Bread and Puppet Theater, and theory and criticism by Marx, Boal, Fuchs, others. Coursework also includes theatrical investigations of the material.

Advanced Playwriting
Theater 306
Students write a full-length play during the semester, with sections of the work in progress presented in class for discussions. Students focus on developing characters and themes that are sustained through a full-length play. They also read contemporary and current dramatic literature and make a field trip to see a production. Prerequisites: Theater 107 or any other playwriting workshop, and permission of the professor.

Advanced Acting: Challenging Contemporary Text
Theater 307-308
Concentrating on dramatic writing generated in the last five years, with particular focus on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) and female playwrights, students tell the story of a scene, create character, and explore how these connect through the lens of their unique identity. The course also explores the similarities and differences between acting for the theater and acting for film. Prerequisite: Theater 209.

Solo Performance
Theater 310
An introduction to solo performance through the review and discussion of pieces by performers such as Spalding Gray, Anna Deavere Smith, John Leguizamo, and Mike Daisey. Through writing and improvised exercises, students also explore their own stories and craft a personalized solo piece. Prerequisite: Theater 110. 

Adaptation: Deconstructing/Reconstructing Shakespeare
Theater 316 
Students work together to mount a production of one of Shakespeare’s plays. They first explore the text as actors, directors, and dramaturgs in order to “unearth” an hour-long cutting of the script. The second half of the course is an accelerated rehearsal focusing on “telling the story” clearly and dynamically through the lens of the modern world. Prerequisite: an introductory and an intermediate course in any area of theater making.

20th-Century Avant-Garde Performance
Theater 317
CROSS-LISTED: ART HISTORY, EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES, LITERATURE
“Set fire to the library shelves!” wrote the Italian futurists in their manifesto of 1909. With their revolutionary politics, audience provocations, and enthusiastic embrace of the new, the futurists inaugurated a century of avant-garde performance. This course investigates that century, tracing the European and American theatrical avant-gardes from 1909 to 1995, including movements and artists such as expressionism, surrealism, and Dada; John Cage, Allan Kaprow, and Happenings; utopian collectives of the 1960s; and Peter Handke, Heiner Müller, and Reza Abdoh.

Female Infernos: Parks, Churchill, Jelinek
Theater 336 
CROSS-LISTED: GSS
DESIGNATED: HSI COURSE
This course examines the works of three groundbreaking and politically engaged contemporary women playwrights: the African-American writer Suzan-Lori Parks, England’s Caryl Churchill, and Austria native Elfriede Jelinek. While each possesses a distinctly singular voice, they have much in common, including their experimental and radical approaches to writing drama. And each, in their own way, challenges contemporary ideas of feminism and prods audiences to think about how they intersect with such concepts as race, class, and capitalism. 

Advanced Acting: Rehearsal Technique
Theater 344
Students in this studio class explore techniques tailored to specific acting opportunities. How does preparing an audition monologue differ from rehearsing a scene for audition purposes? How does the style of a play dictate the choices made in approaching rehearsal? Students prepare material from a wide variety of theatrical texts to rehearse with the instructor and perform in scheduled showings.

Writer/Director Collaboration
Theater 357 
This workshop investigates the collaborative relationship between the playwright and the director within the process of developing new works for the stage. Playwrights and directors are paired up to develop new works generated by the writer. Through this experience, students explore the rules of engagement between writer and director; the collaborative nature—and limits—of the process; and how decisions get made and who gets to make them. Prerequisite: either Theater 107 or 203.

Race, Class, and Gender in Modern and Contemporary Theater
Theater 361
CROSS-LISTED: GSS, LITERATURE
In 1858, the Black American abolitionist William Wells Brown wrote a revolutionary play condemning the institution of enslavement and breaking 19th-century dramatic form wide open. Called The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom, this partially autobiographical work—so far ahead of its time that it did not receive a full stage production until the 1970s—serves as a point of origin for the class, which critically considers and reimagines the modern canon. Artists studied include Ibsen, Soyinka, Gambaro, Cesaire, and Majumdar.

Father Figures: Performing the Family Archive
Theater 362
CROSS-LISTED: GSS
Students in this advanced course explore ways to make performances based on family archives, both through studying the work of other artists and creating their own artistic projects. Topics include the place of parents and extended families in modern society and their role in the construction and deconstruction of patriarchy, heteronormativity and queerness, gender and sexuality. Texts from disciplines including sociology, psychology, literature, art history, and performance studies, and from writers Audre Lorde, Jaime Sabines, Carl Jung, and Sylvia Plath. 

(Post)Pandemic Theater: New York and Berlin
Theater 364
CROSS-LISTED: EXPERIMENTAL HUMANITIES
The course asks how contemporary theater has changed, perhaps for good, at a time when audiences could not gather in person. Also explored are questions of institutional shift, including digital performances made during the COVID-19 pandemic and movements for racial justice in the theater world. A semester-long project involves the creation of a digital archive of New York–based pandemic theater, in which students collaborate, via virtual meetings, with a class at Bard College Berlin, which is conducting a parallel investigation into pandemic theater in Berlin.

Community-Inclusive Performance
Theater 366
CROSS-LISTED: DANCE
An in-depth look at how a range of contemporary artists create community-inclusive immersive performances. Students experiment with creating work based on source material from their personal narratives, using tools from postdramatic and cultural theory and methods for applying these creatively in practice. Assignments include object-oriented and task-based compositions, site-specific and dramaturgical exercises, and participation in collaborative creations.

Race, Class, and Gender in Modern Theater: A Public Writing Seminar
Theater 367
From reviews to Playbill essays to social media posts, modern theater calls upon public communication—among audiences, critics, producers, funders, and more. This course builds practical writing skills through the investigation of identity construction in selected 20th-century plays. Using questions of race, class, and gender as conceptual lenses, students imagine themselves as dramaturgs, critics, producers, and art makers, writing and editing collaboratively each week. 

Junior/Senior Colloquium: The Zócalo
Theater 405
The Zócalo, the biweekly colloquium for the Theater and Performance Program, is a forum where students and faculty share news and ideas of relevance to the field, and meet visiting artists and other guests. Students present work-in-progress performances and receive structured feedback from faculty and peers.