TAPS 0001A. Trust Yourself: The Practice of Artistic Impulse.

Using theatre/ live performance as a point of entry, students will learn how to preserve their work and findings through digital mediums: film, radio, photo, etc. By the end of this course students will not only have a portfolio of their growth which can be used for future artistic opportunities, but they will have the confidence in their unique perspective and the know- how to expand on that in a useful way.
This class will follow a produce-first format. From various prompts, found materials, and sources of inspiration and intrigue, students will extrapolate and expand on impulses. It is my hope that by the end of this course that students will not only have confidence in their work, but have had the opportunity to apply newly applied skills to these impulses.

TAPS 0030. Introduction to Acting and Directing.

Explores basic acting/directing concepts from a variety of perspectives including the use of the actor's imagination/impulsivity in the creation of truthful, dramatic performance; the body, as a way of knowing and communicating knowledge; and the voice, as a means of discovering and revealing emotion/thought. There is a mandatory tech requirement and some evening hours are required. Please go to the TAPS website for specifics on admission and the technical requirement (https://taps.brown.edu/undergraduate/undergraduate-courses%23/additional-info). Enrollment limited to 18 students. Instructor permission required. No permission will be given during pre-registration.

TAPS 0080. Asian American Theatre and Performance in Transnational Contexts.

From the founding of the East West Players in San Francisco in 1965 to Toronto’s now thriving Fu-Gen Theatre, formed in 2002, embodied performance has long played a central role in the formation of an Asian diasporic identity, movement, and politics in the Americas. This intro-level course explores the history and development of Asian American theatre and performance. Through a variety of critical, historical, and aesthetic texts (theatre, literature, contemporary art) we will consider encounters and exchanges in Asian American and Asian Canadian theatre and performance histories as one way to critically engage the “transnational” within Asian American Studies.

TAPS 0080A. Feminist Aesthetics and Performance Philosophy.

A theoretical and practical investigation of art and performance from feminist and performance philosophical perspectives, focusing on the topics of perception, experience, thinking, embodiment, and the practice of everyday life. The course will introduce students to theories and methods from feminist aesthetics and the emerging field of performance philosophy. We will study feminist critiques of aesthetic categories (Battersby, Cixous, Grosz, Korsmeyer, Piper, Scheman, Ziarek) and feminist practices of art and performance. We will combine our theoretical work with practical explorations in the studio. No prior experience with art or performance-making required.

TAPS 0085. Uncomfortable Media (MCM 0901H).

Interested students must register for MCM 0901H.

TAPS 0100. Playwriting I.

A workshop for students who have little or no previous experience in writing plays. Students will be introduced to a variety of technical and imaginative considerations through exercises, readings and discussions. Course is not open to those who have taken Advanced Playwriting (TAPS 1500, formerly LITR 1010C and TSDA 1500). Enrollment is limited to 12 undergraduates per section. A limited number of spaces are reserved for incoming and transfer students. Instructor permission required. S/NC.

TAPS 0101. Playwriting I.

An intensive workshop for students who have little or no previous experience in writing plays. Students will be introduced to a variety of technical and imaginative considerations through exercises, readings and discussions. Course is not open to those who have taken Advanced Playwriting (TAPS 1500, formerly LITR 1010C and TSDA 1500). Enrollment is limited to 14 undergraduates per section. A limited number of spaces are reserved for incoming and transfer students. Instructor permission required. S/NC.

TAPS 0110E. Screenwriting I (LITR 0110E).

Interested students must register for LITR 0110E.

TAPS 0150. Screenwriting I (LITR 0110E).

Interested students must register for LITR 0110E.

TAPS 0200. Playwriting II.

This course is an artistic laboratory and seminar that builds upon the fundamentals of Playwriting I. In this course we will bolster our writing practice with a toolbox of strategies to generate new writing, develop a revision process using peer feedback and exercises, read and discuss various plays and their mechanics, cultivate and act upon our creative curiosities to discover the forms that our ideas and stories want to be held in. S/NC

TAPS 0210. Dancing the African Diaspora.

This seminar/studio course introduces students to theories, debates, and critical frameworks in African Diaspora Dance Studies. It asks: What role does dance play throughout the African diaspora? What makes a dance 'black'? How do conceptualizations of gender and sexuality inform our reading of dancing bodies? Using African diaspora, critical dance, performance, and black feminist frameworks, we will examine the history, politics, and aesthetics of "black dance".

TAPS 0220. Persuasive Communication.

Introduces public speaking, and helps students develop confidence in public speaking through the presentation of persuasive speeches. Primarily for seniors. Limited to 15. Instructor's permission required. No permission will be given during pre-registration; interested students should sign up well in advance on the TAPS 0220 waitlist (application form is at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdWavq-L_fukiByIGrPFdVpzCzLXCfjFiD9K7l7MMjaFbwl6Q/viewform?usp=sf_link) and attend the first day of class. Attendance is mandatory. The application/waitlist process does not apply to students registering for the Summer term through the School of Professional Studies.

TAPS 0230. Acting.

Focus on elements of dramatic analysis and interpretation as applied to the art of acting, and, by extension, directing. Monologues, scene study, and improvisation are basis for comment on individual problems. Reading of dramatic texts and theory. Substantial scene rehearsal commitment necessary. Attendance mandatory. Not open to first-year students. Instructor permission required. No permission will be given during pre-registration. S/NC

TAPS 0240. Africana Feminisms.

Beginning with the institution of slavery and carrying on to the present day, we will examine the field of Black Feminist Thought—or, the political, social, and economic forces that shape black American women’s lives. We will ask: How do black women's lives, labor, and cultural productions lay bare the limits of maleness and whiteness as dominant frames? Why and how do black women matter to us all? Together, we'll ride the three waves of black feminism to explore the ways black women’s cultural production has been consequential to notions of citizenship, liberation, and culture.

TAPS 0250. Introduction to Technical Theatre and Production.

This course is an introduction to the concepts and practices of stagecraft. You will be introduced to different elements of stagecraft such as scenery, lighting, and properties. Lecture and lab classes will also cover the proper and safe use of tools, the choosing of building materials, methods of construction, and the installation of electrics, scenery, and properties for the department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies productions.

TAPS 0260. Stage Lighting.

This course is an introduction to stage lighting. Enrollment limited to 6.

TAPS 0310. Beginning Modern Dance.

Introduction to the art of movement. Focuses on building a common vocabulary based on ballet, vernacular forms, improvisation, Laban movement analysis, American modern dance, and the body therapies. Individual work is explored. One and one-half hours of class, four days a week. Enrollment limited to 20. S/NC.

TAPS 0310E. Shakespeare: The Screenplays (ENGL 0310E).

Interested students must register for ENGL 0310E.

TAPS 0320. Dance Composition.

Focuses on building the individual's creative voice. A movement vocabulary is developed from Western techniques (ballet, American modern dance, Laban/Bartenieff movement analysis, vernacular forms, space-harmony/movement physics, and the body therapies) along with group improvisations and collaboration with artists in other disciplines. Enrollment limited to 20. S/NC.

TAPS 0330. Mande Dance, Music and Culture.

Mande, Dance, Music and Culture explores three distinct life-cycle and celebratory dances from the Bambara, Malinke, Wasalu, and Khassonke peoples of Mali, West Africa. Each dance is taught in relationship to relevant oral histories, folklore and contemporary expressions. Emphasis is placed upon building a mindful community of committed thinkers and doers. Attendance at the first class is required. There is an application process for enrollment. S/NC

TAPS 0350. Black Performance Theory.

This interdisciplinary, reading/writing-intensive course examines the notion of blackness through theorizations of performance. It pursues the following questions: What is black authenticity? What are the rubrics with which 'authentic' blackness is measured? How is black performance political? Discussions and written work will interrogate the slipperiness of, desire for, and policing of blackness in order to trouble conceptions of race as a biological essence.

TAPS 0360. Viewpoints Technique: The Moving Body in Relation to Time, Space, and Ensemble.

The Viewpoints Technique systematically breaks down the elements of TIME and SPACE, providing a precise language for makers to communicate about dynamic staging and offering performing artists the tools to direct themselves more successfully from within composition. An indispensable practice for ensemble awareness, the Viewpoints Technique invites us to think more expansively about composition across performing arts disciplines. All performers can benefit from this rigorous investigation of time and space and the pursuit of cohesive ensemble.

TAPS 0510. Introduction to Shakespeare (ENGL 0310A).

Interested students must register for ENGL 0310A.

TAPS 0700. Introduction to Theatre, Dance and Performance.

An introduction to the breadth of topics covered in the TAPS Department, this class is a gateway to the concentration open to all students interested in live arts. We will explore how, where, and why theatre, dance and performance are made and investigate their relationship to broader culture and society. Students will learn basics: how to read a play, how to appreciate dance, and how to approach the variety of venues, histories, and methods involved in production. Overlaps with other media will be explored. Visits from TAPS faculty will dovetail with the season of offerings on the TAPS main stage.

TAPS 0800D. Asian/American Performance and Aesthetics.

This course examines performances in and of the Asias, paying special attention to gendered and racialized constructions of Asias and Asians in the popular imagination. Working at the intersections of Asian/American Studies and Performance Studies, this course considers the ways in which Asianness emerges from performance along the multiple axes of race, gender, sexuality and class. In analyzing a broad spectrum of aesthetic practices, including theatre, film, music and performance art, we will explore what Asianness means within the gendered and racialized circuitry of global exchanges of commodities, labors, bodies, affects, and discourses.

TAPS 0800E. Performance and Law: Staging Sovereignty in the Courtroom and the Theater.

In this course we explore the relationship between law and performance, and investigate the political stakes of doing so across various historical moments. From scripted proclamations of sovereignty during scenes of conquest to witness testimony in the infamous witch trials, legal processes often seem to rely on spectacle, drama, choreography, scripting—i.e., features associated with theatrical performances. Through case studies we learn to interpret legal events as performances and vice versa (staged performances as legal events). Can a work of theater or dance legislate? Adjudicate? Restore justice? Reading intensive and interdisciplinary course. Students across arts and social science backgrounds welcome.

TAPS 0800F. Performance and the Crisis of Scientific Reality.

Trust is a constant public problem. We are bombarded by competing versions of reality. A century ago, a 'crisis of reality' emerged after the breakdown of positivist science. Enduring truths gave way to contingent particulars in modern life. This course investigates how the experiments of artists and scientists contributed to the philosophical re-shaping of 'reality' as something not only historically made, but also performed. By mingling key texts from the philosophy of science with complementary texts and media from aesthetics and performance, this course focuses on the way that reality has been re-staged across overlapping domains of art and science.

TAPS 0800G. The Body Issue: An Introduction.

Notions about bodies determine what or who is normal, deviant, transgressive, healthy or ill, and who belongs to the human. From philosophical questions about the nature of the body, to issues of gender, race, sexuality, trauma, disability, artificial intelligence, and death, we will see how bodies carry, produce, and perform meanings. With different artworks, we will examine how bodies are being represented, discuss what is being expected from bodies, and speculate on the possibility for bodies to no longer be an issue. This is a reading intensive and interdisciplinary course. Students across arts, humanities, and social science backgrounds welcome.

TAPS 0800H. Performance and Technology: The Art and Science of the Artificial.

This seminar will explore the recent rise of “artificial intelligence” from the interdisciplinary perspectives afforded by performance studies. Performance studies is ideally situated to study algorithms, not as mathematical abstractions, but as material practices predating human tools and modern machines. Specifically, we will look to the emergence of the concept of artificial intelligence as it emerged from wide-ranging algorithmic practices from the mid- 20th century to the present. We will consider the subsequent rise of automation in fields as diverse as financial analysis, climate modeling, social media, crime prediction, and even artistic practice.

TAPS 0800I. (Re)Imagining the Body: What can a Body do?.

How does the body perform itself? And what at all is a body? These are the underlying questions to the fundamental question profoundly binding philosophy and performance: ‘What can a body do?’. From philosophical questions about the nature of the body, to issues of gender, race, sexuality, trauma, disability, artificial intelligence, and death, we will see how bodies carry, produce, and perform meanings. With different visual and performance artworks, we will examine how bodies are being represented, discuss what is being expected from bodies, and speculate on the possibility for bodies to be thought of differently.
This is a reading intensive and interdisciplinary course. Students from all backgrounds are welcome.

TAPS 0800J. Of Emotions Unbound: Feeling Middle Eastern Theatre and Performance.

How is the emotional, bodily experience of watching a theatrical production, a film, or reading a text alone different from the experience of doing so with friends in a dim room? Do feelings/moods sparked by art forms differ across bodies, regions, cultures, and media? Are sensory emotion concepts such as melancholia, euphoria, sorrow, sadness universal? Or are they historically, cross-culturally felt, framed, and situated? Do emotions, or affects, evaporate after a while? Or are they contagious, jumping across regions and bodies, perpetually re-membered from our past shaping our future? This introductory course will look at a wide range of aesthetic-cultural forms within broader political, social, historical contexts in the Middle East and its diaspora to delve into these philosophical queries that help us understand the highly complex region in terms of emotions transgressing its physical-geographic, Eurocentric, Orientalist conceptualizations.

TAPS 0800K. Islam between Theatre and Performance.

This course explores the nuanced relationship among concepts of theatre, performance and Islam in diverse texts and contexts. Our readings cut across disciplinary divides, weaving together theatre history, Islamic intellectual-cultural history, theory of performance, and theory of religion to support a dynamic, critical approach to our field of inquiry. We will discuss how attention to theatricality and performance may enrich our understanding of representations of Islam by Muslims, representations of Islam by non-Muslims, and the relationships between these representations. Taking as a point of departure the extreme opposition between “Islam” and “theatre” that contemporary discourse typically supposes when overlapping these topics, we will evaluate this convention and consider the reasons for its long and continuing prevalence.

TAPS 0800L. Devised Theatre.

Devised theatre is a practice of collaborative creation in which artists redefine the traditional roles of actor, director, playwright, and designer. Often, a devised theatre maker will do all of the above. A devised performance itself can take on a dizzying array of forms, anything from a solo musical to a site-specific dance installation to a guerrilla clown intervention to a Shakespeare play. This course focuses on developing an artist's toolkit for devising, pulling from a variety of traditions from clowning to creative writing. Students will work closely with each other to make performances of increasing magnitude throughout the semester, culminating in a full-class devised performance piece.

TAPS 0800M. Beyond The Rainbow: Black Otherwises in the Work of Ntozake Shange.

This course is designed to introduce students to the wide range of work by poet, playwright, and performer Ntozake Shange (1948-2018). We will discuss the historical periods, global events, social movements, communities, and art movements that shaped her work and her thinking. We will respond critically, creatively and at times collectively to Shange's work.

TAPS 0800N. The Semiotics of the Broadway Musical.

In this class, we will explore the history, present, and future of one of the quintessentially American artforms—the Broadway musical—by investigating its unique combination of music, drama, dance, spectacle, and commerce. Our focus will be on investigating the different ways that the musical produces social meanings. To do so, the course will introduce concepts from semiotics—a method for studying the production and communication of meaning through various systems of “signification.” Surveying the history of the artform in four broad phases, we will how musical theater has represented quintessentially human conflicts around identity and belonging. Assignments will include weekly response posts, a midterm paper, in-class presentations, a final project, and opportunities to perform.

TAPS 0800P. Uneasy Embodiments: Racial and Gendered Objecthood.

This seminar, open to all students, focuses on the distinctions between subject and object, human and non-human, agent and victim, and examines how categories of social difference, including race, gender, sexuality, disability, and class, inform these distinctions. We will analyze performance that demonstrates uneasy problems about personhood, with an emphasis on Asian/American and black aesthetic works, through the frameworks of performance studies and queer and feminist theory. Students can expect to study and create performance, read critical texts, and write a research essay.

TAPS 0810. Performing Italy - Body, Voice and Politics: A Journey within Italian Theatre.

How does performance comment on, interact with, and influence society? And to what extent is this question culturally specific? Performing Italy focuses on Nobel-prize-winner Dario Fo, Franca Rame, Commedia dell’Arte, and Teatro di Narrazione. Engaging with theatrical materials, we will conduct comparative work driven by the students’ own experiences and explore how Italian theater intervened in historical and political discourses within Italian society between the 1960s and the 2000s. Topics will include: the years of lead (1970s terrorism); the influence of the Catholic church on Italian society; the Italian State and organized crime; gender and sexuality in modern Italian society.

TAPS 0811. Campus Activism: Disability Justice and Unwaged Labor Movements.

In this class, we will look at the history of different unwaged labor movements and disability justice critiques of capitalism in order to think about why some kinds of labor become legible as ‘work’ under capitalism while others don’t, and the implications of this. Understanding the educational system as preparation for the work force, we will examine the disciplinary strategies of schooling, and its programs for either cultivating or repressing certain qualities in body and mind. This is an interdisciplinary class that will engage education/pedagogy, labor, and disability studies in order to examine our society’s institutions of governance (schools, families, workplaces) as well as movements of organized resistance to these institutions, such as Wages for Housework, Wages for Students, Socialist Patients’ Collective (SPK), and contemporary campus activist movements. Students with an interest in learning practical organizing skills should enroll.

TAPS 0901N. Body/Gesture/Cinema (MCM 0901N).

Interested students must register for MCM 0901N.

TAPS 0901Q. Governing Sex: Citizenship, Violence, Media (MCM 0901Q).

Interested students must register for MCM 0901Q.

TAPS 0901S. Mediating Reproduction: Feminism, Art, Activism (MCM 0901S).

Interested students must register for MCM 0901S.

TAPS 0930A. The Actor's Instrument: Voice and Speech.

A complete and well-seasoned actor has the ability to perform with specificity and ease, both vocally and physically. Specificity comes from an integration of speech and movement technique. Ease is only possible when a mastery of technical skills reaches the point where the actor can integrate them without loss of spontaneity. The goal of this class is to give the student the fundamental techniques of voice and speech in relation to the body. Prerequisite: TAPS 0230. Enrollment limited to 16. Instructor permission required. S/NC.

Prerequisite does not apply to students registering for the Summer term through the Office of Continuing Education.

TAPS 0930B. The Actor's Instrument: Improvisation.

This course is designed to help students explore the development of relationships in theatrical space without the benefit (or confinement) of a script. By cultivating and developing basic performance skills including spontaneity, self-awareness, creative use of the body and mind, access to the imagination, and collaborativity, this course has applications for actors and other performers interested in all types of performance as well as those interested in improvised performance specifically.

One of the intentions of this course is to generate truthful, creative, and collaborative play, which can lead naturally to material that is funny or humorous as an organic outcome of the moment. However, "comedy" or "improv comedy," which has a different set of intentions altogether, will be strongly discouraged in this course. "Getting laughs," as a goal in and of itself, manufactures unproductive pressure to "be clever" or to "succeed" in ways that are inconsistent with truly creative engagement.

TAPS 0930C. The Actor's Instrument: Stage Movement for Actors and Directors.

Students engage in a process of exploration that centers on the physical relationship of the actor to the physical reality of live performance on stage. The class is structured as a survey introduction to a variety of methods and targets beginning movers with a range of interests and performance applications. Students investigate a broad spectrum of contemporary, classic and non-western movement theories/approaches to better enhance the ability to be 3-dimensionally present in time and space and to develop skills in the art of non-textually based storytelling and performance.

TAPS 0930E. The Actor's Instrument: Clown.

Derived from the teachings of Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier, this course is physically-based, improvisational, loud and messy. Emphasis is on organic and intuitive response, timing and rhythms inherent in comedy, non-verbal expression, the relationship of the Actor to the Audience, and Play! Enrollment limited to 20. S/NC

TAPS 0930F. Explorations in Clown and Physical Play.

Participating in this course, you will learn how to value and share your own unique ridiculousness by transforming mistakes into opportunities and limitations into creative expression. Based in physical exploration and improvisation, this work will implore you to recognize your relationship to fear, expand your sense of humor, connect to an audience, and play with abandon. Inspired by various kinds of clowns throughout history, you will begin to create your own vocabulary of play that will organically accumulate into solo and group performance pieces.

TAPS 0950. Site-Specific Performance.

This class will offer an intensive exploration of the rich histories, theories, and practices of site-specific performance—that is, performances that take place beyond the traditional theatrical stage. Intended to cross-hatch between history, theory, and artistic practice, the class will study a range of examples of performance forms that have emerged in response to specific non-theatrical spaces. Students will also undertake a series of site-specific performance exercises and projects throughout the term, culminating in a public presentation in the form of a mini “festival” of original works of site-specific performance created by students in the class.

TAPS 0971. Digital Art (MCM0750).

Interested students must register for MCM 0750.

TAPS 0980. Black Lavender: Black Gay/Lesbian Plays/Dramatic Constructions in the American Theatre (AFRI 0990).

Interested students must register for AFRI 0990.

TAPS 1000. Intermediate Dance.

This is an intermediate-level modern dance class that extends and expands movement coursework for students who have taken TAPS 0310 or equivalent dance study. It is intended to challenge students’ memory, capacity for rhythmic complexity, and improvisational competence, as well as foster a professional work ethic that can withstand abundant physical, emotional and organizational challenges.

TAPS 1006A. Playing the Villain on Camera (ARTS 1006).

Interested students must register for ARTS 1006.

TAPS 1007A. Performance Practice Workshop (ARTS 1007).

Interested students must register for ARTS 1007.

TAPS 1010. Performing Brazil: Language, Theater, Culture (POBS 1080).

Interested students must register for POBS 1080.

TAPS 1011A. Acting for the Camera (ARTS 1011).

Interested students must register for ARTS 1011.

TAPS 1012A. Body as Medium: Queer Lineages of Duration, Resonance, and Excess (ARTS 1012)..

Interested students must register for ARTS 1012.

TAPS 1050E. RPM Playwriting (AFRI 1050E).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1050E.

TAPS 1080. Performing Brazil: Language, Theater, Culture (POBS 1080).

Interested students must register for POBS 1080.

TAPS 1100. Stage Management.

To introduce students to the principles and techniques of modern stage management from script selection to closing. Through the study of various models of stage management (both professional and academic), students will develop an appreciation of the role of the stage manager as the facilitator, mediator and organizer of the production process. Students will apply theory learned in the classroom by stage-managing or assistant stage-managing a TAPS production and/or observing other TAPS and Trinity Rep stage managers during the production process. Enrollment limited to 12.

TAPS 1110. Voices Beneath the Veil (AFRI 1110).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1110.

TAPS 1150A. Russian/Soviet Performing Arts: Dance, Opera & Theater (RUSS 1150)..

Interested students must register for RUSS 1150.

TAPS 1160. Style and Performance.

For qualified sophomores, juniors, and seniors who offer TAPS 0230 as a prerequisite. Period scene study and monologues are basis for comment on individual progress in acting/directing. Extensive reading of dramatic texts and historic research materials. Work in voice, movement, and poetic text. Substantial commitment necessary for preparation of class scenes. Attendance mandatory. Prerequisite: TAPS 0230. Limited to 20. Instructor's permission required. No permissions will be given during pre-registration.

TAPS 1160A. Physical Play: Embodied Action & The Art of Making Something New.

This course explores the actor’s capacity for play and the idea that games provide theatrical moments of truth and joy. Through a continuum of games, improvisations, and devising activities, students will develop a vulnerable and egoless state of existence that empowers them to take risks, access their imagination, and play more fully with their voice, body, and mind. Exercises explore physicality, vocality, status, focus, scale, presence, flow, and impulse while immersing participants into a state of “le jeu,” or the pleasure of playing.

TAPS 1170. Acting Methods for Period Texts.

This course explores and hones the actor's craft of performing dramatic texts from various periods across theatre history.

TAPS 1210. Solo Performance.

An exploration of the challenges and rewards of performing solo. Students research, write, and perform a one-person show. Other projects may include performance art, stand-up comedy, and monologuing. Substantial time commitment. Attendance mandatory. For advanced students with appropriate background and experience. Submit proposal and resume in the fall, For guidelines and information contact taps@brown.edu. Permission required in advance. Enrollment limited to 20.

TAPS 1230. Global Theatre and Performance: Paleolithic to the Threshold of Modernity.

This course explores performance practices that predate the European Renaissance across disparate parts of the globe. Considered will be Paleolithic rock art and other evidence of ritual practices in Europe, Africa, and the Americas; ritual dramas of Egypt, Greece, and the Roman Empire; Sub-Saharan African traditions and theatre/dance forms in ancient India, medieval Japan and the indigenous Americas. In short, we will explore a wealth of differing ancestral theatrical modes and methods that continue to leave their mark in contemporary diasporic expressions.

TAPS 1240. Performance Historiography and Theatre History.

This course will provide an introduction to performance history and historiography by concentrating on analysis of dramatic texts, theatrical events, festival performances and "performative" state and religious ceremonies from 1500-1850. We will explore incidents in Asia, the Americas and Europe as related to state consolidation, colonization, incipient nationalism(s), urbanization, cultural negotiation, and the representational practices the enacted. Enrollment limited to 35.

TAPS 1250. Late Modern and Contemporary Theatre and Performance.

This class provides introduction to an array of theatre and performance forms of 20th- and 21st-century Europe and North America. We explore historical realism and naturalism to symbolism, the birth of avant-garde, constructivism, dada and surrealism, and myriad other modernist isms. After Stein, Artaud, and Brecht, we jump to Americas and indigenous theatre, the Harlem Renaissance, site specific art, and innovative companies and practitioners from Maria Irene Fornes to the Wooster Group, Augusto Boal and more. We study playwrights, directors, actors, dancers, designers, and performance artists. The focus is on “experimental” forms, recalling that even naturalism, in its day, was "revolutionary."

TAPS 1251A. Making the 21st Century Musical.

Songs are a powerful dramatic storytelling tool - we see them used all the time in media, alongside scripted dialogue and visual elements. In this class we will explore contemporary musicals, in all forms, and we will create songs that tell stories. Together we will investigate how dramatic songs are made, what they can be about, and who are our audiences. We will pay special attention to perspectives that have been left out of past musical storytelling, and we will discover ways that our songs can advocate for justice in the 21st century and beyond. Instructor permission required. Interested students should fill out the following questionnaire (LINK: https://forms.gle/eDM3Mss95oGFqxEU9) and must attend the first class.

TAPS 1251C. Scenic Properties and the Props Artisan.

Scenic Properties requires a working knowledge of all theatrical stagecrafts, an inventory of useful materials, and creative solutions. This class is designed to allow students to develop a creative process and pursue the skills that fortify theatre crafts. Students will hone skills in the scene shop to explore the techniques, materials, and problem solving that support craftspersons and theatre making. The course is designed to support students in creative thought processes and build confidence with practice and research. It is intended to help students grow a better understanding of scenic properties for theatre and in the support of live performance at Brown University and in the future. The course has no formal pre-requisites.

TAPS 1251D. Unmasking the Technologies of White Supremacy.

This advanced undergraduate seminar looks to examine the re-emergent topics of white supremacy and fascism within the so-called post-truth political media landscape. We will proceed by returning to critiques of white male patriarchy at the heart of white supremacy. The course will follow three streams of critical theory and their attendant historical moments. The first section will draw from black feminism and critiques of fundamental American forms of freedom built upon the immobility of "the other" in the service of white racial capital. The second section of the course will contend with the recent rise of Proud Boys, Identity Europa, and the rise of the far-right in Eastern Europe through the lens of performance studies to understand the procedures of identification and aesthetics that lead to white supremacy.

TAPS 1251E. Embodiment, Materiality and Cultural Production.

This course investigates embodiment as one of many materials engaged in contemporary art and performance practices. We will explore concepts of body/mind, the haptic, interiority, intersubjectivity, experience, spatiality, temporality, relationality, liveness, and futurity and how it occurs within a wide variety of cultural productions. Course readings are drawn from dance studies, critical race studies, gender and sexuality studies, performance studies, and museum and curatorial studies. Our theoretical inquiries will culminate in the practical experience of crafting and producing an exhibition and/or live event. No prior performance or art-making experience is required, however, students with active art practices are encouraged to utilize this opportunity to create and present their own works.

TAPS 1251P. Theatre Practicum.

This course offers the practical study of theatre through participation as a member of the production team of a Sock and Buskin theatre or dance production. Regular rehearsals, coaching and mentorship by department faculty and staff, participation in technical rehearsals and performances are required. Enrollment is available after auditioning/assignment of roles. Each student will be assigned an advisor/mentor for this process. S/NC only.

TAPS 1260. Food as/in Performance.

A theater maker has a rare relationship with an audience. It is a relationship that holds the opportunity to engage the five senses (six, if you count the heart). With this thought, let us consider the theatricality of food. How are theater makers creating conversation and experience using language, memory, touch, taste, and smell to shape dramatic action or tell story? Students will prepare “theatrical food experiences” that provide opportunities to write and perform texts.

TAPS 1270. Masking, Trancing, Performing, and Spectating in Non-Western and Circumpacific Performance.

An inquiry into specific traditions of performance - ritual, traditional theatre, contemporary theatre, and performed behavior in more or less day-to-day life - that exist or have existed in various (mostly) Asian settings and have been studied and documented by scholars, film-makers, and theatre artists. The emphasis will be on traditions that use masks as means of transforming the identity of the performer and of the world presented in performance. No prior experience in theatrical performance or in the study of Asia or anthropology is assumed.

TAPS 1280B. The Creative Ensemble: Poetry in/to Performance.

Creative Ensemble: Poetry in/to Performance is an Interdisciplinary Arts course designed to develop skills in acting, improvisation, directing, design, visual storytelling, and writing. Professor Kym Moore (TAPS) and Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo (Music) are exploring the multiple dimension of Poetry: visual, aural, and sonic. Drawing on Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo's expertise as a rap lyricist and performer, students will also examine the ways in which the incorporation of hip hop poetics can shape a performance. Through research, experimentation, performance, participants will engage in a creative process that will culminate in an Ensemble-based final performance for the public. Application and Override Required.

TAPS 1280C. Stage Lighting II.

This class is a continuation of Stage Lighting. The major portion of this class is to give the student opportunity to create an actual design on stage for the Theatre Arts & Performance Studies (TAPS). Each individual student's main project will be to create a light design and be part of the production team of a Sock and Buskin produced show. The class will be an open forum for students to share ideas about their perspective designs. The class is also set up for the continuation of expanding their Vectorworks Spotlight and Lightwright skills, as well as light console programming.

TAPS 1280D. Perception/The Performativity of Neurology.

Time-based art and “theater” more specifically is a perfect manipulator of experience. Many creators of time-based art look for the “universal.” In this course we will explore the science behind what we all have in common beyond shared-experience: brains. What happens in the minds of all truly happens. How can we use art to make our brains experience the same things? And what experiences can we curate for our brains based on science? Show don’t tell. How can art take place in the room in front of us? How do we experience a performance rather than just “watch” it.

TAPS 1280E. Neurodiversity and Performance.

This course will use the framework of performance studies to investigate the emerging concepts of neurodiversity and neurodivergence—terms originally developed by autistic activists and self-advocates seeking to depathologize autism and other forms of neurological, mental, and cognitive difference. Course materials will incorporate perspectives from theatre, performance, and other aesthetic modes in addition to theoretical and scholarly work from disability studies, the history of science, and cultural studies. We will also ask how social movements such as neurodiversity and mad pride have used performative strategies to contest and reformulate how we understand disability and neurological difference.

TAPS 1280F. Introduction to Set Design.

In this class, students will be introduced to the aesthetics, creative process, and industry standard technical skills and tools necessary for designing theatrical scenery. Students will explore set design in a studio format that will focus on the development of both hand and digital design techniques, such as drafting, rendering, and scale model-making. This course is intended to lay the foundation for further study while empowering students to actively engage as set designers in productions on campus and beyond. Students interested in applying for a Registration Override Code should complete the Google Form course application below.

TAPS 1280G. Introduction to Theatrical Design.

This class is an introduction to the process of creating designs for live performance, with a focus on Set, Costume, Lighting, and Sound. Students will learn about the history of production design, how to analyze a script for design, the aesthetic and practical considerations of a designer, and the skills, techniques, and philosophies used to create meaningful designs for theatre. Students will gain proficiency in each area of design, as well as learn communication and collaboration skills required in a team setting. No prior experience with theatre or design is required.

TAPS 1280K. Mindfulness and Movement: Interoceptive Expressive Arts.

This course cultivates and mobilizes interoceptive awareness as a means of self-expression. By slowing things down, calming the mind and focusing attention on the breath and bodily sensations we practice an open-hearted release from self-judgment. Our daily training in Somatic Studies includes Body-Scanning, Authentic Movement, Yoga, Ideokinesis, Laban Movement Analysis, Continuum, Narrative Medicine, Feldenkrais, Automatic Writing and the Visual Arts. S/NC

TAPS 1280L. Modern American Drama.

Modern American Drama is a broad overview of the field, from O'Neill through Kushner and Parks. Particular attention will be paid to the theatrical, social and performance context of the plays under study, although the plays themselves will be the only assigned texts.

TAPS 1280M. A Producer Prepares: Curation, Ethics, and the Entrepreneurial Practice of Arts Programming.

This course introduces students to the complex relationships between cultural entrepreneurs, buyers, sellers, producers, managers, audiences, and artists. Through readings, guest speakers and case studies, with particular emphasis on emerging media technologies, business practice and live art administration, “A Producer Prepares” will arm students with the critical, historical, managerial and curatorial tools necessary to produce work in the contemporary cultural economy. This class seeks to situate arts curation and production within histories of cultural practice, management and technology, and ultimately aims to endow student producers with the critical acumen necessary to thrive in an arts sector in flux. Mandatory S/NC

TAPS 1280N. New Theories for a Baroque Stage.

This course re-conceptualizes and re-models seventeenth-century "baroque" theatricality through the lenses of Russian formalist theory, phenomenology, (post-)surrealist literature and objects, Oulipian literature of constraints, Deleuzian theory, ontological-hysteric theatre, film, etc.

TAPS 1280Q. Hybrid Art (VISA 1800L).

Interested students must register for VISA 1800L.

TAPS 1280S. Libretto Workshop for Musical Theatre.

This class is not only for the aspiring librettist but for any student desiring insight into the craft of book writing for musical theater. The course will cover the basics of storytelling (plot, character development conflict, etc.) but specifically in terms of the musical. It will also detail the fundamentals of lyric writing, musical narrative and basic composition. We will examine three libretti (SWEENEY TODD: the classic horror, LITTLE SHOP of HORRORS, the modern sci-fi and RENT, the contemporary adaptation). There will be lectures, group discussions, talks with guest professionals, and analysis of student assignments. Enrollment limited to 15 sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

TAPS 1280U. Voice Over for the Actor.

Has voice acting always appealed to you but you weren't sure where to start? Luckily, COVID-19 has not impacted the voice over industry and the opportunities in traditional media and digital content are ever-growing. Students will learn acting techniques and how to analyze and voice different types of copy ranging from commercials to video games, animation, audio books and more. The class also covers setting up a cost effective home studio, hardware and software, demo reels, how to find voice work and other aspects of the business. Students need a laptop/desktop computer, a mic, a quiet place to work and a stable internet connection.
Enrollment is limited to 12 to individualize learning and feedback. The focus of the course is skill building and practice in a supportive ensemble environment therefore attendance is required every class.

TAPS 1280V. Theatre and Conquest in the Americas, from Cortes to NAFTA.

Explores the intimate relationship between theatre and conquest in the Americans as contained in missionary accounts, plays, performances and visual art from Cortés arrival to the present. Students will analyze plays and performances that stage the Spanish Conquest, consider the theatrical procedures of the conquest and examine theatrical representation as a methodology of conquest in the Americas.

TAPS 1280W. Native American Indigenous Theatre Performance.

Investigates Native American Indigenous Theatre performance through the study of new contemporary plays. Diverse performance styles informed by Indigenous ways of being and knowing, language, land and identity distinguish Native American Indigenous Theatre performance from Euro-American styles. Inquiry beyond western theatrical understandings is required to center Indigenous narratives and to grasp the rich spectrum offered in the storytelling. Methods of community knowledge production will include guest artists, orality, place / object-making and embodiment to contextualize Indigenous values and their application to decolonize performance spaces, methods of working and theatre-making. All are welcome!

TAPS 1280X. Compossible Worldbuilding.

This course involves project-making through the use of materials and influences that are in plain sight but perhaps not within the reach of what previous investigative methodologies allowed. Our small worlds will be mined for their alterity, their surreality, their complexity, their possibility and apparent impossibility. Students will be reading philosophy, fiction, movies, criticism, and above all, interior and exterior rooms and spaces that will feed into their worldbuilding.

TAPS 1280Y. Issues in Performance Studies.

Explores myriad ways of thinking, doing and talking about performance in the broad spectrum -- from social media to theatre, dance, film, and everyday life including identifications and disidentifications of gender, race, sex, and class. We may study museum installations, surgery, tourism, carnival, history reenactments, performance-based art, sports, and even dinner parties among other actions and sites. The objective is not to pin down a genre or category of performance but to understand performance variously as an analytic and practice, a form of lived history and way of being, including but not limited to traditional theater and dance practices.

TAPS 1280Z. A Producer Prepares: Advanced Topics in Curation, Ethics, and Arts Programming.

This course continues students' orientation to the complex relationships between cultural entrepreneurs, buyers, sellers, producers, managers, audiences and artists. Through readings, guest speakers and case studies, with particular emphasis on emerging media technologies, business practice and live art administration, “Advanced Topics…” will arm students with the critical, historical, managerial and curatorial tools necessary to produce work in the contemporary cultural economy, with particular emphasis on memes, think tanks, and the relationship between the state and art. This class seeks to situate arts curation and production within histories of cultural practice, management and technology, and ultimately aims to endow student producers with the tactical, critical and strategic acumen necessary to thrive in an arts sector in flux.

TAPS 1281A. Director/Designer Collaborative Studio.

Students will explore the relationship between director and designer within the production process. The main objective is to improve collaboration and production output by learning the language, tools, and skills involved in each area of discipline so as to enhance creative output. Enrollment limited to 17 students.

TAPS 1281C. Memory Plays: Theatricality and Time.

This course will read philosophy and critical theory about memory and time beside dramatic works and performance art that take up the topic of history, repetition, and temporality in live art. Readings will be selected from Sophocles, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Noh, Freud, Benjamin, Bergson, Brecht, Muller, Stein, Duras, Homi Bhabha, Paula Vogel, Suzan-Lori Parks, W. G. Sebald, Gilles Deleuze, Thomas King, Philip Deloria, Coco Fusco, Diana Taylor, Charles Ludlam, Teching Hsieh, Wooster Group, Spiderwoman Theatre, Ubu and the Truth Commission, Errol Morris, Robin Soans, and Erik Ehn to ask about time, memory, history, act, Mneme, anamnesis, recognition, and "reconciliation."

TAPS 1281D. Place-Based Dance and Performance.

How can movement practices excavate buried histories and ignored rhythms to invite new understandings of place? In this hybrid studio-seminar course, we will develop critical and creative tools for making public performances that engage local sites through the body. Students will encounter site-specific techniques drawn from dance, performance art, and sculpture, as well as interdisciplinary decolonizing methods for doing place-based research. The class culminates in collaborative performance projects based on extensive research with a local site. This course is open to all who are interested in developing embodied methods of engaging with place and the public.

TAPS 1281E. Directing Theory and Practice.

Directing Theory and Practice is a hybrid academic and studio class designed to introduce students to the history, theory, and practice of the director’s craft. Readings on the theoretical/practical methods of direction are examined closely in class discussions and directing projects. All students must serve as actors and directors throughout.

TAPS 1281F. Choreography ONE: Dancemaking Pre-Classic to Post-Modern.

This course introduces students to 20th century American choreographic methods. Drawing from key texts, improvisational games and dance scores, “Choreography ONE” examines influential choreographic pedagogues alongside major figures of Western dance history and key critical methods. Students will practice systems to make, discuss and critique dances while situating those modes in historical, cultural and performance context. All class members will receive optional lab time in the studio to respond to assignments and have the opportunity to partner with student lighting designers. This course will culminate in the performance of student work in the TAPS Fall Dance Concert.

TAPS 1281G. Queer Dance.

In this course we will study the intersections of dance studies and queer studies, in an inquiry into the emerging field of Queer Dance. What does dance do for queer studies? How does queer studies further dance studies? What constitutes dance as queer? Students will study, observe, examine, discuss, and at times participate in queer dance from a range of historical and global perspectives. Course readings are drawn from dance studies, critical race studies, gender and sexuality studies, and performance studies. Readings are complemented by screenings, movement exercises, and live performance. No prior dance or performance experience is necessary.

TAPS 1281H. Collaborations in Performance: Theory and Practice Moving Together.

This is a hybrid theory and practice course, where students will study and experiment with contemporary collaborative practices. We will investigate collaborations between people, disciplines, theories, practices, spaces, places, mediums, cultures, and institutions. Our readings and theoretical inquiries draw primarily from texts about dance-focused U.S. contemporary performance. Readings will serve as case studies for a series of collaborative projects and experiments. This course will culminate in a final paper and final performance study. Makers and collaborators of all disciplines are welcome. A curious, generous, and open approach to working with others is required. No prior dance or performance experience is necessary.

TAPS 1281M. Introduction to Costume Construction.

An introduction to the study and practice of core costume construction skills. Topics include basic machine, hand sewing and patterning techniques. Instructor overrides will not be provided until the start of class.

TAPS 1281O. Acting Outside the Box: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in Performance.

Examines the relationship between social and cultural identities and their representations in dramatic literature and performance. Students will be expected to read critical essays and plays, conduct research, and prepare to act in scenes that challenge the actor to confront the specifics of character and situation beyond the Eurocentric ideal. The goal is to strengthen the actor's ability to construct truly meaningful characters by removing any reliance of "type" and/or immediate "identification" with the characters they will portray. Open to Any Brown/RISD graduate/undergraduate student that has taken TAPS 0230/Acting or the equivalent. Students should be aware that this is a hybrid Research and Performance class which may be counted as either a Performance Studies/Theatre Arts course for credit. Instructor Permission is Required. Interested students should attend the first class meeting in order to apply.

TAPS 1281Q. Introduction to Critical Dance Studies.

Critical dance studies centers dancing bodies as integral to various social, cultural, and political identity-making practices. In this course students will study, observe, examine, discuss, and at times participate in popular, classical, and social dance forms from a range of historical and global perspectives. Our driving inquiries include: How does dance travel and transform through time and space? How does dance produce identities? How does dance complicate notions of authorship and originality? Course readings are drawn from dance studies, critical race studies, gender and sexuality studies, and performance studies. Readings are complemented by screenings, movement exercises, and live performance.

TAPS 1281S. The Precarious University (HMAN 1970E).

Interested students must register for HMAN 1970E.

TAPS 1281T. Native Americans in the Media: Representation and Self-Representation on Film (ETHN 1890G).

Interested students must register for ETHN 1890G.

TAPS 1281W. Arts and Health: Theory.

This course focuses on current research on and practices in arts and healing, with an emphasis on dance and music for persons with Parkinson's Disease (PD) and Autism (ASD). Includes guest lecturers, readings, field trips, and site placements. Admission to class will be through application in order to balance the course between self-identified artists and scientists and those primarily interested in PD and those primarily interested in ASD. Enrollment limited to 30.

TAPS 1281X. Costume Design.

To provide instruction in the basic techniques of theatrical costume design. This will include: figure drawing; how the elements and principles of design relate to and are utilized in costume design; collaboration; script analysis; research methods; costume design process; character analysis; the function and purpose of costumes in theatre and an introduction to costume history. Emphasis of this course will be on the process of how to design, how to think like a designer, and how to communicate as a designer. This course is intended to lay the foundation for further study while empowering students to actively engage as costume designers in productions on campus.

TAPS 1281Y. Art and Activism.

Using the fundamentals of storytelling acquired in prior theatre courses as the foundation, this course will examine and put into practice the ways we as artists can engage in political and social activism and express our points of view with and through established/published works.

TAPS 1281Z. Arts and Health: Practice.

This course focuses on the application of current research in neuroscience, education, narrative medicine, and best practices in the arts for persons with neurological disorders. Through site placements, students provide arts experiences (primarily dance and music) for persons with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The course also includes guest lecturers, readings, curriculum development, analyzing and developing research methodology, ethnographic research, and planning of and participation in a convening of artists, scientists and educators in an intergenerational exploration. Completion of TAPS 1281W highly recommended, but course may be taken with no prior experience in science, dance or music.

TAPS 1285. Film Acting.

This intermediate acting class is designed to introduce and develop the tools necessary for acting on camera; to examine the application of the screenplay as a blueprint for the finished film; and to pursue the process and demands of working under limited and quickly changing conditions. Utilizing an extensive library of screenplays, the class will study film scene analysis and preparation, pro-active choice, and heightened connection. They will develop and hone the skill to remain present and vital through multiple takes of the scene, keeping emphasis on process rather than presentation.

TAPS 1290. Advanced Costume Design.

Costume design and rendering approaches to various genres of performing arts, including opera, musicals, and dance. Designed for the serious student of theatrical design. Advanced work on rendering emphasizing character, practicality, line, form, and color. Lab required.

TAPS 1300. Advanced Set Design.

The examination of the working relationship between designer and director. An emphasis on the design abilities needed to communicate varied visual approaches. Developing the creative, theatrical vocabulary needed to turn a director's vision into a fully articulated set design. A substantial amount of plays will be read and researched. Drafting and model rendering techniques will be applied. Prerequisite: TAPS 1280F. Instructor approval required prior to registration. Enrollment limited to 10.

TAPS 1310. Advanced Modern Dance.

This course is designed for students with several years of dance experience in any genre. The purpose of this class is to endow students with technical mastery of current contemporary movement vocabularies, with emphasis on Release Technique and Bartenieff Fundamentals. Enrollment limited to 40. S/NC.

TAPS 1311. Dancers' Choice: Improvisational Frameworks for Intermediate and Advanced Movers.

Learning Goals: - The intention of this class is to practice complex improvisational dance frameworks within a cohort of experienced movers. Students must have previously completed at least one movement technique classes before enrolling. - To hone improvisation techniques (with emphasis and guest master teachers instructing) on Contact Improvisation and Forsythe Improvisation Technologies, in anticipation of potential performance for live audiences. - To challenge and expand students’ memory, capacity for rhythmic complexity, competence and comfort holding multiple, simultaneous, and occasionally contradictory game parameters. - To foster a professional work ethic that can withstand abundant physical, emotional and organizational challenges.

TAPS 1312. Contemporary Dance Forms - Intermediate/Advanced Studio.

Three times per week, we will come together for rigorous dance practice based in release techniques, contemporary floor work foundations, and somatic and improvisational modalities. Designed to build strength, efficiency, and inspire a large, expressive way of moving through a three-dimensional sense of the body, our work will include movement research from the practice of Contact Improvisation, choreographic/compositional explorations, and through challenging contemporary phrase work. The course has no formal pre-requisites. Students enrolling should have a degree of comfortability replicating phrase material as well as basic rolling, meeting the floor, and inversions. If in doubt, please shop the class ask questions.

TAPS 1315. Digital Design for the Theatre.

A comprehensive introduction to the use of two-dimensional computer aided tools to realize scenic design elements and diversify the designers’ visual vocabulary. A thorough understanding of digital work-flow from concept development, input, to computer aided design and output will be achieved. The course will cover: Introduction to Drafting with Auto-cad and plotting, Introduction to the use of the Adobe Creative Suite including Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign as they relate to set design and implementing designs in full-scale. We will also review Typography and basic Graphic Design elements and how they relate to scenic elements, scaling and technical applications.

TAPS 1320. Choreography.

Designed for those who have had some experience in composition and would like to work, under supervision, on making dances. Emphasizes making full-length dances for small and large groups and demands a sophisticated use of space, dynamics, and music. Further emphasis on viewing and interpreting contemporary works from a choreographic viewpoint. S/NC.

TAPS 1325. Experiments in Dance, Movement, and Performance.

This course introduces students to the histories and methodologies; meanings and functions of experimental choreography in specific artistic, social, and political contexts. We examine the ways in which choreographers and dancers have experimented with the traditions and forms of dance, by mapping a series of interdisciplinary gestures in relation to creative and critical fields. The course builds on a series of composition exercises and creative assignments to culminate with the making and showing of a dance performance. No experience of dance is required, but an interest in thinking and experimenting with the roles of dance across art, society, and academia.

TAPS 1330. Dance History: The 20th Century.

An exploration of the major figures and trends in modern dance. While the main focus of the course is on American Dance, attention is given to earlier European and other dance traditions that have contribited to the American dance heritage. May be of particular interest Americanists, art historians, dancers, and theatre majors.

TAPS 1330A. Way Too Much And Not Nearly Enough: Making Performance in The Post-Post-Dramatic.

The course will be an experimental studio, mixing theory and practice, to formulate a position beyond what’s known in Europe as “post-dramatic theater.” We will oscillate between discussion, assignments and practical studio work, learning from others and making our own work. The foundation will be addressing artists, writers and pop phenomena internationally with an emphasis on Europe and Israel. Building on these, the practical aspect will comprise of physical group work and home assignments. In learning to compose entanglements between image, sound, word, and space, we will sharpen our tools for reimagining the contemporary performative condition. In the final stage of the course, students will create their own performative études. Instructor permission required.

TAPS 1335. Movement Theory: Choreography, Modernity, Subjectivity.

This seminar examines theatrical choreography as a defining art of western modernity. Drawing from the publication of Chorégraphie in 1700––from the Greek khoreia (dancing) and graphein (writing)––as a system of dance notation, the course will follow the transformation of the relation between the score and the event; writing and moving; philosophy and dance from the Baroque period to contemporary experimentations. This course seeks to enable students to apply a diverse set of languages and concepts to the study of dance; to equip them with the critical tools through which to experience, analyze, and write on dance as a culturally meaningful practice.

TAPS 1337. Introduction to FlexN Dance & Movement.

This course is an open level course that focuses on the history, foundations such as Dancehall and dance movement vocabularies of the international street dance style Flexn. Students will also be introduced to techniques from other dance styles that help broaden the experience. Engaging with this vernacular dance practice, students will build improvisational skills, develop rhythmic abilities, and begin learning some techniques to storytell through dance and movement. Students will learn ways to artistically respond to their world & past/current events, individually and collaboratively. These skills and conversations help students understand the relationship between the self and the communal.

TAPS 1338. Advanced FlexN.

After students have learned the history, foundation, and fundamentals of FlexN in the previous course, they will now work on execution of this style and continue to build on storytelling through dance now that they have touched the surface of an entirely new dance vocabulary. Elevating, developing, and exploring with this new dance vocabulary and culture to use dance as an outlet to tell a story in order to be heard, to bring awareness to different topics both personal and world events, to express stored emotions, and/or to simply have a release from their usual everyday routine and use their body in ways they never have before.

TAPS 1339. Embodied Anatomy.

This course introduces students to human anatomy through various modes of creative exploration. By utilizing somatic practices such as yoga, pilates and dance- students will gain a better understanding of “how and why” movement occurs. Class time will be split between discussion and experiential activities which will include movement based exercises and drawing. We will take an in-depth look at the human form- touching on injury prevention and how we can bridge the body/mind connection.

TAPS 1340. Dance Styles.

Students will be introduced to non-traditional and contemporary social dance practices. The class, which is ideal for students of all experience levels -- beginning, intermediate, and advanced -- features guest instructors who will bring their expertise and training to bear in the studio. Focus will be on dances from the Global South as well as from people of color in the US. Key tenets include; improvisation, polyrhythm, and geography. Students will learn to move their bodies in new directions.

TAPS 1340A. Native American Theatre: from Traditional Storytelling to the Modern Theater Movement.

This course examines Native American Theatre from origins of traditional storytelling to politics of race involved in Native theatre today. First, we will examine traditional storytelling from creation stories in literature and theatre. Second, we will study interactions with Europeans with the Doctrine of Discovery, Native American boarding schools systems, outlawing of traditional culture and how Native culture survived in these systems. These topics will be explored through Native literature and Native plays. Next, the course considers how the public, and the media, support the distortions of Native images. Finally, the course concludes by examining the modern era of Native Theatre and the Declaration of the Rights on Indigenous Peoples. Instructor permission required.

TAPS 1341. Introduction to Ballet.

An introduction to the classical ballet vocabulary and basic movement patterns. We will focus on maintaining correct body alignment while increasing fitness and coordination, and develop a deeper appreciation for ballet in the context of the liberal arts. No prior ballet or dance experience is necessary for this course, but dancers who would like to brush up on basics are also welcome.

TAPS 1342. Ballet II.

This course is designed for students who have some dance background, or who have successfully completed Introduction to Ballet (TAPS 1341). Apart from working on core strength, alignment, and flexibility, we will focus on faster paced movement sequences, and prepare for turns and jumps appropriate for an advanced beginner level.

TAPS 1343. Ballet III (Intermediate/Advanced Ballet).

This course is designed for students who have successfully completed Ballet II (TAPS 1342) and kept up with their dance conditioning, or for students with previous ballet experience at an advanced beginner/intermediate level. The main focus of this class is on center exercises, especially on pirouettes and petit, medium and grand allegro appropriate for an intermediate level.

TAPS 1344. Advanced Ballet with Repertory.

This advanced level half-credit ballet course will provide students with the opportunity to continue to refine their ballet technique while also exploring new and/or iconic repertory. We will focus on advanced barre and center work for the first part of the class with continued emphasis on placement and accuracy while increasing speed and level of difficulty. For the second half of the class, we will work on wide-ranging ballet repertory which will culminate in a dance performance. Instructor override required. This half-credit course can be repeated for credit. Mandatory S/NC.

TAPS 1345. Dance and the Visual Arts after 1960: Performing the Everyday, Choreographing the Museum.

This course examines the mutual influences between the fields of dance and the visual arts since 1960. It surveys a series of artworks spanning early minimal art, happenings, and Judson Dance Theatre to contemporary global experiments in choreographing museal spaces. How can we map the “close correspondence” between choreographic and visual art practices across the performance of pedestrian bodies, dancing sculptures, and relational encounters? Students are invited to experiment collectively with dance archiving methodologies, to write about a performance event in the museum context, as well as to research the critical intersections between dance and art history; performance and curatorial studies.

TAPS 1348. Contemporary Dance Studio Project 1.

In this advanced technique and repertory course, we will engage in a rigorous studio practice based in post-modern dance modalities. Somatics, release techniques, contemporary floorwork foundations, contemporary partnering, and improvisatory frameworks are scaffolded to support the ongoing technical growth of the student practitioner and of a robust undergraduate company in performance. Designed to build strength, efficiency, and inspire a large, expressive way of moving through a three-dimensional sense of the body, our work will include movement research from the practice of Contact Improvisation, choreographic/compositional explorations, and through challenging contemporary phrase work. CDSP 1 supports ongoing technical growth and is repeatable for credit. Enrollment is by permission of instructor. S/NC.

TAPS 1350. Dance Performance and Repertory.

Half course credit each semester. A study of dance repertory through commissioned new works, reconstruction, coaching, rehearsal, and performance. Guest artists and consultants from the American Dance Legacy Institute. Enrollment is by audition. Limited to skilled dancers. Instructor permission required. S/NC.

TAPS 1355. Indian Classical Performance: Natyasastra Theory and Practice.

Natya Prayoga is a theory-practice course of movement and contemplation based on Indian Classical Performing Arts and the principles of yoga. This course will explore the study of Natyasastra as a text for application, as well as, the intersection between theory and practice, with special reference to the contemplative aspects of performance. Students will review and analyze the text with explicit and implicit inferences. Thus, drawing parallels between the basic principles of performance in the Indian traditions and yoga. Analysis of the basic tenets of Natyasastra exploring the physical training routines, for stylized representation of movement and mimesis.

TAPS 1360. Dance Performance and Repertory.

A study of dance repertory offered through commissioned new works, reconstruction, coaching, rehearsal, and performance. The course will explore the phenomenology of dance, audience-performer connection, theatre production and dance criticism, among other topics. Enrollment is by audition. Limited to skilled dancers. S/NC.

TAPS 1370. New Works/World Traditions.

As an Engaged Scholarship course, New Works develops new dance theater pieces that are rooted in research in Mindfulness, Somatic Studies, Mande Dance, Contact Improvisation, Butoh and Contemporary Vernacular dance forms. Guest artists from Japan, China, West Africa, the USA, and local community partners co-create new theatrical pieces for the concert stage. May be repeated for credit. S/NC.

TAPS 1380. Mise en Scene.

A reconstruction of the idea of a stage and a frame on the evidence of theory, novels, plays, and especially films-the seen and the unseen-using the organizing strategies of mystery. Art's "impossible" brokering of the real and the representational in a dialectic of space is considered from a multiplicity of perspectives in diverse works. Enrollment limited to 20. Instructor permission required.

TAPS 1390. Contemporary Mande Performance.

This course examines the celebratory, life-cycle, club, and street party performance forms from the Bambara, Malinke, Bobo, Khassonke and Wasalu peoples of Mali, West, Africa. These embodied performance traditions are studied alongside their specific musical​ and social traditions and oral ​histories. Meditation, films, readings, guest artists and collaborative research projects will be introduced ​to ​help facilitate a deeper investigation of contemporary Mande society and its artistic production. Students MUST register for one of the Movement Labs, and all primary meeting times. Students must attend the first class and fill out an application.

TAPS 1400. Advanced Performance.

An investigation into abstract and nonlinear modes of performance, working from fragmentary and recombined narrative, dramatic, and found sources. Seeks to evolve a conceptual approach to performance of the individual actor-director-writer through supervised and independent exercises and projects. Prerequisite: TAPS 0230. For juniors and especially seniors. Enrollment limited to 20.

TAPS 1410M. Shakespeare and Philosophy (COLT 1410M).

Interested students must register for COLT 1410M.

TAPS 1415. 13 Positions.

A lab exploring the physical, aesthetic and performative relationship of the body to a student's cultural cosmology. We will also look at certain (so-called) traditional aspects to successful forms (a performance, a dance, a film-video, a piece of writing, a painting, sculpture…) and then attempt to break it down and reframe this tradition with a discipline (rigor) that evokes accidents and the inexplicable. A lab that examines how the creative process is thought about, considered and looked upon, watched, inside and out. A fresh outlook, (shared) labor and or proposition on how to construct/deconstruct the right/wrong/right art work.

TAPS 1425. Queer Performance.

This seminar will examine the many meanings of queer performance. We will consider queerness as it is performed in a range of aesthetic genres—theater, music, dance, performance art, digital media—as well as in everyday vernacular contexts. We will explore how the interdisciplinary academic field of queer studies has turned to performance and performativity as key modes through which gender and sexuality are expressed. The class will place a particular emphasis on queer of color, trans*-, and crip/queer approaches and cultural practices, addressing how queerness intersects with other axes of social difference, including race, class, and ability.

TAPS 1430. Russian Theatre and Drama.

An overview of Russian theatre and drama from the 18th century to the late 20th century. Emphasis on plays as texts and historical documents, and on theatrical conditions, productions, and innovations. All readings are in English. Russian area studies concentrators are encouraged to enroll. Instructor permission required.

TAPS 1450M. The Archival of Gestures (MES 1450).

Interested students must register for MES 1450.

TAPS 1480. Sweating Infrastructure: Cultures of Support in Dance and Live Performance.

As the income gap in the US has grown, the possibility of a career in the performing arts has become increasingly less viable for a significant percentage of the population. Issues of arts funding, labor, and professionalization have been debated across academic disciplines and by arts organizers who experience these instabilities firsthand. Researching infrastructure through a dance studies lens, this course reframes the role of embodied action, interaction and assembly in sustaining enabling environments for the arts. By reviewing literature and interviewing arts professionals, this project evidences how people “sweat” the problem of sustaining art work differently on sociocultural grounds.

TAPS 1485. The Activist Body.

The current explosion of activist activity on and beyond college campuses has been called a “movement moment” (McCarthy, 2017), signaling an urgent need to address what it means to be a politically responsive body in the world today. This course examines activism as a topic and performance practice rooted in the body’s capacity to disrupt the political status quo. Building from the growing literature on protest and social movement in dance and performance studies, students will theorize activism and agentic embodiment, analyze cultural events that claim activist intentions, and body forth activist strategies and manifestos in weekly movement sessions.

TAPS 1500A. Advanced Playwriting: Invitation to the Devout Life..

A practice-based class designed to promote prompt, connected and original writing for the live environment. We move through the regular practice of assorted exercises to the development of a completed script by the end of the term. Inquiry is guided by selected readings in esthetic theory, philosophy and theology (Anne Carson, St. Vincent de Paul, Simone Weil, others). Previous playwriting experience preferred. Instructor permission required.

TAPS 1500H. Advanced Playwriting.

This course brings together students of diverse writing backgrounds to build conversation and experimentation around multiple narrative techniques. Classes include craft exercises as well as readings from a range of texts––all to look deeper at how story-worlds are built. Writers create original theatrical works, and through workshop-style classes discover their own particular voice and what makes it unique and necessary. Open to graduate and undergraduate students. Contact instructor to learn more.

TAPS 1500I. Screenwriting.

Screenwriting is a course designed to familiarize the neophyte screenwriter with the basic principles of writing for the silver-screen. By closely examining produced films, in-depth readings of both good and bad scripts, and through the writing of our own, we will gain an understanding of how screenplays are written, and written well. The course will provide a foundation in the basics of the three-act act structure, dramatic action, character arc, the revision process, and an introduction to the business of screenwriting. By the end of the semester we will have produced and polished a 10 page/minute manuscript. Enrollment limited to 17.

TAPS 1500J. Script Adaptation.

This class aims to develop skills and techniques for the creation of new dramatic works based upon previously published or performed material. The unit explores the process of creating a script from previously published source material. To achieve this goal, we will explore the problems inherent in creating dramatic material from source material of various forms. The module will enhance core skills in scriptwriting, dramaturgy and script analysis. Weekly classes will include lecture and discussion, readings, film screenings and writing exercises. Enrollment limited to 17.

TAPS 1500L. Acting Together on the World Stage: Writing and Political Performance.

Practical research in art for social change, with an emphasis on writing and composition, resulting in a series of solo and group devised performances (or well articulated proposals). Each week, in-session writing and devising exercises, coupled with a discussion of critical readings and case histories, build to projects that may be constructed solo or in small groups. Final projects may take the form of carefully constructed, achievable plans for long-range implementation. Students wil be required to attend special workshops, field trips, and performances as scheduled through this semester; this schedule will be available at the first class. Enrollment limited to 12.

TAPS 1500M. Advanced Playwrighting: Guhahamuka.

Guhahamuka is a Kinyarwanda word meaning “breathlessness,” sometimes applied to the wordlessness that befalls the survivors of trauma. We will progress through a series of graduated exercises design to work-out the fundamentals of writing for the live encounter, with an emphasis on the uses of testimony, and language that pushes into spaces where language doesn’t fit, doesn’t belong, fails, converts itself to different energies. How a writer’s technique images spiritual practice, and avails of the useful impossibilities of incarnation and transcendence. Taking on a practical language from contemplative traditions as means of ordering the writer’s craft.

TAPS 1500N. Advanced Undergraduate Playwriting: Experiments in Time.

For centuries, from Pedro Calderón to Ntozake Shange and Caryl Churchill, playwrights have manipulated time to tell stories and create dynamic play-worlds. This class will challenge playwrights to build non-linear time into their plays and use specific approaches to “time-telling” to supercharge content. Students will read plays, essays and engage in time-based theater experiments to explore perspectives that challenge our human-ego-driven experience of time. How is time embodied? How are we programmed to experience time as a Western capitalist value system? How can we use non-linear time in our plays as a radical political act? Students will complete 3 short projects during the course, including two one-act plays and one piece of site-specific or performance art.

TAPS 1500P. Asian American Theater Making.

This course frames Asian American theater-making as a dynamic assertion of presence, autonomy and complexity against and beyond a backdrop of cultural, legal and historical exclusion, erasure and assimilation in the United States. In investigating theatrical practices and contexts made about, by and/or for Asian Americans, we explore the in/stability of identity as embodied sites of ambivalence, tension and solidarity. How do Asian American theater artists integrate, reject and transcend the myriad expectations of identity and representation? As scholars and artists, we will read plays, witness and create performances, discuss critical and historical essays and artifacts, and interact with active practitioners across a wide spectrum of Asian American theater-making. Open to advanced undergraduates/graduate students.

TAPS 1500Q. Black Expressive Cultures.

This course explores black expressive cultures in diasporan perspective.

TAPS 1500R. Auditioning for the Camera.

This course focuses on learning to audition for scenes and scripts from film and television from the vast array of the entertainment industry. Work will cater to each student’s individual needs, choosing material that both strengthens and stretches them. We will work on preparing scenes for an audition: in person, on zoom, self-tapes and cold auditions. We will discuss over-preparing and under-preparing and how to dress and present yourself. This work should complement and enhance previous acting studies and help you with an understanding about the nuanced shifts actors need to make when auditioning for the camera, and the difference between auditioning and playing the role. Your professor is a working actor who will provide examples of what she is teaching in real time. The semester will culminate with 3 audition pieces from both media filmed for your use. S/NC

TAPS 1500S. Performance and Media After Reality.

This class considers crises of “reality” in theatre, photography, television, and digital media. Reality media—like realist drama and reality television—and reality-breaking technologies, from electric stage lighting to the social internet, stage worlds in which some subjects are more real than others. We will ask: how do works articulate reality? How do assertions of reality support political life? Can alternate realities challenge carceral and colonial realisms? What does it mean to be seen as, or to be, unreal?

This is a discussion-based class with ongoing creative and critical response work. Enrollment will be determined at the first session.

TAPS 1500T. Liberatory Strategies for Whole Artist Collaboration.

This first year MFA course serves as foundational curriculum for fostering and sustaining anti-racist and generative learning spaces shared by MFA Actors, Directors and Playwrights and other key student collaborators. This course seeks to introduce and confirm a set of working shared language, analysis and practices anchored in consent-affirming and anti-racist commitments necessary for the theater work of embodied story-telling and collective world-building. How do artists create across, with and at times against differences in identities, lived experiences, imaginative aesthetics and contexts? How can artists discern between generative and harm-based conflict, enacting care, rest and accountability within collaborative projects and the larger theater ecosystem? Open to MFA graduate students and advanced undergraduates by permission.

TAPS 1500U. Decoding the Broadway Musical.

Broadway musicals have been described as among the few truly American art forms. In this class, we will explore the history, present, and future of this quintessentially American artform, focusing on its unique combination of music, drama, dance, spectacle, and commerce. Surveying the history of the artform in four broad phases, we will consider how musical theater has represented quintessentially human conflicts around identity and belonging, as well as attend to its treatment of race, gender, sexuality, and social class. In addition to lectures, readings, discussions, and viewings, students will also have the opportunity to perform solo or group scenes/songs on four designated class dates. Assignments will include short response posts, a midterm paper, in-class presentations, and a final project.

TAPS 1510. Inventing Directing.

"Inventing Directing" is a course that deals with how a director gets thought into stage space via: different emphases communicated to actors; attention to the life of objects; exploration of the languages of stage space; accessing personal experience to deepen point of view; drawing upon film, the practical application of theory, and literature; vertical thinking; and spatializing time. The course will involve practical exercises and work on both scenes from plays and on material drawn from other sources.

TAPS 1520. Seminar in Theatre Arts.

Seminar designed for senior theatre arts concentrators, required during Semester VII. Topics focus on career planning and theatre arts subjects not dealt with in other courses. Enrollment limited to seniors.

TAPS 1540. Bold Bodies: Race in Feminist & Queer Performance (GNSS 1540).

Interested students must register for GNSS 1540.

TAPS 1600. Dramaturgy.

This course is an introduction to dramaturgy and script analysis for advanced undergraduates. It will introduce a variety of plays and critical approaches to dramatic texts and performances with emphasis on culturally divergent dramaturgies, adaptation and textual analysis for performance.

TAPS 1610. Political Theatre of the Americas.

This course explores political theatre and performance in Latin America, the US and Canada. The primary concern will be the use of performance in indigenous rights, queer rights, and gender equity campaigns as well as general critiques of socioeconomic inequity. The course examines the strategies used by actors in theatrical performances, performance art, and political protests that use the tools of performance. Exploration is of the rich relationship between politics and performance. There are no prerequisites, but one course in either Latin American Studies or Theatre and Performance Studies is recommended.

TAPS 1630. Performativity and the Body: Staging Gender, Staging Race.

This course examines how we develop and interrogate different meanings around our bodies through performance practices in everyday life and on stage. Specifically, we analyze how race and gender are regulated, reinforced, reworked, and subverted through embodied modes of performance. We explore how raced and gendered bodies are constructed, reconstructed, and deconstructed through everyday performances of self from fashion to food to surgery. We will also examine works by playwrights, visual artists, and theatre artists who deploy performance practices to make, unmake, and remake historical, social, and political understandings of our bodies as raced and gendered.

TAPS 1640. Theatre and Conquest in Greater Mexico: From Cortes to NAFTA.

Explores the intimate relationship between theatre and conquest in the Americas as contained in missionary accounts, plays, performances and visual art from Cortés arrival to the present. Students will analyze plays and performances that stage the Spanish Conquest, consider the threatrical procedures of the conquest and examine theatrical representation as a methodology of conquest in the Americas.

TAPS 1650. 21st Century American Drama.

Course is designed to familiarize students with contemporary American playwriting from 2000-2005. We will explore how these plays reflect our current moment with attention to conceptions of gender, sexuality, national identity, trauma and memory. Playwrights may include Jorge Cortinas, Sarah Ruhl, Tony Kushner, Juilana Francis, Sabina Berman, and Carl Hancock Rux.

TAPS 1670. Latinx Theatre + Performance.

This course will be an introduction to Latino/a theatre concentrating on the following themes: borders, diaspora and exile, political and personal identities, sexuality, gender and violence, and latino re-imagination of U.S. and Latin history. We will read Chicano/a, Cuban American and Nuyorican drama and performance art. No prerequisites.

TAPS 1680. Performance, Politics, and Engagement.

A survey course in engaged and political performance; this seminar investigates social practice, political theatre, and dance as points of entry into contemporary questions in ecology, ethics, gender, racialization, sexuality, perception, labor, and value. Course materials include artists’ and scholars’ writings as well as scores, scripts, theoretical writings, photographs, films, reenactments, and performance procedures. Assignments include research projects on art and social movements, performance tasks, and scholarly writing projects. An existing performance or arts practice is not required. The course may be especially relevant to TAPS students, the Engaged Scholars Program, and Visual Art. There are no prerequisites.

TAPS 1690. Performance, Art, and Everyday Life.

Provides an introduction to performance-based art. Some knowledge of the historical avant-garde is required. The class will explore site-specific work, time-based work, life art, body art, instruction art and a variety of intermedial artwork. Theories of "theatricality" and "performativity" will be explored as will expressive properties of repetition, excess, mimesis, banality, mobility, framing, failure and shock. Enrollment limited to 16.

TAPS 1700A. Voices Beneath the Veil (AFRI 1110).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1110.

TAPS 1700B. African American Folk Traditions and Cultural Expression (AFRI 1120).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1120.

TAPS 1700C. Advanced RPM Playwriting (AFRI 1050A).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1050A.

TAPS 1700D. Intermediate RPM Playwriting (AFRI 1050D).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1050D.

TAPS 1700E. Introduction to Post-Colonial African and African Diasporic Theatre (AFRI 1050H).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1050H.

TAPS 1700G. Roots of African American Fiction: Oral Narrative through Richard Wright (AFRI 1050M).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1050M.

TAPS 1700H. Art and Civic Engagement: Creativity/Reality (AFRI 1050P).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1050P.

TAPS 1700I. RPM Playwriting (AFRI 1050E).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1050E.

TAPS 1700J. Musical Performance and Theatricality (MUSC 1680).

Interested students must register for MUSC 1680.

TAPS 1700K. Site- Specific Writing in Brown's Historical Spaces (AMST 1570).

Interested students must register for AMST 1570.

TAPS 1700L. African American Musical Theatre (MUSC 1905D).

Interested students must register for MUSC 1905D.

TAPS 1700V. Voices Beneath the Veil (AFRI 1110).

Interested students must register for AFRI 1110.

TAPS 1710A. Open Source Culture (MCM 1700N).

Interested students must register for MCM 1700N.

TAPS 1710B. Radical Media (MCM 1700P).

Interested students must register for MCM 1700P.

TAPS 1720. Queer Relations: Aesthetics and Sexuality (ENGL 1900R).

Interested students must register for ENGL 1900R.

TAPS 1740. Artful Teaching: Intersecting the Arts with Foreign and Second Language Acquisition (POBS 1740).

Interested students must register for POBS 1740.

TAPS 1751. Choreodaemonics.

The phrase “choreodaemonics” is a contraction of “choreography” (the art of bodily movement through space and time creating meaning) and “daemon” (a background computational process). Within this rubric, this seminar seeks to explore the creative opportunities and political risks of creative production through emerging technologies of AI, robotics and virtual presence. Most urgently, "Choreodaemonics" examines the ideological, technological and aesthetic collisions wherever humans collide with emerging computational systems. Students will consider the histories and processes of creative production and technological development, and ultimately investigate the performative consequences of embodiment by computational agents through robots, avatars, games, software, customer service platforms and social media.

TAPS 1900K. Reading Sex (ENGL 1900K).

Interested students must register for ENGL 1900K.

TAPS 1900R. Queer Relations: Aesthetics and Sexuality (ENGL 1900R).

Interested students must register for ENGL 1900R.

TAPS 1970. Independent Reading and Research.

Intensive reading and research on selected topics arranged in terms of special needs and interests of the student. A written proposal must be submitted to the instructor and the chair of the theatre arts department before the project can be approved. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.

TAPS 1970P. Theatre Practicum.

This half-credit course offers the practical study of theatre through participation as a member of the production team of a Sock and Buskin theatre or dance production. Regular rehearsals, coaching and mentorship by department faculty and staff, participation in technical rehearsals and performances are required. Enrollment is available after auditioning/assignment of roles. Each student will be assigned an advisor/mentor for this process. This half-credit course offering is appropriate for students engaging in production projects that are smaller in scale or shorter in duration than befitting of the one-credit Theatre Practicum course offering, TAPS 1251P. S/NC only.

TAPS 1971. Digital Media and Virtual Performance (MUSC 1971).

Interested students must register for MUSC 1971.

TAPS 1971M. Digital Media and Virtual Performance (MUSC 1971).

Interested students must register for MUSC 1971.

TAPS 1990. Senior Honors Thesis Preparation.

To be taken by all students accepted into the theatre arts honors program. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.

TAPS 2001A. Intertextuality, Interconnectivity: A Performative Sonnet Approach (ARTS 2001)..

Interested students must register for ARTS 2001.

TAPS 2010M. Digital Performance (MUSC 2210).

Interested students must register for MUSC 2210.

TAPS 2050. Dramaturgy.

This course will be an introduction to dramaturgy for MFA Actors, Directors and Playwrights and advanced undergraduates. The course will introduce a wide variety of play and critical approaches to dramatic texts and performances with emphasis on culturally divergent dramaturgies, embodied dramaturgy, adaptation and textual analysis for performance.

TAPS 2100. Seminar in Performance Studies and Theatrical Theory.

Key texts in Performance Studies and Theatre Theory selected from works by ancient, modern, and contemporary philosophers, dramatists, performers, and theorists. Covers basic methodological trends crucial to thinking about mimesis and alterity, acting and actants, identity formation and disidentification, decolonial theory and feminist theory in relationship to the study of performance, performativity, drama and theatricality. Enrollment limited to 20.

TAPS 2120. Revolution as a Work of Art.

A study of Russian revolutionary culture and new personhood, ca. 1905-1930, with readings from Russian fiction, philosophy, art criticism, dramatic and political theory, and cultural and theatre history. Topics include the revolution of the spirit, the culture of the future, iconography and spectacle, charismatic authority, and revolutionary terror. For graduate students and qualified juniors and seniors. All readings are in English. Those who can may read some materials in Russian. Enrollment limited to 20.

TAPS 2200A. Abstraction and Resistance.

A study of the uses of abstraction in modernist and postmodern theatre and drama, film, painting, and narrative fiction and of the engagement of resistance as a performative strategy for conceptualizing such nominally unframed and alogical texts. The works of selected theatre directors and playwrights, philosophers and theorists, novelists, filmmakers, and artists are examined and discussed.

TAPS 2200B. Neoliberalism and Performance.

This course will explore the relationship between performance (dance, theatre, performance art, public art) and Neoliberal economic and governmental policies and practices. We will place special emphasis on how the arts participate in modes of labor flexibility, globalization, entrepreneurship, governmentality and surveillance as well as how these forms critique these phenomenon. Critical readings will include political theory, play and performance texts and videos and economic theory.

TAPS 2200E. Historiography.

This graduate seminar is dedicated to a thorough examination of theater and performance historiography. The course will consider methodologies of writing about the past, concentrating on analyzing the writing of history and examining how historical information is obtained, imagined and disseminated in our field, where embodied practice is crucial to thinking. This course will necessarily consider how historiography is understood with the discipline of history as well as performance and theatre studies.

TAPS 2200G. Performance, Photography, and the Live Border.

What are the limits of approaching live performance as essentially ephemeral? What is at stake in the lines drawn between media histories and theatre histories that account for the "still"? Questions such as these will be posed across media as we explore histories of photography and tableaux vivant, as well as critical theories in performance studies, visual studies, art history, media studies, and theatre studies. We will look at images documenting violence, images re-presenting documented violence, and violence to documentary images in the course of a broader conversation about the "life" or "liveness" of the still. Enrollment limited to 20.

TAPS 2200I. Wittgenstein, Writing and Performance.

Performance is the ideal forum in which to discuss Wittgenstein's philosophy, especially as the latter involves rigorous close reading of the physical and metaphysical identities of words, thought and action in the construction of discernible and livable roles and courses of action and understanding within the given circumstances of the mysterious world into which we are born. Wittgenstein's aphoristic writing, which creates a poetic structure, along with the necessary incompleteness of Wittgenstein's thought expression and the wide range of philosophical interpretations of his work by numerous artists and theorists underscore the liveliness of Wittgenstein's writing as creative texts in themselves. Enrollment limited to 17 juniors, seniors, and graduate students. Instructor permission required.

TAPS 2200K. Digital Performance (MUSC 2210).

Interested students must register for MUSC 2210.

TAPS 2200N. Liveness: Performance and Neoanimism in Late Capitalism.

Has the “affect economy’s” 24/7 live shifted medial maps distinguishing live from object arts? As animacy and inanimacy warp, do orientations to duration, participation, and relation shift? Can liveness extend to the Paleolithic in today’s “new materialist” imaginary? If "Cinema is Dead," does it join theatre as a zombie form? Modernist “animism,” “totemism,” and “primitivism” provide a backdrop to recent returns to animism in Chen, Bennet, Latour and others. Does theatre’s separation from ritual and possession demand rethinking via “relationscapes” and the critical turn to affect theory? Art/performance, theatre, cinema will be under discussion, from Euripides Bacchae to Gucci Bacchae.

TAPS 2200T. Who Else: mimesis, performance, psyche.

In this course, we’ll read in, around, and against psychoanalytic theory to think about how theories of the subject, and especially of desire and pleasure, have intersected with ideas about aesthetics and performance. Throughout, we’ll pay special attention to constructions of alterity—difference from the self—and how love, art and performance work in relation to different kinds of difference.

TAPS 2200Z. Embodiment, Materiality, and Cultural Production.

This course investigates embodiment as one of many materials engaged in contemporary art and performance practices. We will explore concepts of body/mind, the haptic, interiority, intersubjectivity, experience, spatiality, temporality, relationality, liveness, and futurity and how it occurs within a wide variety of cultural productions. Course readings are drawn from dance studies, critical race studies, gender and sexuality studies, performance studies, and museum and curatorial studies. Our theoretical inquiries will culminate in the practical experience of crafting and producing an exhibition and/or live public event. No prior performance or art-making experience is required, however, students with active art practices are encouraged to utilize this opportunity to create and present their own works.

TAPS 2270B. Performance in a Virtual World (MUSC 2270B).

Interested students must register for MUSC 2270B.

TAPS 2300. Pedagogy Seminar.

This half-credit course is designed to support MFA Playwriting students preparing to begin teaching the following year, as well as TAPS PhD students as they prepare to teach, begin to teach, or continue teaching. The intent is to offer a space for students to reflect on teaching, bring concerns, and offer each other feedback on pedagogical issues; to introduce resources (from Brown and not) that can help with teaching, both methodologically and practically; and to workshop concrete teaching tasks, such as building and executing lesson plans, grading, and designing syllabi. Students in the course will also observe classes taught by three other instructors during the semester.

TAPS 2310. Graduate Playwriting.

This course is a combination of workshop and seminar, which MFA Playwriting students take every semester in residence. Students write and revise a new play over the course of the term, sharing work periodically. Weekly reading assignments (plays, theoretical texts, other literary works, works in other media) are designed to expand and unsettle your grasp of this art form. Requirements include detailed written and oral feedback, lively participation, presentations, and written exercises. May be taken multiple times for credit. Other graduate students and undergraduates may contact the instructor to request admission to the course, based on a writing sample and relevant experience. S/NC.

TAPS 2400A. Concepts of Space and Time in Media Discourses (HMAN 2970C).

Interested students must register for HMAN 2970C.

TAPS 2450. Exchange Scholar Program.

TAPS 2505. Fundamentals of Acting: Modern and Contemporary Realism.

This course will cover three modalities. Acting/Scene Study: Realism will provide a fundamental understanding of Stanislavski-based acting within the realistic style, developing: a working understanding of a five-week rehearsal process; a system of text analysis based upon events and cause-and-effect; beginning the work of integrating vocal and physical technique into each individual student’s acting method. Voice and Speech I will provide the basis of the actor’s three years of vocal training, gaining an understanding of the actor’s personal vocal blocks as they relate to how the breath resides in the body. Contact Improvisation will investigate improvisation movement through physical contact.

TAPS 2515. Acting Technique: Fundamentals of Physical Awareness.

All Voice and Speech work has two underlying goals: for the actor to be heard; for the actor to be understood. A daily warmup, rigorous drilling, the learning of IPA, and its application in Standard American dialect will build muscle to strengthen your instrument for clarity of speech and train your ear to the nuances of speech sounds, invaluable for dialect and character work. The Alexander Technique uses gentle guidance to enable movement to take place unencumbered by habitual effort. Voice, Speech and Alexander work together to enable the actor to produce clear, tension-free sound.

TAPS 2535. Directing 1: Fundamentals in Analysis and Action for Brown/Trinity MFA Actors and Directors.

This course is designed to activate the mind of the director. It is a detailed investigation of the creative process and the beginning of the foundation for communication with actors, designers and audiences in the making of live performance with text. MFA students will participate in Directing Lab, rehearsing as assigned.

TAPS 2545. Dramaturgy.

This course will be an introduction to dramaturgy advanced undergraduates and MFA students. The course will introduce a wide variety of play and critical approaches to dramatic texts and performances with emphasis on culturally divergent dramaturgies, embodied dramaturgy, adaptation and textual analysis for performance. This course meets for 2 of the 3 hours with TAPS 1600 Dramaturgy for MFA students; Graduate Students will take Deb Salem Smith’s Playwriting course for the final hour of their course credit.

TAPS 2555. Advanced Acting: Modern and Contemporary Realism.

Purpose: To provide a deepened understanding of the principles of Stanislavski-based acting within the realistic style; to reinforce and practice a working understanding of a five-week rehearsal process; to develop a system of text analysis based upon events and cause-and-effect; to understand and deepen the process of individual personalization; to continue the work of integrating vocal and physical technique into each individual student's acting method.

TAPS 2565. Acting Technique II: Strength, Expansion and Articulation.

This course is open only to students of the Brown University/Trinity Rep MFA Consortium program. Continued studio exploration of various dance and movement techniques and vocal articulation and practice, designed to promote effective, healthy usage of the actor's instrument, as well as an introduction to dialect work and stage combat. This course includes separate classes in Speech, Alexander Technique and Movement Technique. Mandatory S/NC.

TAPS 2575. Theatre History in a Changing Present.

This course will be an introduction to the offerings in theatre history, theory and practice offered at Brown University and environs in relation to a changing American Theatre. Each week will feature an original guest speaker from TAPS or other affiliate departments/institutions to expand your understanding. First Look Production is included in this course. This production process is a companion production experience to course work done in the fall semester. Students will experience the full process of revising and staging original works, with opportunities to work as actor and/or director, playwright, producer—actively applying conceptual knowledge gained from first semester courses.

TAPS 2585. Directing II: Collaborative Communication.

Building on Directing I: Fundamentals in Analysis and Action this course focuses on communication between actors and directors. Methodologies are tested and explored through practice in studio scene work. Rehearsal preparation, diagnostic processes are developed and practiced, and a detailed exploration of the directors preparation is the final project.

TAPS 2605. Fundamentals of Acting: Shakespeare and Classical Verse.

An introduction to the conventions of classical English verse performance, including elements of meter, heightened language, metaphor and rhetoric, with the goal of expanding the actor's understanding of the principles of realistic acting to the rigorous demands of Shakespearean and other classical texts. This course includes separate classes in Scene Study, Voice and Movement, all designed to support and promote heightened poetic expressivity in performance. S/NC

TAPS 2615. Acting Technique III: Poetic Expression.

Vocal and physical work designed to support the exploration of classical verse acting, with an emphasis on expanding a range of performance beyond realism. Rhythm, fluidity, presence, power, clarity of thought and the expression of emotional depth through language and movement is the focus of studio practice. Also included is introduction to singing technique. This course includes separate classes in Movement Technique, Alexander Technique and Singing.

TAPS 2625. Playwriting Dramaturgy Practicum.

This course is advanced playwriting and script analysis for second year students. We will look deeper at the tools and craft of playwriting. We will begin by exploring adaptation—what are the bones and tissues of a given story? How can that body be transformed into a theatrical story? What is required? What changes? What is the relationship between form and content? We will transition from adaptation to writing original full-length works.

TAPS 2635. Directing III: The Director's Vision.

This course is for Brown/Trinity MFA Actors and Directors and focuses on the vision of the director. Deep investigation in complicated language, verse, period. Continued development in collaboration with actors as well as personal mission, and vision. Seminar discussion of current work in process and production, exploration of contemporary dramatic forms and practitioners, issues in the art and craft of directing, diagnostic and exchange around the breaking of boundaries and best practices. Seminar runs concurrently with Directors Lab, Director projects, including thesis, and verse.

TAPS 2645. Fall Directing Practicum.

This credit is designed to build the director's skills in preparation, script analysis, and rehearsal processes in the making of a Shakespeare production which tours into the Providence School System, a kind of "mobile unit" production. This project has very clear parameters and minimal design to center the work on the embodiment of the text by the actors. It is intended to center the actor in the making of work, requires a deep understanding of the text through analysis, and an edit to get it to a length that will support the tour.

TAPS 2655. Advanced Acting: Shakespeare and Classical Verse.

In-depth study of the methods and practice of classical acting, with the goal of developing professional-level skill and mastery of the form. Actors work toward total integration of the physical and vocal instrument into a unified whole to achieve complete expressivity of thought, emotion, character and imagination through poetic language and vigorous, purposeful and creative physicality. This course includes separate classes in Scene Study, Voice and Movement Composition.

TAPS 2665. Acting Technique IV: Creativity and Virtuosity.

A culmination of the technical practice of the previous three semesters, with the goal of achieving a professional level of technical expertise. Through mastery of the vocal and physical instrument, the actor is prepared to fulfill creative, imaginative and athletic choices in physical and vocal performance. This course includes separate classes in Alexander Technique, Singing and Movement/Devising.

TAPS 2675. Advanced Playwriting.

We will do craft exercises and close readings of texts to look deeper at how works are built. We will explore, discover, and map the mechanics of a diverse range of texts. You will have the opportunity to experiment with those same mechanics to create your own pieces. Through energetic workshop-style classes, you will experience the full process of drafting, hearing aloud, and then revising original works. In charting and defining others' voices, you will discover your own particular voice and what makes it valuable and necessary.

TAPS 2685. Directing IV: Special Topics.

This course is focused on the development of advanced and augmented research and the deepening of communication with designers and production team. Directors will explore a variety of methodologies and approaches to theater-making.

TAPS 2695. Spring Directing Practicum.

Spring Directing Practicum is the spring repertory production in the end of the fourth semester directed by each MFA Directing Student. This production is fully designed with a professional design team and presented to the public at the Pell Chafee Performance Center in cooperation with Trinity Rep.

TAPS 2705. Third Year Practicum: The Actor as Creator.

Based upon a foundation of mastery in realistic and classical acting styles, actors engage in an exploration of historical, modern and contemporary dramatic literature and theatre practice with a goal of developing a personal aesthetic voice that pushes the boundaries of convention and tradition in their mature theatre practice This course includes separate classes in Scene Study, Voice, Movement and Alexander Technique, as well as participation in Director's Lab. S/NC

TAPS 2715. Professional Development and Performance.

This course builds upon the first two years of acting technique training. Students will use the foundational technique acquired as they add the critical component of preparation to enter the professional theater, television, film, and audiobook industries. Actors will select material for themselves and their colleagues in preparation for spring Showcase rehearsals. Students will cut/arrange selected material to an appropriate length, propose several partner pairings for each scene, and work on further adaptations and pairings as necessary. Workshops with industry professionals in casting, entertainment unions, agencies, self-taping, audiobook work, on-camera technique and auditioning will be scheduled throughout the semester. Mandatory S/NC

TAPS 2735. Directing V: Advanced Directing - Directing Seminar.

Seminar discussion of current work in process and production, exploration of contemporary dramatic forms and practitioners, issues in the art and craft of directing, diagnostic and exchange around the breaking of boundaries and best practices. Seminar runs concurrently with Directors Lab, Director projects, including thesis, and verse. Directors Lab provides work for critical analysis that is the bedrock of the conversation in Fall Seminar, through diagnostic tools.

TAPS 2755. Third Year Practicum: The Actor as Total Theatre Artist.

Actor's produce, direct, write and perform an original solo piece as a culmination of their ongoing study of acting, directing and playwriting, with the goal of developing confident expression of their singular voice, point of view and artistic aesthetic as they enter the professional world. Writing, devising, presentation and critique of ongoing work all take place throughout the semester, culminating in a final public performance that serves as an acting thesis and manifesto of the actor's identity as an individual artist. This course includes private work with members of the Acting, Directing, Voice, Movement, and Playwriting faculty.

TAPS 2765. Professional Development and Performance - Spring.

This course is a continuation of work begun in the fall semester. Students in this course will rehearse scenes selected in the fall semester, choose and rehearse songs or musical material, and stage both for their professional Showcase. They will perform their Showcase for our community in Providence, and travel to New York and Los Angeles to perform for industry professionals. In addition, several single and multi-day workshops with industry professionals may also be scheduled throughout the course of the semester. These workshops will be scheduled based on the availability of industry guests.

TAPS 2775. Directing Seminar.

Seminar discussion of current work in process and production, exploration of contemporary dramatic forms and practitioners, issues in the art and craft of directing, diagnostic and exchange around the breaking of boundaries and best practices. Seminar runs concurrently with Directors Lab, Director projects, including thesis, and verse. Directors Lab provides work for critical analysis. This course is required for all Brown/Trinity Rep MFA Directors. The course is S/NC.

TAPS 2890A. Theatricality: Labor, Time, Affect.

No description available.

TAPS 2970. Comprehensive Examination Preparation.

For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the registration fee to continue active enrollment while preparing for a preliminary examination.

TAPS 2975. Thesis Workshop.

For graduate playwrights, in their second and third years, rehearsing and revising their thesis projects. May be taken multiple times for credit. Must be taken both semesters in the third year.

TAPS 2980. Graduate Level Independent Reading and Research.

A program of intensive reading and research on selected topics arranged in terms of special needs and interests of the student. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.

TAPS 2981. Master's Thesis Research.

Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.

TAPS 2982. Graduate Level Independent Reading & Research - 0.5 credit.

A 0.5 credit program of intensive reading and assignment preparation on selected topics arranged in terms of the special needs and interests of the student. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.

TAPS 2990. Thesis Preparation.

For graduate students who have met the residency requirement and are continuing research on a full time basis.