BA students may take one of these options for the TD 357T Topics in History/Criticism/Performance Studies/Literature/Dramaturgy requirement.
TD 351S is no longer offered.
Please check the course schedule for options available each semester. New options may be added at any time, so please check back. If one section is full, try to add cross-listed courses, if available.
T&D Faculty Directory | University Directory | Course Syllabi
I tried to register for an open T D course that should be available to me, but it gives me an error message, what do I do?
This likely means the remaining seats are reserved for certain students who need to take it in order to graduate in a timely manner. You’re welcome to add yourself to the waitlist, if available. For instructions on how to add to a waitlist, please refer to the Registration & Waitlist Examples Wiki page.
The option I'm enrolled in isn't satisfying the TD 357T requirement on my degree audit, what do I do?
Degree audits are updated after the 12th day of classes. You may also email Mark-Anthony your name, EID and the course unique number, so he can adjust your audit.
T D 357T ADAPTATIONS IN THEATRE DANCE
Learn about and experiment with adaptations of literature and other media into theatre and dance.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T AFR RELIG CULTURE/CREATIVITY
Examine religion as an aesthetic practice and explore the inventiveness of the imagination that underlines African religious practices. Study religious practices spanning from the pre-colonial and post-colonial eras to the contemporary period particularly in urban centers.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T American Musical
T D 357T CONFRONTING LGBTQ OPPRESSN
Peers for Pride (PfP) is a peer facilitation program of the Gender and Sexuality Center. Students will take two courses during the academic year in partnership with the Gender for Women’s Gender Studies. During the program, students build applied theatre, critical analysis, and facilitation skills as they build the workshop “What Do Thriving Queer Communities Look Like?” Students create message scenes and activating scenes in the workshop to share skills and build space for conversation and accountability across LGBTQIA+ communities and with supporters of LGBTQIA+ communities. Through their facilitation and reflection after workshop facilitation, students continue to build a knowledge of performance-based social justice facilitation in higher education and of intersectional LGBTQIA+ realities.
Instructor Consent Required. This is the first course of a two-semester sequence.
To Apply: please fill out this online application and someone will contact you in 3-5 business days. Interested students must complete an application and a short assessment/informal meeting, which will allow instructors to learn more about you and your learning goals that can be scheduled in-person, video call, or conference call. For priority consideration, submit application during the spring and summer semesters. The deadline to apply for the program is the start of the next fall semester.
T D 357T LGBTQ OPPRESSION: DIALOG
Peers for Pride (PfP) is a peer facilitation program of the Gender and Sexuality Center. Students will take two courses during the academic year in partnership with the Gender for Women’s Gender Studies. During the program, students build applied theatre, critical analysis, and facilitation skills as they build the workshop “What Do Thriving Queer Communities Look Like?” Students create message scenes and activating scenes in the workshop to share skills and build space for conversation and accountability across LGBTQIA+ communities and with supporters of LGBTQIA+ communities. Through their facilitation and reflection after workshop facilitation, students continue to build a knowledge of performance-based social justice facilitation in higher education and of intersectional LGBTQIA+ realities.
This is the spring semester course for students who will complete the LGBTQ OPPRESSION course in the fall semester.
T D 357T CREATING A THEATER COMPANY
Please contact instructor for course description.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T Gender & Sexuality in Performance
T D 357T / AFR 330V / C L 323 GREEK TRAGEDY/POSTCOL DRAMA
Greek tragedies are considered one of the greatest heritages of the white western world. But what does it mean when they are adapted by Black/African writers in postcolonial and post-Apartheid societies to narrate their contemporary African histories? What contradictions occur in these adaptations and what creative potentials do they make possible? This course is a study in adaptation of great dramatic literature of the Greek civilizations to their phenomenal evolution into popular African performances. Our task as scholars in this class is the mediation of the meeting of great minds like Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Wole Soyinka, Ola Rotimi, Athol Fugard, Femi Osofisan, Efua Sutherland, and Yael Farber through critical analysis. What insights do we derive about history and culture when Hellenism becomes a narrative paradigm for African/Black nationalism?
We will parse Greek tragedies, the African adaptations, and critical studies of these works to understand the making of multicultural literature, the de-colonization agenda that goes into the project of adaptation, 2 and what world history and culture both gain (or lose) through these re-creative works. As we put the classical writings from Ancient Greek in dialogue with texts that formed the background of African anticolonial revolutions, we will analyze how Africans have used these works to re-shape literary canon and given their world and their histories universal purchase. While this course involves creative writing and some staged performances, you do not need prior experience to be a member of this class.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T / RTF 345 MUSICALS AND AMERICA
The American musical has long been a popular genre through which storytellers, performers and audiences reimagine who we are and how the nation defines itself with respect to norms of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and citizenship. It also has been a forum for stories about social issues of the day, with its conventions as popular entertainment allowing boundary-pushing content to be given voice. Musicals and “America” surveys the genre’s history and evolution, with an emphasis on musical and dance films and television series since the 1950s, and provides tools for critical analysis of musical narratives, performances involving song and/or dance, and the representation of identities across the decades. We’ll watch a number of important films and television series in this history (including Rent, Stormy Weather, Funny Girl, Zoot Suit, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), and read and respond to scholarship on Hollywood, Broadway and television musicals, with a focus on the ways in which cinematic renditions of song and dance make meaning.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T Narrative & Physical Performance
T D 357T OPERA PRODUCTION HISTORY
Explore opera as theater, focusing on the historical development of opera production elements as they relate to questions of interpretation and artistic agency from the early modern period to the present.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T / WGS 335 / C L 323 PERFORMING LGBTQ+
This discussion-based seminar takes a multi-disciplinary, multi-media, approach to study LGBTQ+ performance in the U.S., historically and in the present moment. We will also explore how the fields of queer theory and queer studies have turned to performance and performativity as key modes through which gender and sexuality are expressed and understood.
Focusing on different artists almost each class day, we will assess a wide variety of staged performances, (theatre, dance, performance art, multi-media works), in galleries (installations), in community sites (social practice art, community-based art, pageants), in video/film (online media platforms, as well as film and television markets) to ask how LGBTQ+ performance has informed LGBTQ experience, and continues to do so today.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T REINVENTING US HISTORY
US theatre history has been written the same way for decades. Scholarship on identity and experience has been robust for some time and had an enormous impact on theatre as an educational, social, cultural, and/or political institution. Despite this excellent work, the stories about US theatre have changed very little. This class will explore ways to understand theatre in the US in very different ways including geography, language, immigration, borders, methods, and host of other categories. This course assumes that the contributions of the Hong Fook Tong Chinese Dramatic Company and Compañia Dramática de Hernádez-Villalongín are as consequential to US theatre as the Keith Albee vaudeville circuit. It also assumes that Asturias por Heredar un Sobrino a su Tío is as crucial a play as The Contrast. That Sarah Parker Remond had as much impact on theatre as any activist in the 19th century is basic to this class. Don’t know who these people or plays are? Then this is the course for you. Let’s change history together.
PREREQUISITE: T D 317C & T D 317D Theatre History Before & Since the 18th Century
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T RETROSPECTIVE DEVISING
This studio class will engage a diverse group of performance-makers (designers, actors/dancers/movers, directors, playwrights, teaching-artists, YOU) in creating, accumulating, and exchanging richly poetic and surprising performance material.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T / F A 371 THE BUSINESS OF SELF-MARKETING
Co-taught by producer David Treatman (Broadway, Off-Broadway, film, and podcasts), this course teaches emerging creative professionals how to package themselves, how to network and generate opportunities, and how to deploy the fundamentals of law and relationship management to protect their work and pursue lasting success in creative enterprises.
Whether you are an artist, an investment banker, or just out with your friends, you are always in the business of selling “you.“ The stories that we tell about ourselves, to ourselves and to others, can mean the difference between opening doors or closing them. This course draws on real-world examples, theoretical reading, and practical application of class concepts to confidently and effectively pursue their dreams. From collaborating effectively, to understanding basic contracts, to creating and getting opportunities in an opaque industry, this course prepares students with essential business skills. While this course is designed for students who will pursue a career in entertainment or the arts, it is applicable to anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T THEATRE DIALOG: INTERACTIVE PRF/VLNC PRV
Through this class students will be introduced to and participate in the use of applied theatre as a means to increase awareness, advocating and educating others on issues of interpersonal violence including relationship violence, sexual violence, and stalking. Theatre strategies practiced include various interactive theatre approaches (Pedagogy and Theatre for the Oppressed, Playback), personal narrative, auto-ethnography and documentary form. Improvisation as a devising tool will be integrated throughout the course.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T / WGS 335 TRANS IDENTITIES AND/AS PERFORMANCE
Draws on staged performance to ask how public cultures index, negotiate and experience gender through trans bodies.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T / AFR 330F / AMS 321Q / CRW 325T WRITING FOR BLACK PERFORMANCE
This course will require students to write theatrical pieces as well as critical essays about the performance of black identity in America. Participants will also give oral presentations and perform readings of their work using various African-American performance styles. Students will read texts that examine African-American performance, contemporary black identity, and expressive culture. During the semester, we will explore what Lajos Egri describes as “the art of dramatic writing” or, depending on your style and interests, the art of comedic writing. We will consider the magic of theater and learn ways to use words to shape action on the stage. The main objectives of this course are finding or refining your voice, learning how to write a play or performance text and presenting it to an audience. The term will be spent reading theatre, writing plays and talking about plays–and if we are lucky, maybe even seeing a show or two. This class will introduce students to different theatrical formats such as solo performance, the choreopoem, one-acts, and the full-length traditional play. We will discuss character development, dialogue, monologue, conflict and setting. In acknowledgement of some of the difficulties writers face, we will also consider topics such as inspiration, technique and discipline as well as do a variety of writing exercises. We will also devote time performing assigned texts as well as what we write during class. The course will culminate with staged readings of excerpts from your final projects.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 375H HONORS SEMINAR
Comprehensive introduction to research in the area of theatre and dance.
PREREQUISITE: Upper-division standing; admission to the Honors Program in Theatre and Dance; and consent of the head of the Theatre and Dance Honors Program.
OTHER T&D OPTIONS
T D 351T ART AND THE EPIDEMIC
Art & The Epidemic will examine artistic responses to the AIDS crisis in the United States across a variety of art forms (theatre, visual art, literature, etc) and explore contemporary artistic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The course will delve into social and historical contexts for AIDS and COVID-19 and will look at both epidemics in the context of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. Students from all majors/fields of study are welcome.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 351T DIGITAL STORYTELLING
Explores digital storytelling as an applied performance practice. Students will engage digital storytelling a practice for reflecting on self, building community, and amplifying cultural engagement and social justice. Creative writing and devising through drama and digital technologies; collaborative development and documentation of digital stories and performance collages.
Instructor Consent Required.
T D 351T THEATRE IN MUSEUMS
This course will make performance work with and for community partners to explore access/inclusion/belonging at The Art Galleries for Black Studies and The Blanton Museum of Art. No formal museum experience required beyond an interest in using theatrical strategies and performance to support increase engagement in museum exhibitions through critical and creative thinking. Teaching artists, directors, actors, dancers, playwrights, designers and stage managers area all encouraged to register!Expl
T D 356T Latino Theatre for Young Audiences
T D 357D DRAMATURGY
Dramaturgy is a course for actors, directors, designers, educators, playwrights, and dramaturgs interested in deepening their artistic work. This course aims to give undergraduate students a background in the theory and practice of dramaturgy. After exploring the history of the dramaturg, we will focus on the many aspects of a dramaturg’s job, including the responsibilities of a production dramaturg, new play dramaturg, and literary associate. Students will analyze plays from a dramaturgical perspective through written assignments that deepen critical thinking skills. They will then apply their knowledge to a production in the New Works Festival by conducting research and creating a production casebook. We will also consider how dramaturgy can help us understand public culture and manipulate public response.
No Instructor Consent Required.
The courses below are not allowed as a substitution until further notice.
OTHER Non-T&D OPTIONS
F A 346 Inside the Arts of New York City - UTNY
From Broadway to Brooklyn and far beyond, New York City has a long, evolutionary, and singular presence in the visual and performing arts as one of the greatest cultural capitals of the western world. Through course readings, class discussion, site visits to major art institutions - both historic and those considered more experimental – supplemented by guest speakers, including practicing artists and art scholars, students will gain first-hand and behind-the-scenes knowledge of the depth of art practice and scholarship as defined and shaped by the city itself.
F A 369 Entrepreneurial Artist
F A 371 BUSINESS OF ENTERTAINMENT
This course will focus on the world of commercial entertainment. We will explore all aspects involved in producing live stage and on screen commercial productions. Inspiration (the search for creative content; self-generated or existing), to Organization (Executive, Administrative, Financial, Creative, Legal), Capitalization (Institutional, Independent, Theatrical, Key elements of “The Pitch”), Negotiation of Agreements & Contracts (Owner of Creative Content, Book/Script Writer, Composer, Lyricist, Director, Choreographer, Designers, Actors, Agents, Musicians, Unions, Theatre Owner, Merchandise, Investors, Insurance), and Execution.
No Instructor Consent Required.
F A 371 Offensive Art
What should be done with Confederate statues? Should books in school libraries be censored? Should we avoid and denounce art by creators who behave reprehensibly like Harvey Weinstein or Kanye West? Who should own the “Elgin Marbles” or the Benin Bronzes? Does the First Amendment protect artists from all censorship? Should street artists Banksy and Shepard Fairey be charged with vandalism? Should public dollars be spent on controversial or ugly art the public doesn’t like? Should artists and performers be accountable to a professional code of ethics like doctors and lawyers?Art, theatre, literature, music and dance, and the artists who create them, are often offensive, inflaming deep opposition and controversy. This course will examine cases of offensive and controversial art to examine the nature and cause of offense and what special role art and artists might play in instigating, mediating, and resolving social and political conflicts.
No Instructor Consent Required.
F A 371 Producing Art Social Change
