BA students may take one of these options for the TD 357T 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.
Faculty Directory: https://theatredance.utexas.edu/about/directory/faculty
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 Wiki page: Registration & Waitlist Examples.
SPRING SEMESTER
T D 357D DRAMATURGY DARLINGTON, MADGE Canceled
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.
T D 357T ADAPTATIONS IN THEATRE DANCE DARLINGTON, MADGE
Learn about and experiment with adaptations of literature and other media into theatre and dance.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T RETROSPECTIVE DEVISING ALRUTZ, MEGAN
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 / WGS 335 TRANS IDENTITIES AND/AS PERFORMANCE BONIN-RODRIGUEZ, PAUL
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 THOMPSON, LISA
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.
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.
E 321 Shakespeare
We will read seven of Shakespeare’s plays, sample his non-dramatic poetry as well, and seek insight into his development as a playwright during the last decade of the reign of Queen Elizabeth (d. 1603) and the first decade of the reign of her successor, King James (1603-25). Apart from the impact of these monarchs on Shakespeare’s works, a recurring point of historical reference will be Shakespeare’s influence on his young contemporary, John Milton (1608-73), England’s greatest non-dramatic poet and a politically radical Puritan who served Oliver Cromwell. The occasion for this course emphasis is the recent discovery of Milton’s personal copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, complete with young Milton’s copious marginalia. We will particularly consider Shakespeare’s representations of monarchal pomp and political violence in relation to the regicidal circumstances of Milton’s situation decades later. Our readings will also highlight notable moments in Shakespeare’s plays that reflect on dramatic or theatrical fiction while also being part of the fiction and address the implications of Shakespeare’s persistent bent for metadrama.
Prerequisite: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or Rhetoric and Writing.
E 321P SHAKESPEARE THRU PERFORMANCE
This course explores Shakespeare's plays through performance. We will spend every class period looking in detail at Shakespeare's texts, at the interpretive challenges they present, and at the way performance choices contribute to their meaning. We will consider the original circumstances of their performance, their subsequent history on stage and film, and the critical controversies they have occasioned. Above all we will explore them in action, through our own creative work, in the classroom, in online environments, and, we hope, in the theatre barn at Winedale. The topic for the 2021 class will be “Global Shakespeares”. The class will also include some interaction, through online link-ups, with students from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.
Instructor Consent Required.
RTF 328C / WGS 324C Gender & Media Culture
This course provides an introduction to the critical and theoretical analysis of gender (femininities and masculinities) in media (film, television, new and emerging media). Students will engage dominant and oppositional practices of media production, representation, and reception to investigate the sociocultural mechanisms that shape individual and collective notions of gender in our media-saturated environment. Paying particular attention to wider questions of power, politics, and identity, students will read key texts in cultural, media, and communication studies, as well as influential theories within gender, feminist, and transgender studies. Although primarily focused on the mediated construction of gender, this course insists on an intersectional approach that examines gender in conjunction with race, class, sexuality, nation, and generation.
Prerequisite: Upper-division standing.
RTF 335 / AFR 370 / WGS 324D RACE/CLASS/GENDER IN AMERICAN TV
Television is one of the primary forums through which American notions of race, ethnicity, and citizenship have been constructed, in intersection with class and gender; this class explores the evolution of these dynamics in U.S. televisual representation. In addition to study of how racial and ethnic diversity has been represented in entertainment television since its inception and how various racialized and ethnic groups have participated in television production and consumption, scholarship on these topics and areas of theoretical and popular contention will be surveyed. Critical and cultural studies approaches will be emphasized.
Prerequisite: Upper-division standing.
RTF 335 / MES 342 CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EASTERN CINEMA
This course introduces students to some of the most pertinent themes in celebrated films across Arab countries, Turkey, Iran, and Israel & Palestine. In a region that has experienced decades of war, social uprisings, authoritarianisms, economic, social and political traumas, cinema has served as one of the most expressive avenues of insight into the politics and cultures of these countries. Together we will examine key films and delve into important debates that cross national borders.
The course will be organized into five topical sections. In the first, we will familiarize ourselves with foundational texts on Middle Eastern cinema with questions revolving around themes such as national cinemas, the neorealism/documentary format, postcolonial, Third-Worldist and accented cinemas, and the international film festival circuit. In the following four sections, we will watch films and read accompanying texts that highlight the themes of cultural memory, gender, social trauma, and authority/censorship.
Prerequisite: Upper-division standing.
RTF 345 / AMS 321 THE SILENT FILM
This course explores silent cinema history – its production, reception, marketing and aesthetics, both in the US and globally. Readings draw broadly from US and world film history, also contexts of US cultural history, gender, sexuality and race and ethnicity studies. We will examine film texts, performers and audiences across a variety of topics – from the development of stardom, to early films produced in San Antonio in 1910-1911, to how movie fan culture spread across the US, and global artistic movements, to issues in comic performance and special effects production. The seminar will be focused on student group discussion; there will numerous writing assignments and participation in one of several group projects. Screenings each week will provide illustrations and primary research sources. Students will develop final research and/or creative projects that apply historical and theoretical ideas and information learned throughout the semester.
Prerequisite: Upper-division standing.
RTF 359S / MAS 374 / WGS 340 LATINA FEMINISMS AND MEDIA
This upper-division undergraduate course surveys Chicana and Latina feminist scholarship, activism, and creative expression, with an emphasis on Latina media production and representation in U.S. entertainment media. We will explore the rise and development of Latina activism and feminisms in relation to the Chicana/o, Puerto Rican, and U.S. women’s movements and in relation to historical and social contexts for women and girls of Mexican American and other U.S. Latina heritage. The course will also survey scholarship on Latina participation and representation in mediated popular culture and strategies of resistance enacted through Latina film and media production.
RTF 359S / AMS 321 SIXTIES YOUTH CULTURE AND MEDIA
In the 1960s, young people experienced gender, race, sexuality, ethnicity, social class and generation through media (TV, film, music, magazines, advertisements). This course explores how media challenged and complicated their lives. Readings draw broadly from US cultural history, television and film studies, cultural studies, and gender studies. We will examine texts, performers and audiences across a wide variety of media -- television and film, literature, comics, radio, internet, live performance and other forms. The course will be focused on lectures and student group discussion; there will also be written tests, and brief in-class writing assignments. Screenings each week will provide illustrations and primary research sources. Students will develop final research and/or creative projects that apply historical and theoretical ideas and information learned throughout the semester.
FALL SEMESTER
T D 351T TEACH ARTISTS IN SCHLS & COMMS
Do you want hands on experience developing, facilitating, and assessing a workshop session with young people at a museum or school location?
Do you want to a chance to dig into the ways that practitioners work at the intersection of the arts and education in a range of learning contexts?
Do you want to consider how local and global contexts shape the arts in education and society?
Then, come learn about how to be a teaching artist in the Teaching Artists in Schools and Communities --a dynamic course offered by the Theatre and Dance Dept. This practical, interdisciplinary course will explore how to use the arts to educate in arts and non-arts settings (professional arts organizations, after-school programs, schools, museums, and community sites) in local and global contexts. As teaching artists, we will consider the role of intentionality, artistic perspective, quality, assessment, and praxis (the relationship of action/reflection) in our work. Our discussions will be framed through dialogue with local, national and global teaching artists and by a practical residency experience in a museum or school location. The course ends with professional projects designed to synthesize our learning and new understanding through a creative response or a teaching artist portfolio/website.
No Instructor Consent Required.
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 CONFRONTING LGBTQ OPPRESSN NGUYEN, QUYNH-HUONG
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 1-3 business day. There will be a 30 – 60 minutes informal interview to learn more about you and your learning goals that can be scheduled in-person, Skype, or conference call. For priority consideration, submit application by August 1st or prior to the first class of fall semester but there is no firm deadline. To learn more about the program, contact the Gender & Sexuality Center at gsc@austin.utexas.edu.
T D 357T / AMS 321 / RTF 345 / WGS 340 MUSICAL/AMERICAN IDENTITIES
(if TD section is full, try to add cross-listed courses)
The American musical has long been a popular genre through which storytellers, performers and audiences reimagine who we are, particularly with respect to norms of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. 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 films and television series since the 1950s, and provides tools for critical analysis of musical narratives, performances, audio-visual integration, and representations of gender, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity across the decades. We’ll watch a number of important films in this history (including Rent, Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Funny Girl, Hair, Zoot Suit, and Hamilton), and read and respond to scholarship on Hollywood and Broadway musicals, with a focus on the ways in which cinematic renditions of song and dance make meaning.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T PERFORMING LGBTQ+ (Summer Course)
The perspectives, experiences, and cultural contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people, examined from different disciplinary and/or interdisciplinary perspectives according to the topic.
No Instructor Consent Required.
T D 357T WRITING FOR BLACK PERFORMANCE Canceled
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.
AFR 330O / E 343F Black Film At The Oscars
In 1939, at the height of Jim Crow, the first black person to win an Oscar, Hatie McDaniel, did so for playing a stereotypical black mammie. In 2018, in the wake of the Ferguson Uprising and the emergence of Black Lives Matter, Jordan Peele took home a Best Screenplay Oscar for Get Out!, his horrifying satire of American anti-blackness. Each year, when we sit down to watch the Academy Awards, we are not only witnessing the celebration of the supposed best that cinema has to offer, we are also encountering a barometer for mainstream American culture’s ideas about blackness. In this course, we will be “reading the Oscars” as this ongoing weather report on American racism. To “read the Oscars” we will closely view work by black filmmakers and actors that has been both lauded and snubbed by the Academy. What do these films and performances say about blackness and whiteness and why has the Academy either embraced or rejected certain cinematic messages about race at certain historical moments. What does Halle Berry’s 2002 Oscar for her performance in Monsters Ball say about mainstream notions of black femininity? Why did the Academy recognize the version of black queerness presented in Barry Jenkin’s Moonlight? Why have Spike Lee’s incisive cinematic meditations on American racism never received the attention of the Academy? Questions such as these will guide our inquiry. This class then introduces key ideas about film criticism, black studies, and cultural studies more generally while also providing a space to work on academic writing skills.
No Instructor Consent Required.
AFR 370 Drugs In Afr Am Lit/Culture
From our current, seemingly perpetual “war on drugs”; to the Black Panthers’ drug treatment programs; to Ralph Ellison’s “invisible man” smoking refer while listening to Louis Armstrong in an underground hideout; to mythic stories of heroin-addicted jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Billie Holliday; drug addiction and intoxication have a complicated and contested history within African American politics and popular culture. Sometimes denounced as a white supremacist conspiracy and sometimes championed as a vector for black artistic vision and existential liberation, drug use is often a touchstone for debates about black subjecthood, empowerment, citizenship, community, and life itself. Through careful study of African American literatary, filmic and musical texts dealing with drug use, this course will think through these debates. How does the iconography of lean in Trap music relate to blackness in the late capitalist world of the 21st Century? What does Dave Chapelle’s character Tyrone Biggums suggest about the place of the “crackhead” within African American communities? How does drug use figure into the modernisms of James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison? How does the Black Panthers’ condemnation of drug use relate to the gritty realism Donald Goines’s fiction and blaxploitation cinema. How does addiction and drug dealing intersect with blackness, femininity and queerness in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight? Such questions will guide our study of some of the key aesthetic and political movements in contemporary African American culture. This course will provide an introduction to important theories of black studies and philosophical formulations of addiction, as well as an overview of key works of 20th Century African American literature, film and popular culture. It will also provide a space for students to develop critical reading and writing skills.
No Instructor Consent Required.
MAS 374 CHICANA/O FILM
Investigate representations of Chicanas/os, both on-screen and behind the scenes of U.S. films. Explore films made by, for, and about Chicanos/as and Mexican-Americans from the Chicano Movement of the 1960s to the present day.
No Instructor Consent Required.
OTHER OPTIONS (when offered)
AFR 356C African American Theatre Hist: Precolonial-1950
AFR 356D African American Theatre History: 1950-Present
AFR 356E Black Women and Dance
F A 369 Entrepreneurial Artist
F A 371 Producing Art Social Change
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 ALRUTZ, MEGAN
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 356T Latino Theatre for Young Audiences
T D 357T American Musical
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 Gender & Sexuality in Performance
T D 357T Narrative & Physical Performance
T D 357T THTR DLG: INTRCTV PRF/VLNC PRV Coleman, Shavonne
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.
