Dramatic Arts

This course concentrates on the beginning stages of working on a play: from the initial reading through early conceptualization (before the artists go into their studio or rehearsal room.) Using the text as the foundation, students deepen their understanding of the play through brainstorming, discussions and research (both of the play, the playwright, and the visual world of the play). The class uses the basic building blocks of the theater (ACTORS performing an ACTION while an AUDIENCE watches) and asks how these elements can be used and exploited to further the ideas of the artist.   

The course begins with students working on short plays then moves into longer dramatic works. The course features texts with a clear narrative form that allows multiple interpretations, with the first projects being short, individual projects and the final project being a collaborative group project. Last, the course features three professional theater artists to share their early interruptive processes with the class.    

This course introduces students to the languages and protocols of performance theory and analysis. Students explore critical methodologies for the analysis of theatre and performance events and develop critical languages and methodologies by studying the potential role of performance theories in the engagement with and analysis of the theatrical text and performance

The course mainly concerns basic theories of theater art. Through the course, students will get an overall view of the history of western theater and think about the fusion of different forms of theater so that they are able to understand the essence of theater and have a prospect of the development of the world’s theater arts in the future. The course considers the theater art of the world as a whole as opposed to the usual idea which confronts the theater of the East to that of the West. It thoroughly introduces the main theory issues of the history, aesthetics, phenomena, and performances of theater art which appear in the process of its development including the emergence, characteristics, form, language, structure, narration, performance, directing, space, genre, school, function, aesthetics of theater etc. 

This course focuses on contemporary theater creation (theater and society, theater and music, theater about theater, etc.). It considers theater and modernity in the 20th and 21st centuries, and how to make theater today. The course starts with Brecht and the French theater of the 20th century, to consider the stage mutations and teeming directions of contemporary creation. It then studies the New Theater (50s and after), theater and society, the question of feminicide, and authentic theater from Othello to the present day.

This entry level course introduces the theatrical design student to the basic graphic tools, materials, and techniques of hand drafting. At the same time, the class introduces students to the conceptual foundations of scale drawing and the generally accepted formats of a drafting package (Ground Plan, Section, Elevations, Details). Utilizing hand drafting best allows the student to apply these basic skills to whatever medium they use (hand drafting, CAD, 3D modeling). 

This course covers the professional skills required for theater production management and marketing. At the same time, through practical simulations and theater company visits, students enhance their abilities in performance planning and execution. The teaching content includes the planning and coordination of performance projects, budget preparation, and writing of business plans; subsidy submission to public and private sectors, application for performance venue schedules, recruitment of performance staff, budget control, marketing and publicity, ticketing, public relations sponsorship, and relevant administrative affairs, etc. Onsite visits to theater troupes introduces core values and management methods of the performance team's operation.  

This course also features professionals related to performing arts production or administration to speak to the class and share their practical experiences. 

This course introduces and studies Kun Opera singing: voice, articulation, four-tone pattern, musical phrases, breath tone, vocal emotion, rhythm and frustration, etc. It also teaches an understanding and practical learning of Kun Opera body movements, including basic joint flexibility training, basic stage steps and lower body training, cloud hand (circle) training, and basic movements of fans and water sleeves. Finally, the course teaches Kun Opera "Performance," guiding students to understand how to apply the "stylized" basic movements of opera to the "drama" fragments: in the coordination of hand, eye and body steps, body rhythm and rhythm; among them, the use of eyes is the focus of this stage. 

The course allows students the opportunity to explore through embodied engagement a range of methods of movement practices in order to performatively understand place, movement, and cultures. Students study, through practice and seminar, some of the key writings and practices of movement and place in contemporary culture. This can include a range of contemporary and historical approaches to dance, choreography, physical theatre, somatic practice, and contemplative practices.

An introduction to stage design, this course instructs how to collect picture materials; hand-drawn space sketches; basic drawings; make 1:100 rough and color models and visualize text space and design concepts. 

The course focuses on W.B. Yeats as a playwright and as a theorist of the theatre, combining an intensive focus on Yeats’s own work in the first half of the course with a more expansive consideration of the ways in which Yeats provides us with a way of reading subsequent Irish theatre in relation to recent work in the second half. Hence, the course combines the study of Yeats’s theatre and dramaturgy with consideration of recent work in the Irish theatre, including productions of plays currently running at the time of the module. It considers both the work of Yeats, and of more recent dramatists, not only as literary texts, but as performance pieces.