Welcome back students! Add/Drop runs August 24 - September 9. Looking for the perfect Theater, Dance & Media class to add to your courseload? Check out TDM courses still enrolling below! For the full course list, visit this page.
TDM 90CR: Fall Dance Production Studio: Contact Improvisation
Laura Quinton & Steph Turner
TDM Production Studios consist of a 4-credit weekly course led by a TDM faculty member and a full production process led by a professional director or choreographer, which jointly culminate in the public performance of an original work. This fall’s Production Studio will focus on contact improvisation, one of the most influential contemporary dance practices today, attracting and inspiring dancers and non-dancers all over the world. Developed in the early 1970s, contact improvisation explores how two or more people move closely together through space, playing with physical forces such as momentum, gravity, and inertia.
The course component, taught by dance scholar Laura Quinton, will delve into the history, theories, political, social, and practical applications of this global art form. We will also examine what it means to make a professional dance production, meeting with our choreographer, musicians, and designers to hear their insights into the creative process.
The production component will be led by professional choreographer Stephanie Turner. In weekly rehearsals leading to a weekend of professionally produced performances, students will collaborate with Professor Turner to create a new dance work rooted in contact improvisation, developing their individual artistic voices while building a shared movement language. What does it mean to fall, fly, rebound, and dance together in a turbulent world? And what might contact improvisation reveal about the value of human touch, physical expression, and live performance in our digital age? In the spirit of contact improvisation, all movers – seasoned or first-time – are welcome.
TDM 134AD: The Actor/Director Collaboration
Brisa Areli Muñoz
In this course, Brisa will guide students through the dynamic relationship between actors and directors in both scripted and collaboratively created theater. Focusing on creative risk-taking and collective creation, students will engage in exercises that examine how trust, communication, and flexibility build the foundations for a strong working relationship between actor and director. Throughout the course, students will learn how to navigate bringing both written scripts and collaborative work to life.
TDM 136TC: Bodies/Spaces/Things: Theater Creation Lab
Kate Brehm
A practical class for actors, directors, dancers, and designers, students are introduced to exercises from visionary teachers of visual and physical theater: Jacques Lecoq, Kari Margolis, Anne Bogart, Chris Bayes, Frantic Assembly. Through this training, concepts such as making time, the speed of fun, spatial storytelling, collective packets, the need to continue, pattern, choral movement, and the body’s lines of force inform the creation of original dramatic performance pieces.
TDM 150VT: Visual Thinking and Creation for Theatermakers
Jeff Adelberg
On stage, the visual world must be treated as an active force in storytelling, as essential as the play itself. Drawing from nature, visual arts, media, architecture, everyday experience, and our individual and collective imaginations, we will compose striking, meaningful visuals and explore how they might evolve into theatrical environments. Scenery, costumes, light, projections/video, and movement will all be considered. This course is ideal for theatremakers of all kinds, especially those drawn to directing or design.
TDM 157PL: Backstage Blueprint: Operational Strategy & Production Leadership in Theater
Timothey Sullivan
This course delves into the core elements of technical theater management, focusing on operational strategy, backstage infrastructure, and effective leadership. Students will gain practical knowledge in areas such as stage management, lighting, sound, technical direction, costumes, automation, and production coordination while also developing the language and communication strategies essential for managing teams and collaborating with creatives, performers, and production staff.
TDM 169S: Singer + Song = Story
Stew Stewart
This course students interested in writing songs and scenes to experiment with a unique approach that injects personally-political, free-spirited, DIY, Punk practices into the process of musical theater making. Students will learn to build “mini-musicals” as well as create their own “theater-pop-band” using a technique called “autobiographical myth-making.” They'll be encouraged not only to tell their own stories, but to “autobiographically mythologize” their personal narratives into Tales Worthy of Their Truths.
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