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In this course we will encounter various strategies for building a career in the performing arts field.

This class uses movement and the principles of the Alexander Technique to prepare the body for making sound. It is designed for singers, actors, dancers, or anyone interested in using their body as an instrument. Our goal is to root sound in the body before the mind gets in the way. Class begins with gentle movements on the floor, sitting and standing to develop physical awareness and ease, and over the term will progress to vocal warmups, spatial games, and exercises that allow the free flow of air, vibration, resonance, and emotion.

For students with some prior singing experience. This class is designed to refine awareness and coordination of the mind and body and develop a reliable vocal technique applicable to all styles of singing and speaking performance.  

In this class we will explore the art and practice of scientific communication. This course is inspired by the work of Edward Tufte as well as a lifetime of experience in scientific research and presentation. Our aim is to learn how to create elegant explanations of complex ideas using pictures, charts, numbers and words. We will analyze and produce displays for use in journalism, research publications and scientific presentations, as well as other art forms that inspire multifaceted understanding.

At the center of almost every live performance is a single human being who quite literally runs the show: the stage manager. This course will explore the stage manager’s role as both an artist and an administrator, using the SM’s wide-ranging responsibilities as a roadmap to understanding the production process and all the people involved in it.

This course explores the life, works, and revolutionary contributions of Harry Partch (1901–1974), one of the most original and influential American composers of the 20th century. Partch was a pioneer of microtonal music and developed a unique 43-tone scale, which led him to construct his own instruments to realize his visionary compositions. Students will examine Partch’s unconventional approach to tuning, his rejection of equal temperament, and his philosophy of music as an integrated theatrical and corporeal experience.

In this course we will be looking at the harmonic and melodic structures of traditional Gaelic (Highlands and Islands of Scotland) melodies as well as the contemporary music of the Scottish folk music revival to draw on and create new compositions. Students will compose four melodies (or one larger work) in a variety of traditional styles utilizing the different tune forms we will be discussing and analyzing. Analysis of modern composers use of traditional Celtic/folk melodies will also be covered. Students will be asked to compile their own playlist for inspiration and analysis.

This is an advanced improvisation class for students from all disciplines. We will learn the concepts of complexity and advance our skills in pattern recognition, self-organization, emergent structuring, and development of movement, verbal, visual and design vocabularies. Collaborative processes will be explored to further different forms of creative practices, both to address an artistic practice and a dialogic practice.

One secret to great playwriting is that what you put offstage is just as important as what you put on. In this class, we will explore a variety of offstage worlds: from realistic to fantastical, from richly detailed to deliciously sparse. We will think about how playwrights bring offstage environments to life through language—how a single image can evoke wider landscapes, how a single story can conjure vast histories.