Theatre

507 Milbank Hall
854-2080
Fax: 854-1840
http://theatre.barnard.edu

Professors: W.B. Worthen (Chair, Alice Brady Pels Professor in the Arts)
Assistant Professor: Maja Horn, Shayoni Mitra, Hana Worthen
Assistant Professor of Professional Practice: Sandra Goldmark, Alice Reagan
Senior Lecturers: Pam Cobrin (English; Director, Writing Program), Patricia Denison (English; Director of Undergraduate Studies, Drama and Theatre Arts),
Lecturers: Betsy Adams, Craig Baldwin, Kyle deCamp, Sharon Fogarty, Rebecca Guy, Tuomas Hiltunen, Charise Greene, Gideon Lester, Stacey McMath, Sylvan Oswald, Fitz Patton, David Paul, Rita Pietropinto, Wendy Waterman

Theatre Administrator: Jessica Brater
Technical Director: Greg Winkler
Production Manager: Michael Banta
Costume Shop Manager: Kara Feely
Departmental Assistant: Mike Placito

Other officers of the University offering courses listed below:
Professor: Austin E. Quigley
Assistant Professor: Katherine Biers
Associate Professor of Professional Practice: Steven Chaikelson

The Barnard College Theatre Department integrates the critical and artistic study of drama, theatre, and performance with the traditions of liberal arts inquiry.  The Barnard Theatre major and the cognate Columbia College major in Drama and Theatre Arts, implemented largely through the Theatre department, take advantage of a wide variety of studio coursework, of the Department's production season in the Minor Latham Playhouse, as well as of a rich panoply of drama and theatre studies courses. Students' creative work develops in dialogue with critical inquiry into the literature, history, culture, and theory of western and nonwestern performance, typically combining coursework in theatre and drama with study in other fields, such as anthropology, architecture, art history, classics, dance, film, languages, literature, music, and philosophy. Students work with accomplished artists, directors, designers, actors, and playwrights whose work enlivens and enriches the contemporary American theatre; they also study the critical, historical, and theoretical lineaments of drama, theatre, and performance with celebrated teachers and internationally-recognized research scholars. The coursework in the major also engages productively with Barnard's "nine ways of knowing" and with Columbia's Core Curriculum, by considering how critical questions and traditions are animated by the forms, genres, and practices of dramatic theatre, and by conceiving the mutual responsiveness of critical and artistic work to those questions. Making, thinking about, and writing about art are an essential part of any undergraduate education: for this reason the courses offered in the Barnard Theatre Department and casting for its theatrical production are open to majors and nonmajors alike.

All students pursuing the major develop a vocabulary for conceptualizing performance in common courses in the history, literature, and theory of various world performance traditions. They also engage in the range of disciplines sustaining modern theatre--acting, design, directing, dramaturgy, playwriting--before taking up culminating work on a senior thesis. An original creative project, the thesis can take several forms: a significant research essay; a new play; or acting, dramaturging, directing, or designing as part of the Department's annual showcase of thesis productions. Theatre is a site of cultural innovation, transmission, and contestation, involving a variety of verbal, visual, spatial, musical, and gestural languages. Barnard/Columbia theatre majors understand the power of performance as an act of articulation; in speech, through movement and embodiment, as the manipulation of space, in the construction of an expressive event.

Student Learning Objectives

Upon completion of the major, successful students will be able to attain the following objectives:

  1. Assess critically the artistic ambitions of contemporary theatrical performance, and of literary, critical and theoretical issues involved in the interpretation of dramatic literature and theatrical performance;
  2. Create with proficiency in at least one area of creative work in the field: critical/research writing, acting, directing, design, playwriting.

Areas of Concentration

Drama and Theatre Studies Student Learning Objectives

Students successfully completing drama and theatre studies coursework, or concentrating in drama and theatre studies, should be able to attain the following objectives:

  1. Write clearly about dramatic literature, and about performance, including where applicable film performance;
  2. Synthesize and evaluate contemporary criticism and research scholarship in writing;
  3. Know specific authors, movements, periods, styles, and ideological structures in the history of drama, theatre, and performance (i.e., Shakespeare, American drama, Performative Cultures of the Third Reich, Black Theatre);
  4. Use critical, theoretical, and historical concepts in the analysis of drama and performance.
Acting Student Learning Objectives

Students successfully completing a concentration in acting should be able to attain the following objectives:

  1. Analyze dramatic texts and apply the analysis to developing a performable role/character;
  2. Snthesize external elements with external elements (social mores, environment, historical context, status relationship to others) and internal elements (center of gravity, personal rhythm, speed, tempo) toward the expression of a character's physicality and emotionality;
  3. Recognize and apply the fundamental concepts of character development: objectives, obstacles, actions, given circumstances;
  4. Develop vocal, physical and emotional awareness and imagination, and to explore techniques available to aid the actor in applying these elements in a conscious way during rehearsal and performance.
Design Student Learning Objectives

Students successfully completing a concentration in design should be able to attain the following objectives:

  1. Analyze dramatic texts and translate that analysis into documents used in the production process (breakdowns, plots, etc.);
  2. Research images and texts that provide insight into the developing design idea, and accurately communicate historical and stylistic choices;
  3. Demonstrate fluency with the craft of a design field – e.g. sketching, model making, drafting, sound and lighting plots, and associated software;
  4. Perform collaboratively, adapting and informing their designs with ideas generated through conversation with colleagues, classmates, and advisors.
Directing Student Learning Objectives

Students successfully completing a concentration in directing should be able to attain the following objectives:

  1. Recognize the different demands of different configurations of stage space;
  2. Apply compositional tools;
  3. Define production style and its influence on performance choices;
  4. Communicate effectively with actors;
  5. Analyze the historical, social, and aesthetic elements of a dramatic text as the basis for a directorial conception.
Dramaturgy Student Learning Objectives

Students successfully completing a concentration in dramaturgy should be able to attain the following objectives:

  1. Apply important critical and theoretical concepts to the analysis of dramatic writing and theatrical performance;
  2. Synthesize and evaluate contemporary research scholarship and apply it to a specific production, including biographical, historical, and interpretive information;
  3. Write clearly and effectively about the goals of a production, its critical contexts and purposes;
  4. Communicate the critical stakes of a performance to a director and cast; to be able to work with a director in fashioning those stakes;
  5. Edit dramatic scripts for production.
Playwriting Student Learning Objectives

Students successfully completing a concentration in playwriting should be able to attain the following objectives:

  1. Create an individual theatrical voice in writing;
  2. Construct dramatic and theatrical events onstage;
  3. Communicate supportive critique to fellow writers;
  4. Interpret plot and story, and to employ language and spectacle creatively;
  5. Recognize dramatic structures, and be able to shape and hold an audience's attention.