Course Number:  TAPS 2505/ 2555

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

This course will provide a fundamental understanding of the principles of Stanislavski-based acting within the realistic style, help the actor develop a working understanding of a five-week rehearsal process and a system of text analysis based upon events and cause-and-effect, and begin the work of integrating vocal and physical technique into each individual student's acting method.  This course continues as TAPS 2555 in the Spring, incorporating an introduction to verse work.

Instructor:  Skiles/ Scurria/ Christopher

Course Number:  TAPS 2505/ 2555

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

This course is an introduction to voice for performance and moves through theory, experiential anatomy and
physiology, and employs kinesthetic exercises for physical release, respiration and support, phonation, resonance, expression (pitch/rate/volume), and articulation.  All work explored will develop a kinesthetic awareness of coordinating breath, the vocal tract, resonance, expressivity, and articulation skills as synergized parts of a holistic communication system that are able to respond truthfully to imaginary circumstances and to the real needs of the performance space. This course continues as TAPS 2555 in the Spring, incorporating an introduction to working with structured verse.

Instructor:  Moser

Course Number:  TAPS 2505/ 2555

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

The work of this foundational movement course seeks to grow our athletic capabilities and expand our capacity to perceive and act through the deepened attention gained through improvisation and somatic investigation. Through an evolving practice of reading, moving, witnessing, reflecting verbally, and writing about our physical research, we will achieve a deeper understanding of the body as an instrument for communication and expression.  When we're lost, we learn to stop and inhabit ourselves, then go on.   

In the Spring, this course (2555) delves deeply into The Viewpoints Technique as first conceived by choreographer Mary Overlie and then continued by theater directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau. Viewpoints Technique systematically breaks down elements of Time and Space, providing a precise language for makers to communicate about dynamic staging and offering performing artists the tools to direct themselves more successfully from within composition. Ultimately offering a rich language of theatrical deconstruction, Viewpoints is a practice that broadly benefits us in our work as actors, directors, designers, and as writers.

Instructor:  Baryshnikov

Course Number:  TAPS 2515/ 2565

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

This course offers the actor foundational tools with which to begin a lifelong exploration and appreciation of the sounds of language. Work throughout the semester consists of a daily warmup, rigorous drilling, and instruction towards acquisition of the International Phonetic Alphabet.  IPA's application in Standard American dialect will build muscle to strengthen one's instrument for clarity of speech.  It will also train the actor's ear to the nuances of speech sounds, invaluable for dialect and character work. 

In the Spring (2565) we will use our foundational knowledge of IPA and the sounds of spoken English to begin an investigation into the prosody of heightened language.  How do the sounds of language combine with rhythm, pitch, breath, and emphasis to create meaning for the listener?  How do those begin to live in the actor’s body?  How do they inform physical choices in the work?  Students will work with a variety of literary texts and on Shakespearean verse.

Instructor:  Brazil

Course Number:  TAPS 2515/ 2565

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

This course will offer students an introduction to the basic principles of Laban Movement analysis and its practical application for the actor. The class will consist of an investigation into the basic principles of Body, Effort, Shape and
Space (BESS). Students will investigate and discover the full movement potential of their bodies, be introduced to useful terminology to analyze, articulate and notate movement sequences and discover practical ways to approach character development through physicality.

In the Spring, students in this course (2565) will be invested in a study of physical range and articulation through Physical Play. This course explores the actor’s capacity for play and the idea that games provide theatrical moments of truth and joy. Through a continuum of games, improvisations, and devising activities, students will develop a vulnerable and egoless state of existence that empowers them to take risks, access their imagination, and play more fully with their voice, body, and mind. Exercises explore physicality, vocality, status, focus, scale, presence, flow, and impulse while immersing participants into the wild soup of “le jeu,” or the pleasure of playing.  Pending instructor availability, an additional section of Movement Embodiment will also guide the actor through grounding and expansion of the physical instrument through techniques and practices rooted in the African diaspora.

Instructor:  Mitchell, Hogan

Course Number:  TAPS 2515/ 2565

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

The Alexander Technique alerts our awareness by restoring our balance in simple everyday movements. The teacher, using gentle guidance through a sensitive hand contact, improves the freedom in the relationship between the head, neck and back and enables movement to take place unencumbered by habitual effort. The contrasting lightness and ease shows the student kinesthetically how the ‘habitual mode’ has interfered, thus enabling them to ‘undo’ that interference.  Students learn to have a new body map by ‘giving directions’ with clear focus, and how to ‘think in movement’ so that they can use the new map in daily activities and particularly in their creative work.  This course continues in the Spring (2565).

Instructor:  Gill

Course Number:  TAPS 2535/ 2585

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

This course, designed to activate the mind of the director, is a detailed investigation of the
creative process and the beginning of the foundation for communication with actors, designers
and audiences in the making of live performance with text.  This course continues in the Spring as TAPS 2585.

Instructor:  Mertes

Course Number:  TAPS 2535

Term:  Fall

Course Description:

Director's Lab is a cross-class collaborative opportunity for all participating students to work on a variety of material of their choosing and to stretch the boundaries of our individual and collective theatrical imaginations in a vibrant laboratory setting. Lab culminates in five Saturday morning work sharings over the course of the semester for the Brown/Trinity Rep community.  Directors direct in each of these five Labs, first-year actors participate as actors in their first year, while second and third-year actors act in Labs and are also offered the opportunity to direct one Lab each semester.

Instructor:  Mertes

Course Number:  TAPS 2545/ 2575

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

This course will be an introduction to dramaturgy for MFA students and advance undergraduates. The course will introduce a wide variety of play and critical approaches to dramatic texts and performances with emphasis on culturally divergent dramaturgies, embodied dramaturgy, adaptation, and textual analysis for performance. 

In the Spring, this course shifts to Theater History in a Changing Present (2575).  Working in the service of linking performance, history and perspective; it will provide an introduction to theatre history by focusing on analyses of plays, playbills and ephemera, performances, non-performances or occluded performances, and audiences and spectatorship. We will attend to how performances move temporally -- citing past events, producing alternative times, and gesturing toward worlds to come across several spatial scales, such as regional borders, local terrains, and the limen or threshold of the stage. The course also crucially aims to explain the histories of representing race, gender, sexuality, ability and nationalism, noting how these histories remain relevant and urgent within contemporary
theatre and the larger world.

Instructors:  Columbus, Ybarra

Course Number:  TAPS 2545

Term:  Fall

Course Description:

In this introduction to playwriting course, we will do close readings of texts to observe and define how works are built. We will explore, discover, and map the mechanics of a diverse range of texts. Students will use those same tools to write their own material, experiencing the full process of writing, revising, and––ultimately––staging original works. In charting and defining others’ voices, students will discover their own particular voices and what makes them valuable and necessary.

Instructor:  Smith/ Chum

Course Number: TAPS 2605/ 2655

Term:  Fall/ Spring 

Course Description:

In the fall, this course will teach the actor to apply the principles of personalization and real speaking to the conventions of
classical verse; to incorporate an understanding of meter, metaphor and rhetoric into an ongoing working technique; to develop a method of physicalization and staging not dependent upon realistic stage settings; to continue the ongoing process of integrating full and supportive breathing technique, full resonance and forward placement in all pitch ranges, intellectually specific and emotionally responsive connection to language, as well as strong, integrated, and tension-free physical presence.  In the spring this course continues as TAPS 2655, Acting for the Camera.  Foundational knowledge of acting technique and script analysis will be honed further with the camera's eye.  Actors will work with contemporary material written for film and television to develop an understanding of and facility with working for the camera.

Instructor:  Fall/ Skiles, Christopher.  Spring/ Waterhouse.

Course Number:  TAPS 2605/ 2655

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:  This course is a continuation of skill sets explored in the first year voice and speech classes, including a brief review of concepts and techniques from the first year: theory, experiential anatomy and physiology, and kinesthetic exercises for physical release, respiration and support, phonation, resonance, expression (pitch/rate/volume), and articulation. We will also review text and language work, rhetorical devices, and basics of scansion. The work will also consider how the preparation sequence can be adapted to performing in different spaces, and will continue to explore the idea of truthful expression in response to given circumstances, and how to be a healthy actor inside of a tense character.  We will apply our knowledge of IPA and General American, and begin to apply the speech work to accent/dialect work.  This course continues in the Spring (TAPS 2655) with a deeper exploration of dialects and character.

Instructor:  Moser, Gibel

Course Number:  TAPS 2605/ 2665

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

This course aims to build the technical and compositional foundation for creating collaborative performance. Through a number of devising progressions, we will work to cultivate a unique ecology of making, drawing upon the work of the previous two semesters in Viewpoints and Embodied Creative Practice to build expressivity and legibility in storytelling. We will work to craft without using dramatic text but instead a number of visual sources, poems, short stories, and other non-dramatic texts as compositional anchors. In this studio, form is as important as context. Theatrical narrative is as important as dramatic narrative. We're not engaging in adaptations of texts, we're worldbuilding. The work of this course culminates in an end-of-semester community showing for the community.  

In the Spring (TAPS 2665), we continue with a course exploring the tools for creation of solo work. In this studio we work to generate raw material rapidly, working decisively to find solutions to puzzles, tasks, prompts, and structures posed. What happens if we build the physical world and write the script simultaneously? The body will write in space through thorough compositional progressions and consistent Critical Feedback processes will guide the artist to the emergent story. 

Instructor:  Baryshnikov

Course Number:  TAPS 2615/ 2665

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

This class is designed to give a solid understanding of unarmed stage combat. Topics covered include: falls, rolls, shared weight techniques, chokes, slaps, grabs, contact punches and kicks, non-contact punches and kicks, blocks, knee and elbow attacks, and found objects combat work. Students will learn how to execute the stage combat techniques safely, and how to commit to the high stakes of a fight scene with clear and specific acting. The course will culminate in a Skills Proficiency Test for a Fight Master from the Society of American Fight Directors. If the students’ work meets the SAFD’s criteria for safety and dramatic effectiveness, the students may be recognized with either Basic or Recommended Proficiency.

In the Spring, this course shifts to dance techniques rooted in traditions of the African diaspora.  This innovative movement class aims to provide students an opportunity for rigorous, physical activity, exploring Hip-Hop and Afro-Caribbean Dance forms and traditions. Each class will begin with a choreographed warm up, stretches, core-work and floor-work.  The semester will culminate with choreographic composition assignments both in solo and ensemble. 

Instructor:  Jepson, Davis

Course Number:  TAPS 2615/ 2665

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

This course offers the actor continued attention to ongoing mastery of the skills of giving direction and inhibiting unwanted effort and interfering habit patterns.  Students will apply this work to Shakespearean monologues and scenes with increasing emotional demands.  In particular, the focus will be to help each student experience how vocal ease and clarity of meaning, power, and access to emotional depth are all increased through the student’s ability to incorporate this work in their acting.  This course is enhanced by the addition of weekly private sessions in which the work is highly individualized.  This course continues in the Spring (TAPS 2665)

Instructor:  Gill, Casey
 

Course Number:  TAPS 2615/ 2665

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

The aim of this course is to add confident and expressive singing to an actor’s skill set. We will build upon the fundamentals of vocal production already studied in voice, speech and diction classes (breath, resonance, intelligibility, flexibility, clarity of vowels, articulation of consonants, dynamic range, etc.) and apply these principals along with new concepts, such as registration, timbre, legato and onset of tone to the heightened and sustained mode of language that is singing.  This course continues in the Spring (TAPS 2665) and culminates in a public sharing of work

Instructor:  Nicholson

Course Number:  TAPS 2635/ 2685

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

This course will focus on language in non-linear plays. Using Cicely Berry’s work, there will be a technical focus on rehearsal room techniques for unleashing heightened language in absurdist plays. In addition, the class will embark on a thorough investigation of race and drama.  In the fall semester we will read The Balcony, some critical thinking around Genet, and Cicely Berry. Towards the end of our time together, each student will direct a small portion of the play for classroom presentation. In the spring semester we will read works by Adrienne Kennedy, and some critical thinking about race and drama by Suzan-Lori Parks, bell hooks and Claudia Rankine.  Towards the end of the semester, each student will direct a small portion from one of Kennedy’s pieces.

Instructor:  Magar, Mertes

Course Number:  TAPS 2635

Term:  Fall

Course Description:

Director's Lab is a cross-class collaborative opportunity for all participating students to work on a variety of material of their choosing and to stretch the boundaries of our individual and collective theatrical imaginations in a vibrant laboratory setting. Lab culminates in five Saturday morning work sharings over the course of the semester for the Brown/Trinity Rep community.  Directors direct in each of these five Labs, first-year actors participate as actors in their first year, while second and third-year actors act in Labs and are also offered the opportunity to direct one Lab each semester.

Instructor:  Mertes

Course Number:  TAPS 2625/ 2675

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

Fall Playwriting Dramaturgy Practicum consists of a weekly playwriting class, rehearsal and performance of a verse play, and a collaborative project with Rites and Reason Theatre. 

The weekly class in Playwriting, focused on developing original scripts for performance, is taught by Deb Salem-Smith. 

The verse production, a Shakespeare play that is adapted and directed by second- year MFA directors with minimal design elements, is shared in studio previews with Brown/Trinity MFA Program faculty and students, and subsequently tours to the Providence Public School system.  This project is developed in collaboration with Trinity Rep’s Education Department, and Teaching Artist workshops are developed and scheduled for each MFA student in conjunction with the communities where performances take place. 

As part of the Fall Practicum, all second-year MFA students participate in a collaborative project with Rites and Reason Theatre at Brown's Department of Africana Studies. 

In the Spring, this course (2675) offers an opportunity for students to continue with Advanced Playwriting, construct a faculty-supervised independent study, or choose an elective course from the Brown University catalog.

Instructor:  Smith/ Mertes/ Brazil

Course Number:  TAPS 2705

Term:  Fall

Course Description:

This course is an exploration of dramatic style from Greek to contemporary times and builds upon skills acquired in year two.  We begin by expanding dramaturgy and mapping skills to the spectrum of playwrights and genres. We explore how our work as actors shifts with each writer and genre, and how we can change our acting style to suit the material and the playwrights’ vision. We work from the point of view that the audience is the most important element of this process; everything is communicated for the understanding and experience of the audience.  

Instructor:  Scurria/ Skiles/ Christopher

Course Number:  TAPS 2705/ 2755

Term:  Fall and Spring

Course Description:

This course is a direct continuation of the first two years of work, and begins to explore advanced voice and
speech techniques, moving the communication skillsets into teaching practice.  The voice work continues to encourage refinement of physical release, respiration and support, phonation, resonance, expression (pitch/ rate/ volume), and articulation.  Additionally, we continue to examine truthfully responding to imaginary circumstances. Vocal extremes and vocal viewpoints are added to the exploration.  

The speech work continues to explore use of the IPA for intelligibility inside of accent/dialect work.  The course prioritizes objective and process-based exploration.  It prioritizes the idea of effective, economical vocal and articulatory choices that arise from the energized physical body in truthful, vulnerable, spontaneous response to the imaginary circumstances at work in the world of the play, and  appropriate for the needs of the space and medium.  It prioritizes the exploration of the range of human existence and expression, rather than a binary of this/that, good/bad, better/worse.  In the Spring (TAPS 2755), this course continues with individual dialect projects.

Instructor:  Moser, Gibel

Course Number:  TAPS 2705/ 2755

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

Fall/ Clown.  This course cultivates playful presence. Through exercises that bring awareness to (and potentially, freedom from) the socialized self, actors explore harmony, equilibrium, scale, and empathy . The internalized patterns of  behavior that impede authentic presence and impulsive freedom are re-wired, which empowers the actor to develop true kinaesthetic presence, and to deepen joy in the sheer act of performance.  By learning to play fully and without fear, actors begin to reveal the nature of their individual clown.

Instructor:  Hogan

Course Number:  TAPS 2705/ 2755

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

RECITAL is a class devoted to research, development, and writing of a one-person solo piece that is rehearsed and performed in the Spring.  The work begins by exploring what each writer is passionate about; why this topic now; what existing one-person shows can be models for the work in terms of style/structure/spectacle as well as language, texture, and content.  Sessions with instructors are ongoing throughout the fall and spring semesters. The culmination of this yearlong process is three nights of performances for the community in May at the Granoff Center on Brown’s campus.

Instructors:  Smith, Christopher

Course Number:  TAPS 2705/ 2755

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

In the third year Alexander work continues with private lessons for each student.  These private sessions will be used to generally remind and encourage practice of this work, with individualized focus on any personal issues of use and continued development of a full understanding of how the technique supports the voice and gives easy access to the actor’s work.

Instructor:  Gill

Course Number:  TAPS 2705/ 2755

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

The art of acting music is a rich, complex, delightful, powerful, and particularly vulnerable process that marries vocal technique with heightened pursuit of action. The singer is not honoring the form if one is only doing one of those things or is not pursuing both to the fullest extent possible. This course will continue to strengthen and coordinate each singer's technique, investigate and analyze the particular opportunities musical dramatic material holds and
connect those discoveries to one's approach to the song, learn how to research, choose and prepare material for professional auditions, and build each singer's audition book.  A performance for the community will take place each semester.  This course is by invitation only.

Instructor:  Warren
 

Course Number:  TAPS 2705

Term:  Fall

Course Description:

Director's Lab is a cross-class collaborative opportunity for all participating students to work on a variety of material of their choosing and to stretch the boundaries of our individual and collective theatrical imaginations in a vibrant laboratory setting. Lab culminates in five Saturday morning work sharings over the course of the semester for the Brown/Trinity Rep community.  Directors direct in each of these five Labs, first-year actors participate as actors in their first year, while second and third-year actors act in Labs and are also offered the opportunity to direct one Lab each semester.  Lab is optional for third-year students.

Instructor:  Mertes

Course Number:  TAPS 2715/ 2765

Term:  Fall/ Spring

Course Description:

This class will prepare students for entry into the profession with work in audition technique, workshops with industry professionals, an on-camera intensive, and the creation and performance of their industry showcase.

In the fall, students will select material for each actor in preparation for rehearsal and staging of material in the winter.  Students will perform in New York and Los Angeles in March for invited audiences of industry professionals.  

Single and multi-day workshops with invited guests will offer students professional advice and experience from a range of professional casting directors, managers, agents, and on-camera instructors.  Material covered includes but is not limited to an introduction to visual storytelling and the cinematic form, audiobook narration, self-taping skills, audition technique, and the business of the business.  In the Spring, this course continues as TAPS 2765.

Instructor:  Brazil, industry guests