This course aims to inspire students to think beyond words and ideas, and challenge and extend their existing skills and practices in writing and directing as they are exposed to visual tools for the development of a play or a performance. With a deep focus on the development of visual narrative skills, the course lays the foundation for the collaborative interactions between writers and directors with designers. Students are introduced to visual thinking, visual storytelling and different aspects of design, through the theory and practice of visual dramaturgy (the transformation of text and ideas into a system of visual signs to communicate meaning) and scenography (the manipulation and orchestration of the performance environment to create a theatrical experience). Students develop an analytical awareness of design as a dramaturgical and formal element in communicating meaning, and a profound understanding of the power of scenography to unfold that meaning through the shaping of theatrical space and time. The study material will directly inform the process of writing and directing and facilitate an authentic visual communication of ideas between writers, directors and designers. The combined design activities in this course create exposure to a variety of collaborative strategies in contemporary theatre, including immersive and site-specific performances. Using experimental hands-on group exercises, individual work, and discussions we explore the transformation of content through the world of images.

This course focuses on the work of William Shakespeare as a way of developing directors’ ability to effectively capture the poetic, ideological, and narrative heart of classical plays. This course provides the director with the tools to direct plays of sprawling scope, that wrestle with the existential questions of humanity. Aside from exploring standard dramaturgical and directorial techniques, students in this course engage with different artistic mediums to develop the imagination, flexibility, and multifaceted thinking necessary for directors to interrogate Shakespeare’s plays through an ideological lens, as well as from a social, cultural and political context. Students learn how to imagine a play in physical space, informed both by a thorough understanding of the play’s origins, its production history, as well as through an imagining of the play’s potential in today’s context.

The course is designed to engage directing students with fundamental questions of Spatial and Visual Dramaturgy. Students will gain an understanding of visual theatre and site based/immersive performance as a spatial art that moves beyond the boundaries of the stage and defines a particular social and public space. Using exercises, individual work, and group discussions students apply theory to practice and explore how aesthetic strategies of visual theatre and site-based performance can inform and expand artistic development, in order to create socially motivated work that engages audiences and communities ethically as well as aesthetically. Students learn how to engage the audience phenomenologically and semiotically, and develop skills to create artistic work beyond conventional performance venues where performer/spectator relationships are deconstructed and redefined.

This course is designed to engage students with fundamental questions of space as an environment for action, interaction and interplay between performance and spectatorship.  In this course students will learn about the theories, practices and potentials of space in live performance and will be encouraged to think about performance in terms of a spatial event where the spectator meets the performer. By approaching space as a protagonist and an envelope for dramatic action, students are encouraged to explore how space produces behavior (on and off stage) and develop skills pertaining to spatial awareness, spatial organization, and vocabularies of spatial dramaturgy. Students develop knowledge of dramaturgical practices and an understanding of the relation between theatre and performance, the work and the audience, leading to an understanding of space as a container for the theatrical event. Students will experiment with novel non-conventional audience/performance arrangements and explore how space is used to create emotional, poetic, intellectual and spiritual experiences. 

https://courses.newschool.edu/courses/TPRC5100

This course involves the study and practical application of basic site-based and participatory practices to the devising of a site-specific public performance. By creating a project outside of a conventional theatre venue, students explore performance as a spatial art that moves beyond the boundaries of the stage and occupies a particular social and public space. The course examines practices that foreground their relationship to space, creating work that places a special emphasis on activism, social justice and community engagement. 

https://courses.newschool.edu/courses/TPRC5101

The course considers how theatrical design affects, transforms, and inspires contemporary performance. It offers a theoretical and practical exploration of the dramaturgy of all elements of theatrical design. It investigates how textures, colors, spatial relationships and other properties of design determine the experience of the theatrical event. The course approaches design from two complementary perspectives: that of the audience and that of the performer. The first perspective focuses on the role of design in the perception, understanding and experience of the performance by the spectators, through communication of emotions, meaning and narrative. The second perspective considers how design affects the performer experience, in particular through the effects of costume, props and set on the body of the actor. The course develops the ability to organize all the component elements of a production into a cohesive whole. It lays a solid foundation for the collaborative interactions between actors, directors, playwrights and designers towards developing a shared creative vision.

https://courses.newschool.edu/courses/TPRC5102

The course develops from Impact of Design on Performance 1 and looks specifically at design as a key compositional element within theatre. The purpose of this course is to develop the artistic and practical aspects of the collaborative design process, including script analysis, research, and the development of design ideas. The outcome of the course is an understanding of the process of creating a theatrical design for a performance, in order to work collaboratively with designers and appraise the role of the designer as a co-author of a performance.

https://courses.newschool.edu/courses/TPRC5103