Playreading

Catalog description

LIGHTING (001) Each year we in the lighting department read and discuss plays together every week. The plays are used in the curriculum of the Year 1 lighting classes, but we all benefit from practice discussing plays with others in a more public setting. In addition, we will have brief 5-10 minute biographies of significant lighting designers. It is very important to us as faculty that you know all of us well, and you know the other lighting designers who are not in your year. By the time you leave us in 3 years, you will have read and discussed 72 plays with 5 classes of students. SET (002): As theater and film artists, we are constantly required to react to new and unfamiliar work: in performance, on screen, at public and private readings, in scripts. The ability to think and talk about the work you encounter is an essential part of finding your voice and identity as an artist. At each class, we will discuss an assigned play, screenplay, or theater production. Brief written responses may be assigned before each class. This is not a literary analysis class, or a theater history class. The scripts are chosen for individual merits and also, as a collection, to constitute a broad range of ideas and challenges, but the collection is not chronological, nor drawn from any single genre, style, or cultural context. It is an intentionally diverse and eclectic set of texts. Students are encouraged to investigate each text as deeply as possible on your own; this should include, at a minimum, familiarizing yourself with the author and identifying some basic historical and cultural context in which to begin to understand the play.