What makes a performer distinctive and effective? How can or should performance be recorded and presented in media? How can we, as performers in our own lives, become more relaxed and expressive with our bodies and voices? What is therapeutic—healing—about performing? Address these questions and more within the emerging interdisciplinary field of performance studies. Become part of an international movement toward Team Learning and active listening as well, via collaborative sessions with the Changemaker Lab faculty and students on campus.
We'll study innovative and classic performances by popular, folk, and art musicians, dancers, and actors and compare excerpts from musicals on stage and on film, looking beyond the texts to the performative aspects. We'll pay close attention to voice, posture, facial expressions, movement, and makeup, and consider how gender, race, ethnicity, and accents continue to color access to resources in the theater, film, and music worlds. We'll also pay our dues to the crafts offstage or behind the camera, including scriptwriting, sets, lighting, costuming, makeup, hairstyling, masks, puppets, sound design, and video editing.
In weekly workshops we'll read scenes aloud, breaking them down line by line for close study in theory and practice, then experiment with adding vocal and facial nuances, movement, and music. Students with prior training in music or theater can pursue small group projects of their choice, including workshop productions of scenes from plays or musicals. Students can also explore ambitious collaborations employing the Team Learning approach with students from the Changemaker Lab, study influential artists in depth via collaborative research projects and presentations, or work with student activities groups like the Evergreen Theater Club or Evergreen Live Music on related projects.
First Year students enrolled in Greener Foundations will take the program for 14 credits each quarter; other students will enroll for 16 credits. Students enrolled for 14 credits will participate in all types of program activities, but their group project work will be correspondingly less extensive to allow room for their Greener Foundations work.
Anticipated Credit Equivalencies (split over the two quarters):
12 - Theater: Performance Studies
10 - Theater: Performance Workshop
10 - Music, Theater, or Media: Group Projects
Registration
Some previous experience in music, dance, theater, or film performance is helpful but not required.
Academic Details
Media, Communication, Journalism, Music, Theater, and Dance.