TAPS 1:
Introduction to Theater and Performance Studies
TAPS 1 provides you with a solid foundation in Theater Studies and traces the development of the burgeoning field of Performance Studies. We will consider a range of canonical plays and emerging performance forms, and explore how performance can also function as an interpretive framework for analyzing a broad range of social behaviors, sites, and institutions. Through a series of close readings, discussions, written and practical exercises, and viewings of live performance, this course will help you achieve a richer understanding of the performances you see and the performances you may wish to make. This quarter, TAPS 1 will serve as the platform for the Theater & Performance Studies professionalization series. We will host several guest speakers (directors, actors, playwrights, and dance practitioners), who will give you some real connections in the theater world and will provide you with information and skills to help you build a career in the arts.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
TAPS 11N:
Dramatic Tensions: Theater and the Marketplace
Preference to freshmen. The current state of the American theater and its artists. Conventional wisdom says that theater is a dying art, and a lost cause, especially in an age of multi-media entertainment. But there are more young playwrights, actors, and directors entering the field today than at any other time in American history. Focus is on the work of today's theater artists, with an emphasis on an emerging generation of playwrights. Students read a cross-section of plays from writers currently working in the US and UK, covering a spectrum of subjects and styles from serious to comic, from the musical to the straight play. Hits and misses from recent seasons of the New York and London stages and some of the differences of artistic taste across the Atlantic. Hands-on exploration of the arts and skills necessary to make a play succeed. Students develop their own areas of interest, in guided projects in design, direction or performance. Conversations with playwrights, designers ,and directors. Labs and master classes to solve problems posed in areas of creative production. Class meets literary managers and producers who are on the frontlines of underwriting new talent. Class trips include two plays at major Bay Area Stages.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
TAPS 11Q:
Art in the Metropolis (ARTSINST 11Q)
This seminar is offered in conjunction with the annual "Arts Immersion" trip to New York that takes place over the spring break and is organized by the Stanford Arts Institute (SAI). Participation in the trip is a requirement for taking part in the seminar (and vice versa). The trip is designed to provide a group of students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the cultural life of New York City guided by faculty and the SAI programming director. Students will experience a broad range and variety of art forms (visual arts, theater, opera, dance, etc.) and will meet with prominent arts administrators and practitioners, some of whom are Stanford alumni. For further details and updates about the trip, see http://arts.stanford.edu.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 17AX:
A 24 Hour Decade History of Popular Music with Taylor Mac
Performance collaboration with Stanford Live and the Curran Theater, San Francisco<br>Students selected for this Arts Intensive course will have the opportunity to participate with Taylor Mac in creating four 6-hr performances that encompass the whole of the 24-hr project. (Note: performances on Fri 9/22, Sun 9/24, Fri 9/29, and Sun 10/1, 2017)
Terms: Sum
| Units: 2
TAPS 17N:
Acting for Activists
Acting for Activists is designed for students who are interested in combining acting with activism, performance with politics. We will work with theatre that responds to specific political events and crisis such as hate crimes or war through the performance of activist texts. We will also explore works that challenge inequalities of income, race, gender and sexual orientation. By the end of the course students will cultivate a critical vocabulary for discussing and critiquing work within acting/activist contexts and develop new strategies for creating theatre in relation to issues they are passionate about. Acting for Activists encourages students to think about what they want to say and helps them craft how they want to say it.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 19N:
Perform, Record, Create: American Theater in the Age of Video
From Electronovision, a clunky combination of television and film used to record Broadway shows in the sixties, to slick 360º videos of theater performances that Google Cultural Institute brings to your iPhone, video technologies have profoundly altered the ways in which we see and understand live performance. If video recording started as an effort to preserve live performances, it ended up transforming the way we make theater. In short, it went from documentation to creation. In this class, students will watch landmark recordings of theater performances, comment on them, and, following the historical trajectory of the encounter between these two media, create their own videos of live shows. No previous experience in video or theater is necessary.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
TAPS 20A:
Acting for Non-Majors
A class designed for all interested students. Creative play, ensemble work in a supportive environment. Designed for the student to experience a range of new creative skills, from group improvisation to partner work. Introductory work on freeing the natural voice and physical relaxation. Emphasis on rediscovering imaginative and creative impulses. Movement improvisation, listening exercises, and theater games release the energy, playfulness and willingness to take risks that is the essence of free and powerful performance. Course culminates with work on dramatic text. This version of the class is offered in summer only. During the year, students should register for TAPS 124D.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 2
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 20N:
Prisons and Performance
Preference to Freshmen. This seminar starts with the unlikely question of what can the performing arts ¿ particularly dance and theater ¿ illuminate about the situation of mass incarceration in America. Part seminar, part immersive context building, students will read and view a cross-section of dance and theater works where the subject, performers, choreographers or authors, belong to part of the 2.4 million people currently behind bars in US prisons. Class includes conversations with formerly incarcerated youth, prison staff, juvenile justice lawyers and artists working in juvenile and adult prisons as well as those who are part of the 7.3 million people currently on parole or probation. Using performance as our lens we will investigate the unique kinds of understanding the arts make possible as well as the growing use of theater and dance to affect social change and personal transformation among prison inmates. Class trips will include visits to locked facilities and meetings with artists and inmates working behind bars.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
TAPS 21:
StoryCraft
StoryCraft is a hands-on, experiential workshop offering participants the opportunity, structure and guidance to craft compelling personal stories to be shared in front of a live audience. The class will focus on several areas of storytelling: Mining (how do you find your stories and extract the richest details?); Crafting (how do you structure the content and shape the language?); and Performing (how do you share your stories with presence, authenticity and connection?).
Terms: Aut, Spr
| Units: 2
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 21N:
The Idea of Virtual Reality
What is virtual reality and where is it heading? Was there VR before digital technology? What is the value of the real in a virtual culture? How, where, and when do we draw the line between the virtual and the real, the live and the mediated today? Concentrating on three aspects of VR simulation, immersion, and interactivity this course will examine recent experiments alongside a long history of virtual performance, from Plato's Cave to contemporary CAVEs, from baroque theatre design to Oculus Rift.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 21S:
StoryCraft: On Sexuality (FEMGEN 21S)
This class prepares students to tell their stories in front of the Beyond Sex Ed audiences in three performances for all freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, Fall 2017. What is sexuality education? In this class, you will learn about sexuality from the inside-out. We will examine social discourses that shape our understanding of sexuality and then dive into an experiential workshop to discover the many facets of sexuality through the art of story -- our own and others. Due to the sensitive nature of the topic, we will emphasize safety, trust, and confidentiality throughout. The class will offer you the structure and guidance to 1) mine your lives for stories, 2) craft the structure and shape, and 3) perform with presence, authenticity, and connection.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2
TAPS 22:
Scene Work
For actors who complete substantial scene work with graduate directors in the graduate workshop.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 1-2
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 25:
Acting Short Narrative: From Shakespeare to YouTube
This course will help beginning students understand basic dramatic structure for acting short scenes. Using classic models (Euripides, Shakespeare, Noel Coward, Stephen Sondheim), we will explore how compelling dramatic scenes are constructed. Students will work with the instructor and with professional actors from Stanford Repertory Theater to come to grips with what makes these scenes successful and how best to bring them to life. As a final project, students will work together to develop and write their own short dramatic scenes, suitable for posting on YouTube.
Last offered: Summer 2016
| Units: 2
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 4 units total)
TAPS 28:
Makeup for the Stage
Techniques of make-up application and design for the actor and artist including corrective, age, character, and fantasy. Emphasis placed on utilizing make-up for development of character by the actor. Limited enrollment.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 2
TAPS 29:
Theater Performance: Acting
Students cast in department productions receive credit for their participation as actors; 1-2 units for graduate directing workshop projects and 1-3 units for major productions (units determined by instructor). May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 1-3
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 30:
Introduction to Theatrical Design
Introduction to Theatrical Design is aimed at students interested in exploring the fundamentals of design for the stage. Students are introduced to the practical and theoretical basics of design and are challenged to answer the question: What makes good design? Students should expect to try their hand at communicating their ideas visually through research, drawing, sketching and model making. Readings, field trips, guest lecturers and class discussion will complement these projects. This course is intended as a gateway to more specialized courses in set, costume and lighting design and is also an excellent primer for actors, directors and scholars who wish to know more about design. Collaboration will be emphasized. No prior experience in these areas is necessary.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 31:
Introduction to Lighting and Production
How light contributes to the creation of mood and atmosphere and different kinds of visibility in theatrical storytelling. The use of controllable qualities of light including color, brightness, angle, and movemen in the theatrical process of creative scenography. Hands-on laboratory time.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
TAPS 32F:
Godiva to Gaga: A Survey of Western Fashion and Societal Implications
The evolution of fashion and costume with an emphasis on the relationship between social, cultural, and political events and clothing style. Attention to major designers and creators and their shaping of resultant fashion and artistry in clothing.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 4
TAPS 33:
Introduction to Technical Theater and Production
A fun, collaborative, hands-on course subjecting students to the basics of scenery, props, painting, rigging, sound, lighting, costumes, and other production elements used in theater. This class is good for all types of theater students interested in producing theater at Stanford and beyond.
| Units: 2-3
TAPS 34:
Stage Management Techniques
The production process, duties, and responsibilities of a stage manager. Skills needed to stage manage a production.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
TAPS 39:
Theater Crew
For students working backstage, on run crew, or in the theater shops on TAPS department productions. Night and weekend time required. Pre-approval from Laxmi Kumaran (laxmik@stanford.edu) required for enrollment.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-3
| Repeatable
4 times
(up to 15 units total)
TAPS 39D:
Small Project Stage Management
For students Stage Mananging a TAPS Senior Project or Assistant Stage Managing a TAPS department production. Pre-approval by Laxmi Kumaran (laxmik@stanford.edu) required for enrollment.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 2-4
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 41N:
Inventing Modern Theatre: Georg Büchner and Frank Wedekind
The German writers Georg Büchner (1813-1837) and Frank Wedekind (1864-1918). Many of the most important theater and film directors of the last century, including Max Reinhardt, G. W. Pabst, Orson Welles, Robert Wilson, and Werner Herzog, have wrestled with their works, as have composers and writers from Alban Berg and Bertolt Brecht through Christa Wolf and Thalia Field. Rock artists as diverse as Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Duncan Sheik, and Metallica have recently rediscovered their urgency. Reading these works in translation and examining artistic creations they inspired. Classroom discussions and written responses; students also rehearse and present in-class performances of excerpts from the plays. The aim of these performances is not to produce polished stagings but to creatively engage with the texts and their interpretive traditions. No previous theatrical experience required.
Last offered: Winter 2014
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
TAPS 101P:
Intro to Directing and Devising Theatre
An introductory workshop class that explores a range of theatre exercises and techniques in order to create, perform, and compose theatre. Students will work with original texts such as Beckett, Pinter, Churchill as well as creating their own performance texts and scores to make original, devised performance. Students will be encouraged to think critically about various compositional themes and ideas including the relationship between form and content, aesthetics, proximity, audience, space. Students will work collaboratively learning how to problem solve and deal with creative challenges as they create original performance works. Students will work towards creating a short original performance piece.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 103:
Beginning Improvising
The improvisational theater techniques that teach spontaneity, cooperation, team building, and rapid problem solving, emphasizing common sense, attention to reality, and helping your partner. Based on TheatreSports by Keith Johnstone. Readings, papers, and attendance at performances of improvisational theater. Limited enrollment. Improv, Improvisation, creativity and creative expression.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 104:
Intermediate Improvisation
This class is the continued study of improvisational theater with a focus on stage skills, short and long form performance formats, and offstage applications of collaborative creativity. It is open to any students who have taken TAPS 103 or have previous onstage improv experience AND consent of the instructor. May be repeat for credit.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 6 units total)
TAPS 108:
Introduction to Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (AMSTUD 107, CSRE 108, FEMGEN 101)
Introduction to interdisciplinary approaches to gender, sexuality, queer, trans and feminist studies. Topics include the emergence of sexuality studies in the academy, social justice and new subjects, science and technology, art and activism, history, film and memory, the documentation and performance of difference, and relevant socio-economic and political formations such as work and the family. Students learn to think critically about race, gender, and sexuality from local and global perspectives.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
TAPS 115:
Musical Theater
In this workshop we will traverse the landscape of world of Musical Theater. It will serve as an introduction for the beginning actor and singer, and expand the more experienced performer¿s range in this genre. The world of Musical Theater is filled with stories of love, passion, joy, violence, heartbreak and rage. The class will include an introduction to vocal and movement skills for musical theater, beginning with exercises to build an ensemble and encourage a sense of play and relaxation in supportive environment. Our class must be a place where everyone feels safe. As ensemble members, we will be responsible for each other in this environment. nnStudents will choose one solo song, and perform in a group number from this exciting discipline. The instructor will work with the actors on technique, utilization of action, specificity of language, personalization, and emotional truth. A professional coach from the theater community will conduct vocal coaching. Physical warm-ups and choreography will be suited for both the dancer and non-dancer.n nThe class will culminate in the last week with live performance for friends and family.nnSTUDENTS ARE ENCOURAGED TO BRING THEIR OWN SUGGESTIONS. (Isn¿t there a role you¿ve always wanted to sing?)nnRequired text: Broadway Musicals Show by Show: Sixth Edition - Stanley Green; Paperback
Terms: Spr
| Units: 1-3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 119:
Modern Theatre (GERMAN 119, GERMAN 319, TAPS 319)
Modern theatre in Europe and the US, with a focus on the most influential works from roughly 1880 to the present. What were the conventions of theatrical practice that modern theatre displaced? What were the principal innovations of modern playwriting, acting, stage design, and theatrical architecture? How did modern theatrical artists wrestle with the revolutionary transformations of the modern age? Plays by Büchner, Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, Chekhov, Wilde, Wedekind, Treadwell, Pirandello, Brecht, O¿Neill, Beckett, Smith, Parks, and Nottage.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 1-5
TAPS 120A:
Acting I: Fundamentals of Acting
A substantive introduction to the basics of the craft of acting, this course gives all incoming students the foundation of a common vocabulary. Students will learn fundamental elements of dramatic analysis, and how to apply it in action. Topics include scene analysis, environment work, psychological and physical scoring, and development of a sound and serviceable rehearsal technique. Scene work will be chosen from accessible, contemporary, and realistic plays. Outside rehearsal time required.
Terms: Aut, Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 120B:
Acting II: Period and Style
Learn how to expand character work, beyond what is immediately familiar. Continuing basic practices from the first part of the sequence, in this quarter they will look beyond the strictly contemporary, and may begin to approach roles drawn from more challenging dramatic texts. This might include plays chosen from mid-century American classics, World Theater, or other works with specific historic or cultural requirements. Actors begin to learn how a performing artist researches and how that research can be used to enrich and deepen performance. Prerequisite: 120A or consent of instructor.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 1-3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 121:
Proseminar
Workshop. Open to graduate and undergraduate students. Prepares PhD students for the academic profession by honing skills in conference presentations, job market, and scholarly publications. Also offered to undergraduates to help prepare them for careers in theater.
Last offered: Autumn 2015
| Units: 3-5
TAPS 121C:
Physical Characterization
A practical course in movement, acting and character development for stage or screen. This course is appropriate for all artists; no prior movement training is required. We will explore expressive possibilities in the body in order to build characters with nuanced physicality and rich emotional life. Students will learn strategies for awakening the body, find a greater range of expression, and widen the variety of characters they can inhabit. We will conduct live observations and take inspiration from photographs, memories, dramatic texts and other sources to build vivid portraits of character in performance. Actors will work independently and as an ensemble, learning techniques derived from Michael Chekhov. We will also practice physical conditioning for the actor through a daily warm-up sequence that improves strength, flexibility and alignment.
Last offered: Autumn 2015
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 121P:
Period and Style:Acting
This course is designed for the actor and theater-lover who has completed 120a or an equivalent basic acting class. Students will develop their acting skills towards the ability to perform in some of the major classics of the theater, from Shakespeare's plays through the fast-paced physical comedies of twentieth-century farce. Acting in "big" plays without damaging the voice, working physically with safety, how to research like an artist, and rehearse like a professional are all topics that will be covered. Class culminates in an open Scene Showing of Period Plays.
Last offered: Spring 2014
| Units: 3
TAPS 122P:
Undergrad Performance Project: The Tempest
The Undergraduate Performance Project provides students the opportunity to study and perform in major dramatic works. The Winter 2017 Undergraduate Performance Project presents The Tempest. Students learn to form an artistic ensemble, develop dramaturgical materials, learn professional arts protocols and practice, devise within the ensemble, and develop live performance ability. Audition required. Preference to majors/minors. Maybe repeated for credit.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1-9
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
3 times
(up to 15 units total)
TAPS 124D:
Acting for Non-Majors
Formerly TAPS 20. Creative play, ensemble work in a supportive environment. Designed for the student to experience a range of new creative skills, from group improvisation to partner work. Introductory work on freeing the natural voice and physical relaxation. Emphasis on rediscovering imaginative and creative impulses. Movement improvisation, listening exercises, and theater games release the energy, playfulness and willingness to take risks that is the essence of free and powerful performance. Course culminates with work on dramatic text.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 1-3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE, way_ce
TAPS 125:
Acting Shakespeare
This course explores the unique demands of playing Shakespeare on the stage. Through deep exploration of language and performance techniques in sonnets, speeches and scenes, the student will learn how to bring Shakespeare's passions to life through research, analysis, and a dynamic use of voice, body and imagination. This course is designed to increase the actor's physical, vocal, emotional, and intellectual responsiveness to the demands, challenges and joys of playing Shakespeare.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 6 units total)
TAPS 126:
Sound Stories
This special seminar is designed for students interested in creating stories for radio, podcast, and other sound media. Students will learn both the core principles of telling strong stories, whatever the medium, and the strategies of telling entertaining, persuasive stories for the ear. Just like film or the novel, sonic stories offer a fascinating mix of constraints and opportunities, and you'll learn how to invite listeners into an experience or insight that combines theories, facts and feelings into a single space of empathy. This is a hybrid class - equal parts classic seminar and creative workshop - and students will create stories from start to finish and learn skills from pitching and interviewing to writing, editing, and digital production. Students will work in small groups to document places through the stories that inhabit them - from the Menlo Park Police department to local shelters and community centers. Recommended for students interested in creative nonfiction, documentary, film, and even sound art. No prior experience necessary. Students wishing to enroll in this course must complete the following survey: nhttp://web.stanford.edu/~jwarga/S17TAPS126.fb (Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center)
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 127:
Movement for the Actor
This course is an exploration of movement techniques for the actor, designed to provide a foundation for performance practice. Students will develop a more grounded sense of ease and breath onstage, learn fundamentals of physical partnership, and acquire an expanded physical vocabulary. Areas of study include Laban movement analysis, observation and embodiment, basic contact improvisation, and physical characterization. Students will also engage a personalized warmup process for rehearsal and performance. All coursework will be entirely experiential, practical, and participatory. No previous experience necessary. Some outside rehearsal/investigation time required.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 8 units total)
TAPS 127C:
Introduction to Stage Combat
A course designed to cover the fundamental techniques to safely and convincingly create the illusion of violence. Stressing safety, storytelling, and partnering, this class will explore the most commonly used unarmed combat techniques, including fighting with found objects and comedic violence. Additionally, students will explore the essential techniques and vocabulary for theatrical broadsword including parries, cuts, thrusts, footwork and evasions. Students will have the opportunity to take a "skills proficiency test" in both disciplines for recognition as a beginning theatrical combatant with Dueling Arts International. This class will be taught by Dave Maier.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
TAPS 127S:
Acting Through Song
How does a singer develop the strategies to shape nuanced, emotional performances? What clues does the singer mine from lyrics and a score in order to communicate through song? This is a studio course in acting and movement techniques for vocal performers who want to expand their expressive range, refine multi-faceted performances, and cultivate compelling stage presence. nnThis course is suitable for any vocalist; classical singers, a cappella performers, musical theater actors and others are all welcome. The three foundational underpinnings of our work will be actor personalization technique, basic movement training and text analysis strategies. We will develop flexibility, relaxation and the freedom to follow expressive impulses while also deepening our knowledge of character, narrative and theme.nnStudents should be prepared to engage in intensive work with performance pieces, selected according to each student¿s preferred style and tradition. We will focus on close textual analysis and find connections between the ways performers use various written scores (for spoken dialogue, song lyrics and musical composition) as the blueprints for dynamic performances that tell a powerful story. The course will culminate in a public performance of material from a musical performance genre.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 2-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 130:
ReDesigning Theater: Live & Digital Performance
This quarter¿s version of ReDesigning Theater looks at Live and Digital Performance. We will examine the use of digital technology in collaboration with live performance. Students will learn and employ the design thinking process as well as improv and theatrical techniques. We aim to create user-centric, interactive experiences where technology enables the audience to become part of and/or influence the outcome of the story or its presentation. Student projects will begin with the concepts enabled by personal technology such as smart phones and expand to animation, video projection, and other media. Students will work in small groups to investigate and experiment with formats that blur the lines between live and digital, performer and audience, and physical and virtual platforms. This project-based course is accessible to students of all backgrounds interested in exploring and transforming the frontiers of technology, art, and live performance.
Last offered: Autumn 2013
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 132:
Costume Design
This course introduces the goals, directives and techniques of designing costumes for performance. From the first reading of the script to opening night, all aspects will be covered including director/designer relationships, design approach, research, rendering, fabric selection, procurement or construction of costumes, fittings and final dress rehearsals. Each student will work on, or be assigned one main project of their choice. This class can coincide or be taken in advance of a student¿s involvement in a campus show, utilizing the campus project as their main project in the class. Smaller exercises will be given throughout the quarter to emphasize principles and invigorate design discussions. All students will be required to attend the performances of their peers¿ projects. One field trip to a professional theater may be planned.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 133:
Stage Scenery Design
Craft and Theory of stage scenery design including visual research, spatial organization, basic drafting, sketching and model-building. Prerequisite: 30, or consent of instructor.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 8 units total)
TAPS 133D:
Set Design Practicum
This course is intended for students who are in the process of designing scenery for a Stanford club or department production and seek guidance in developing and refining their design. It is also open to students who have not yet committed to a fully realized set design project but would like to in the future, or anyone who would like to focus on the practical aspects of set design in general. Each week students present their work on a current or future set design and receive feedback and suggestions from classmates and the instructor. Also, the instructor will create project oriented assignments adapted to the needs and timeline of each individual project and student. Topics include: visual research, sketching, computer and hand drafting, and model making. During the first two weeks of the course students and instructor will determine a final project, such as a color model or design drafting, which will be required for completion of the course.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-4
TAPS 134:
Stage Management Project
For students stage managing a Department of Drama production.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 134M:
Theatricality and the String Quartet (MUSIC 134)
How might we imagine string quartet as a theatrical genre? This thought experiment informs a collaboration between Mohr Visiting Artist Majel Connery, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, and the Saint Lawrence String Quartet. This seminar serves as a laboratory for that collaboration, offering a forum to explore side by side with Connery, SLSQ and Shaw the conceptual origins of the project and soliciting students' creative involvement. Orbiting around signal works for string quartet and voice, the course combines the critical rigor of graduate-level work with the practical grit of a studio workshop, and culminates in a suite of student performances. This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit. Enrollment limited to 15.
Terms: Win
| Units: 2-3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
TAPS 136S:
Hidden Gems: Bay Area Theater Architecture post 1906
An active investigation of Bay Area theater architecture through a close look at five buildings built specifically for performance and how their use has changed over time. Students uncover building histories by researching drawing plans, photographs and other contextual documents in public and university archives in addition to site visits when possible. Particular attention will be paid to understanding shifting attitudes toward the proscenium arch in American popular culture. Possible buildings to be included: California Theater (San Jose), Memorial Auditorium (Stanford), Lucie Stern Theater (Palo Alto), Fox Theater (Redwood City) and The Curran Theater (San Francisco).
Terms: Aut, Win
| Units: 3
TAPS 137:
Hand Drafting for Designers
Fundamentals of hand-drafting. Standard drawing conventions; the use of line weight, color, composition, and graphic style. Creation of construction documents for real-world applications.May be repeated for credit.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 3
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 6 units total)
TAPS 140:
Introduction to Projects in Theatrical Production
A seminar course for students performing significant production work on Theater and Performance Studies Department or other Stanford University student theater projects. Students serving as producers, directors, designers or stage managers, who wish mentorship and credit for their production work sign up for this course and contact the instructor, Laxmi Kumaran. nPrerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 1-4
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 150P:
Performance Art, Politics, and Culture: The Manifesto (CSRE 150P)
This course is structured to examine manifestos as unorthodox texts, leaking with emotion, humor, and anger, in order to offer an important critical frame for studying performance art in relation to gender, power, oppression, and autonomy. By reading manifestos with and against feminist and queer performance practices, and by taking an interdisciplinary approach to Performance, Cultural, and Aesthetic Theory, the course examines the method, rhetoric, aim, style, and substance of manifestos to understand their importance and efficacy.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 150T:
Transnational Sexualities (CSRE 150T, FEMGEN 150T, FEMGEN 250T, TAPS 250T)
Transnational Sexualites is an inter-disciplinary course that considers the aesthetic, social, and political formation of sexual subjectivities in a global world. How does the transnational traffic of people, media, images, finance, and commodities shape the force-fields of desire? What is the relationship between political economies and libidinal economies? The course will explore the erotics of race and religion, neoliberalism and globalization within a wide range geo-political contexts including Indonesia, China, Egypt, India, South Africa, US, among others.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
TAPS 150V:
The Idea of Virtual Reality (TAPS 350V)
What is virtual reality and where is it heading? Was there VR before digital technology? What is the value of the real in a virtual culture? How, where, and when do we draw the line between the virtual and the real, the live and the mediated today? Concentrating on three aspects of VR simulation, immersion, and interactivity this course will examine recent experiments alongside a long history of virtual performance, from Plato's Cave to contemporary CAVEs, from baroque theatre design to Oculus Rift.
| Units: 4
TAPS 151C:
Hamlet and the Critics (ENGLISH 115C)
Focus is on Shakespeare's Hamlet as a site of rich critical controversy from the eighteenth century to the present. Aim is to read, discuss, and evaluate different approaches to the play, from biographical, theatrical, and psychological to formalist, materialist, feminist, new historicist, and, most recently, quantitative. The ambition is to see whether there can be great literature without (a) great (deal of) criticism. The challenge is to understand the theory of literature through the study of its criticism.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
TAPS 151T:
Great Books: Dramatic Traditions (COMPLIT 151B, COMPLIT 351B, TAPS 351)
The most influential and enduring texts in the dramatic canon from Sophocles to Shakespeare, Chekhov to Soyinka. Their historical and geopolitical contexts. Questions about the power dynamics involved in the formation of canons. This course counts as a Writing in the Major course for TAPS in 2016-17.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
TAPS 151V:
Controversies in US Theater: From Casting to Funding
For as long as there has been an American theatrical tradition, there have been controversies about it. From those creating theatrical performances, to those analyzing drama¿s place in society, to audiences, people have strong opinions about the purpose, nature, and impact of US theater. This course will ask questions such as: What are the best casting practices with respect to race, gender, ability, and sexuality? How has the commercialization or Disneyification of Broadway changed the theatrical landscape? Should the federal government fund the arts, and if so, does that give them the right to influence content?
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 152:
Introduction to Improvisation in Dance: From Salsa to Vodun to Tap Dance (AFRICAAM 52, CSRE 152)
This seminar introduces students to Dance Studies by exploring the topic of improvisation, a central concept in multiple genres of dance and music. We will survey a range of improvised dance forms¿from salsa to vodun to tap dance¿through readings, video viewings, discussion, and movement exercises (no previous dance experience required). When studying each genre, we will examine how race, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and other power structures affect the practices and theorizations of improvisation. Topics include community and identity formation; questions of technique versus ¿natural¿ ability; improvisation as a spiritual practice; and the role of history in improvisers¿ quest for spontaneity. Course material will focus on improvised dance, but we will also read pertinent literature in jazz music, theatre, and the law.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
TAPS 152G:
Cultural Fusions, Global Flows: Dance History and Practice
This course examines how dance is produced from a confluence of different social, cultural, and historical forces. Focusing on dance practices from Africa, Latin America, and Oceania, we investigate how attention to dance¿s entangled genealogies can teach us about issues of diaspora, globalization, and trans-indigeneity. Students have the opportunity to engage in stimulating discussion and debate, to participate in practical dance workshops, and to interact with specialist guest artists.
| Units: 4
TAPS 153:
Revenge: From Aeschylus to ABC
How has the topic of revenge inspired some of theatre history¿s most dramatic masterpieces? Covering works from ancient Greek and Roman tragedy to Chinese Opera, from Japanese samurai intrigues to Renaissance drama, and from nineteenth-century comedy to postcolonial plays, this course examines how the powerful impetus to take revenge has spurred or stymied some of theatre¿s most compelling characters. Blending theory and practice, we will experiment with an array of theatrical forms and styles; we will also discuss the philosophical dimensions and moral implications of revenge, including various cultural understandings of retribution and redress.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 4
TAPS 153D:
Performing Digital Technologies
This class is about collaboration: between live performers and digital images, between artists and engineers, and between scholars and artists. It emphasizes conceptual work and creativity in the integration of new and old media. We will take a rigorous but fundamentally hands-on approach to the uses of a wide range of screen technologies - from smart phones to digital projections - in live performance. The class will start with a survey of successful uses of screens in recent theater and performance work, then move to finding novel solutions for particular dramatic scenes.
Last offered: Winter 2015
| Units: 4
TAPS 153F:
Performing Feeling (CSRE 153F, FEMGEN 153F)
This course explores the intersections of performance and feeling through a wide geographical and historical range of theories, texts, and performances. We will examine how performance and feeling relate to one another by surveying a broad spectrum of performance and performance theory, with special attention to race, gender, and sexuality.These explorations will serve as grounds for richer understandings of performance as well as expanded artistic vocabularies in performing feeling.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
TAPS 153T:
Mechanics of the Stage: The Technology of Tricks and Traps in the History of Stagecraft
From traps, to lifts, to sugar glass props, the stage absorbs and utilizes technological and scientific innovations for its own illusions. In this course, we will examine the history of stagecraft through the technologies and scientific theories that came to define its spectacle. We will explore innovations in perspective scenery, stage mechanics, and lighting design as well as significant stage illusions from the seventeenth century to the present. Readings will include treatises on mechanical apparatus, stage machinery, and architectural theories; schematics, blueprints, and patents of theatre spaces; and readings on theatre theory and stage design. One Shakespeare play, and later twentieth-century adaptations, will provide the focal narrative around which we will examine how changing theories and technologies influence the possibilities of representation. The play will be drawn from The Tempest, Midsummer Night¿s Dream, or Hamlet with selected twentieth- century adaptations. Creative projects will be included in the course work.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 154C:
Shall We Dance? Social Dancing as Political Practice (CSRE 154C, DANCE 154, FEMGEN 154C)
This seminar investigates social dancing as a political practice, and the dance floor as a place where race, ethnicity, class status, and sexuality are formed and contested. While many students may be familiar with salsa, and can imagine how it produces particular kinds of Latin/a feminities, this course asks students to expand the notion of social dancing beyond partner-dancing spheres. Course materials will focus on dance practices from the late-nineteenth century to present-day, ranging from rural Louisiana dancehalls to NYC nightclubs to Iranian backyards. We will examine how dances become racially coded (e.g., what makes a dance black or Latin@?), and understand how categories such as gender, class, and regionality intersect with such racializations. Students will engage in a range of activities, including reading, viewing films, and participating in occasional movement workshops (no previous dance experience required). Each student¿s final project will require independent, sustained, ethnographic research in a social dance setting of choice (e.g., student dance club, yoga studio, aerobics class, or YouTube).
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
TAPS 154M:
The Broadway Musical as History
Most musicals are adaptations of pre-existing artistic material: plays, novels, films, even operas. However, some musicals draw their inspiration not from fiction, but from fact, from history. This course examines how musicals perform history, engaging with and transforming historical subjects and events. Focusing on historical musicals such as Cabaret, concept musicals such as Assassins, and biographical musicals such as Hamilton, we will ask: How do musicals teach us history? In what ways do music and narration interact with past events and people? How does music articulate a sense of time and place, connecting history to contemporary events?
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 154P:
Stage Physics and Chemical Theaters: Science & Contemporary Performance
Using the concept of theatre and performance as a way of seeing and being in the world, this course investigates the presentation and representation of science through texts, images, films, and experiences. The knowledge and objects of scientific research have often overlapped with aesthetic practices of literature, art, and performance. Whether through playwrights evaluating the impact of spectacular and dangerous technologies (e.g. Michael Frayn's Copenhagen) or researchers exploring creativity in science communication (Dr. Brian Cox's Forces of Nature), the practices of science and performance consistently intersect. In this course, we will explore how scientists, playwrights, artists, and inventors have engaged with science and technology through performance. We will examine the history of scientific process and theatrical performance, revisit debates over the relationship between the disciplinary science and arts, and will develop a critical vocabulary for approaching contemporary performance and scientific work. We will delve into the world of science communication, scientific practice, and the SciArts---all the while keeping a keen eye on the questions and epistemologies of theatrical and performative practice. The course will include in-class activities, excursions, and creative writing projects.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 156A:
Warhol: Painting, Photography, Performance (ARTHIST 156A, ARTHIST 356A, TAPS 356A)
This course focuses on the career of Andy Warhol as a means to consider the broader history of American art and culture since 1950. It examines little-studied aspects of Warhol¿s visual production (e.g. his career as a commercial artist in the 1950s and his everyday photographs of the 1970s and 1980s) alongside his now-canonical Pop paintings of the 1960s. Warhol?s critical and scholarly reception will be scrutinized in detail, as will published interviews of and writings by the artist. Finally, we will consider Warhol¿s legacy and wide-ranging influence on American culture in the decades since his death in 1987.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 159G:
The Theater of War: Art, Violence, and the Technologies of Death
We will read plays and study films dealing with war and the technologies of destruction, including Aeschylus' Persians, Sophocles' Philoctetes, Euripides' Trojan Women, Shakespeare's Macbeth, O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars and The Silver Tassie, Brecht's Galileo and Mother Courage, Kubrick's Paths of Glory and Dr. Strangelove, Bergman's Shame, Nichol's Catch-22, Wertmuller's Seven Beauties, Brenton's The Genius, Frayn's Copenhagen, Nottage's Ruined, among others.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 160:
Performance and History: Rethinking the Ballerina (DANCE 160, FEMGEN 160, TAPS 260)
The ballerina occupies a unique place in popular imagination as an object of over-determined femininity as well as an emblem of extreme physical accomplishment for the female dancer. This seminar is designed as an investigation into histories of the ballerina as an iconographic symbol and cultural reference point for challenges to political and gender ideals. Through readings, videos, discussions and viewings of live performances this class investigates pivotal works, artists and eras in the global histories of ballet from its origins as a symbol of patronage and power in the 15th century through to its radical experiments as a site of cultural obedience and disobedience in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
TAPS 160M:
Introduction to Representations of the Middle East in Dance, Performance, & Popular Culture (CSRE 160M, DANCE 160M, FEMGEN 160M)
This course will introduce students to the ways in which the Middle East has been represented and performed by/in the 'West' through dance, performance, and popular culture in both historical and contemporary contexts. A brief look through today's media sources exposes a wide range of racialized and gendered representations of the Middle East that shape the way the world imagines the Middle East to be. As postcolonial theorist Edward Said explains, the framework we call Orientalism establishes the ontological character of the Orient and the Oriental as inherently `Other'. Starting with 19th century colonialism and continuing into the post-9/11 era, this course will trace the Western production, circulation, and consumption of representations of the Middle East as 'Other' in relation to global geopolitics. We will further examine dance forms produced in mid-twentieth century Iran and Egypt, with particular attention to nation-state building and constructions of gender. Finally, we will examine artistic productions and practices from the Middle East and Middle Eastern diasporic communities that respond to colonialism, war, displacement, secularism, and Euro-American Empire. Using dance studies, postcolonial feminist, and critical race theoretical frameworks, we will consider the gender, racial, political, and cultural implications of selected performance works and practices in order to analyze how bodies produce meaning in dance, performance art, theater, film, photography, and new media. Students will engage in multiple modes of learning; the course will include lectures, engaged group discussions, viewing of live and recorded performance, embodied participation in dance practice, student oral presentations, and a variety of writing exercises. Course assignments will culminate in a final research project related to class themes and methods.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
TAPS 161:
Dance & Conflict
This seminar investigates how moving bodies are compelling agents of social, cultural, and political change.Through readings, videos, discussions and viewings of live performances this class questions the impact of social conflict and war on selected 20th and 21st century dances and dance practices. This class asks to what extent dance, in its history as well as contemporary development, is linked to concepts of the political and conflict.
| Units: 4
TAPS 161H:
Dance, History and Conflict
This seminar investigates how moving bodies are compelling agents of social, cultural, and political change.Through readings, videos, discussions and viewings of live performances this class questions the impact of social conflict and war on selected 20th and 21st century dances and dance practices. This class asks to what extent dance, in its history as well as contemporary development, is linked to concepts of the political and conflict.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 4
TAPS 162H:
Baroque Modernities: Dance, Theater, Film, Political Theory
What do seventeenth-century choreography and dramaturgy contribute to (mean to) choreographic and theatrical modernity? How can we explain the recurrent baroque phenomenon across the twentieth century -- becoming particularly prominent in the 1980s -- beyond the historicist accounts of theatrical reconstruction? How does the baroque locate itself within cultural modernity?nnThis seminar asks this question of choreography at several junctures: The analysis of seventeenth century baroque spectacle that fashioned dance and theatre into political tools of monarchical sovereignty; Twentieth-century literature on the Baroque that destabilizes received notions of subjectivity and political sovereignty; Twentieth-century choreography and film that deploys baroque figures and techniques.nnThus, our material shall range from seventeenth-century dance and theater to contemporary dance, film and literature.
| Units: 4
| Repeatable
4 times
(up to 16 units total)
TAPS 162I:
The Idea of a Theater
Examines the idea of a theater from the religious street theater of Medieval York, though Shakespeare's Globe, and onto the mental theater of the Romantic reader and the alienation effects of Brecht's radical playhouse in the 20th cent
Last offered: Winter 2013
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
TAPS 162Z:
Dance on the Move: Migration, Border Zones, and Citizenship (CSRE 162Z, DANCE 162Z)
Dance on the Move is an introductory-level course that considers dance performance and practice as sites for examining the mobilities/immobilities that shape transnational migration and citizenship. We examine how (im)migrant bodies as subjects constructed through political-economic relations of race, gender, sexuality, class, nationality, and religion negotiate, contest, and affirm experiences of belonging/unbelonging in daily life and artistic practice across diverse geographical sites. Students will conduct a small ethnographic project with a dance community that relates to the theme, such as social dance events or student dance groups. Students will produce either a written- or a hybrid written/performance- ethnography as their final project.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
TAPS 163:
Introduction to Dance and History: From Postwar to the Present (DANCE 163, FEMGEN 163D, TAPS 263)
This course explores the cultural and historical unfolding of the genre of contemporary performance known as postmodern dance over the past six decades. It begins with the formative influence of the émigré Bauhaus artists of the 1930s, then the postwar experiments of the Beat artists in the 1950s, to Merce Cunningham, the Judson Dance Theatre, postmodern formalism, neo-expressionism, dance theatre and through to the global, spectacle-rich, cross-genre dance work of the early 21st century as the most recent extended legacy of this history. This course uses dance history to trace with special emphasis the effects of these visual art and movement experimentalists on gender representation and nationalist identity construction in the negotiation of boundaries between dance and life.
Last offered: Autumn 2015
| Units: 4
TAPS 164T:
Queer Art and Performance (TAPS 364T)
Examines the late 19th, 20th and 21st century forms of performance-- including examples from drama, theater, cabaret, and performance art -- through the perspectives of contemporary critical gender and queer theories. Texts and movements range from early avant-garde (Dada, Futurism) to gay and lesbian drama (Lillian Hellmann, Joe Orton, Tony Kushner) to post-liberation Queer performance and video (Split Britches, Carmelita Tropicana, Kalup Linzy). Theorists include Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
Last offered: Spring 2013
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-Gender
TAPS 165:
Introduction to Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (COMPLIT 195, CSRE 196C, ENGLISH 172D, PSYCH 155, SOC 146)
How different disciplines approach topics and issues central to the study of ethnic and race relations in the U.S. and elsewhere. Lectures by senior faculty affiliated with CSRE. Discussions led by CSRE teaching fellows. Includes an optional Haas Center for Public Service certified Community Engaged Learning section.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
TAPS 165C:
Ancient Dance and its Modern Legacy (CLASSICS 137, CLASSICS 237, TAPS 265C)
Descriptions of dance in the Greek and Greco-Roman world; theories about dance in antiquity; dance and the senses; modern and modernist dancers and choreographers discussing ancient dance
Last offered: Winter 2015
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 166H:
Historiography of Theater
Goal is to design an undergraduate theater history class. Standard theater history textbooks, alternative models of theater history scholarship, and critical literature engaging historiography in general.
Last offered: Spring 2013
| Units: 3-5
TAPS 167:
Introduction to Greek Tragedy: Gods, Heroes, Fate, and Justice (CLASSICS 112)
(Formerly CLASSGEN 110.) Gods and heroes, fate and free choice, gender conflict, the justice or injustice of the universe: these are just some of the fundamental human issues that we will explore in about ten of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
TAPS 167H:
Revolutions in Theater (TAPS 267)
This course surveys the period from the turn of the 20th century until WII, during which the European avant-garde movements transformed modern art. This period in history is marked by dynamic political events that had a deep impact on experimental art and on culture in general. This interaction between poetics and politics makes the first decades of the 20th century the formative period of western and global theater.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 4
TAPS 168H:
Poor Theater (TAPS 268H)
The goal of this class is not to offer a survey of Happenings and other happening-related art of the late twentieth century. Instead, we will use Happenings as a paradigm of "poor theater" and "poor art" - umbrella terms for a number of experimental performance and art practices that emerged in the aftermath of the WWII. We will use the idea of poor theater as an organizing principle in our investigation of the main currents in the experimental performance in the last five decades. The class has a tripartite structure. First we will outline the paradigm of happenings, then trace the origins of Happenings in music, visual arts and theater of the mid twentieth century, and finally look at Happenings' immediate impact, as well as at its ripple effects that continued to reverberate long after the disappearance of this new art form. This course counts as a Writing in the Major course for TAPS in 2016-17.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
TAPS 169:
Hysteria and Modern Culture (HUMBIO 162H)
The term "hysteria" has been used for centuries to categorize the mysterious ailments of others. This course will focus on the history of hysteria's representation and production from the late nineteenth century through WWI. Readings will include medical writings (Charcot, Bernheim, Freud), plays (Ibsen, Strindberg, Toller), and feminist theory (Cixous, Clément, Diamond). We will also devote some attention to the ongoing influence of the discourse of hysteria on contemporary medical and popular cultures.
Last offered: Winter 2015
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 170:
Directing and Dramaturgy: Composition and Adaptation for Theatre (TAPS 370)
This course explores dramaturgy and directing in the research and production of theatre primarily through practical creative projects with secondary readings on dramaturgy as a discipline. In this course we will consider the role of the dramaturg in its broadest sense, running across theatrical production from research to playwriting, adaptation, choreography, devising and directing. Students will work individually and in small groups researching, adapting, crafting and workshopping material.
Last offered: Spring 2013
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
TAPS 170A:
The Director's Craft (TAPS 370A)
This workshop class guides students through the directing process from investigating the big ideas of a play and analysing the action to organizing and running rehearsals to building up the world of the play through character work and visual composition. Over the quarter we will look at the use of creative visualization and improvisation alongside working with actors on ideas, emotions, relationships, textual analysis and blocking. This course also attends to the process of communicating with designers and production teams as well as structuring rehearsals, run-throughs and technical and dress rehearsals. Each student will select a theatrical text to work from across the quarter. In many cases the student¿s text will be a play that they are planning to direct in future, such as productions for student groups like Ram¿s Head or Stanford Shakespeare Company, TAPS capstone projects, TAPS 2nd year grad shows and/or TAPS Second Stage productions. No previous directing experience in necessary.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 170B:
Directing Workshop: The Actor-Director Dialogue (TAPS 372)
This course focuses on the actor-director dialogue. We will work with actors and directors developing approaches to collaboration that make the actor-director dialogue in theater.
Last offered: Autumn 2014
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 171:
Performance Making (TAPS 371)
A studio course focused on creative processes and generating original material. Students will be encouraged to think critically about the relationship between form and content exploring the possibilities of site specific, gallery and theatre settings. Students will reflect throughout on the types of contact and communication uniquely possible in the live moment, such as interaction or the engagement of the senses. The emphasis is on weekly experimentation in the creation of short works rather than on a final production.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 172:
Out of Place: (W)riting Home (CSRE 172, FEMGEN 172, TAPS 272)
A creative writing workshop; all genres. This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of a productive creative writing practice, including "the beginner's mind" (as founded in Eastern spiritual practices); and, an indigenous approach to "authenticity¿" in one's work and one's words. Through w(riting), one returns to the body of home-knowledges, languages, and geographies to uncover what is profoundly original in us as artists, writers and thinkers.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 173D:
Theater Production Lab: Dramaturgy and Development (TAPS 373)
173/373: In this course students will explore general dramaturgical history and methodology as well as engaging in applied dramaturgy from evaluating works for a productions seasons, to developing dramaturgical materials for specific productions. Students will agree the focus of their course-work with the instructor depending on their specific interests. The TAPS 2nd year grad students enrolled in this course will act as a dramaturgical team, supporting the TAPS winter production of The Tempest in Pigott Theater March 2-11 2017, directed by Amy Freed. Students will support the actors and the creative team through providing research materials and presentations and helping actors with guided research, write program essays for general audiences, attend rehearsals and provide constructive notes, and curate and/or present on a Preface panel prior to opening night.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 176:
Living with Mindfulness, Meaning, and Compassion
Living with mindfulness, meaning, and compassion is a journey of contemplation, self reflection, and guided action. We examine "the good life" through the insightful eyes and inspirational words of others as well as through the light of our own experience. We explore success, happiness, and well being through the wisdom of spiritual traditions and scientific discoveries. Our focus is on acceptance, vulnerability, humility, kindness, and courage. Our integrative learning approach creates a transformative, synergistic community through appreciative inquiry and connected knowing.
Last offered: Spring 2014
| Units: 5
TAPS 176A:
Narrative Design
This class examines narrative design in performed storytelling, especially live drama, oral storytelling, and radio, and compares it to narrative design in other forms, such as print, photography, and the graphic novel. After considering what media theory, psychology and neurobiology understand about how different forms of narratives operate on us, students will create a "base narrative" in print and then versions of that narrative in two different other forms. The goal is for students to understand narrative design principles both across and specific to media forms and be able to apply them to move audiences. Students will have the opportunity to meet and work with master storytellers including Anthony Doerr, author of the Pulitzer prize winning novel All The Light We Cannot See.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
TAPS 176S:
Finding Meaning in Life's Struggles: Narrative Ways of Healing (CSRE 176S)
We can find meaning in life's struggles through narrative ways of healing. The self-reflective, dynamic process of finding, telling, and living our stories connects us with our whole selves as well as with others. We find our stories through vulnerability and courage; tell them with humility and honesty; and live them authentically and responsibly. Our shared stories will focus on gratitude, acceptance, reconciliation, forgiveness and compassion, empowering us to overcome personal, community, and historical traumas and wounds. In a respectful, caring community we will discover our hidden wholeness by improvising with various experiential and embodied means of finding our stories; telling our stories in diverse ways, including writing, storytelling, music, and art; and living our stories by putting values into action.
Last offered: Spring 2014
| Units: 5
TAPS 177:
Dramatic Writing: The Fundamentals (CSRE 177, FEMGEN 177, TAPS 277)
Course introduces students to the basic elements of playwriting and creative experimentation for the stage. Topics include: character development, conflict and plot construction, staging and setting, and play structure. Script analysis of works by contemporary playwrights may include: Marsha Norman, Patrick Shanley, August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, Paula Vogel, Octavio Solis and others. Table readings of one-act length work required by quarter's end.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-CE
TAPS 178B:
Intensive Playwriting (CSRE 178B, TAPS 278)
Intermediate level study of fundamentals of playwriting through an intensive play development process. Course emphasizes visual scripting for the stage and play revision. Script analysis of works by contemporary playwrights may include: Suzan-Lori Parks, Tony Kushner, Adrienne Kennedy, Edward Albee, Maria Irene Fornes and others. Table readings of full length work required by quarter¿s end.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 179:
Chicano & Chicana Theater: Politics In Performance (CHILATST 179, TAPS 379)
This is a practicum course, where the basic tenets and evolving politic and philosophies of Chicano and Latin American liberationist theater are examined through direct engagement with its theatrical forms, including, social protest & agit-prop, myth & ritual, scripting through improvisation, in-depth character and solo work, collective conceptualization and more. The course will culminate in an end-of-the quarter play performance in the Nitery Theater (Old Union) and at a Mission District theater in San Francisco.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 179F:
Flor y Canto: Poetry Workshop (CHILATST 179F, CSRE 179F, NATIVEAM 179F, TAPS 279F)
Poetry reading and writing. The poet as philosopher and the poet as revolutionary. Texts: the philosophical meditations of pre-Columbian Aztec poetry known as "flor y canto," and reflections on the poetry of resistance born out of the nationalist and feminist struggles of Latin America and Aztlán. Required 20-page poetry manuscript.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 179G:
Indigenous Identity in Diaspora: Women of Color Art Practice in América (CSRE 179G, CSRE 279G, FEMGEN 179G, NATIVEAM 179G, TAPS 279G)
This course is part of the core curriculum of the IDA emphasis in CSRE. This year it will focus on the art and art practice of women of color in the areas of literature, visual art and the performing arts. Through readings, screenings, on and off campus events, and visiting artists, the course will examine the aesthetics, cultural inquiries, and related politics of Indigenous-identified women artists (especially but not limited to Xicana, Northern Native and African American). Issues of gender and sexuality in relation to cultural identity are also integral to this exploration. Students will be required to produce a mid-term and final work, integrating the critical concepts of the course into creative projects.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
TAPS 180P:
Color (ARTSTUDI 180)
Hands-on study of color to develop color sensitivity and the ability to manipulate color to exploit its expressive potential. Guided experimentation and observation. Topics include color relativity, color and light, color mixing, color harmony, and color and content. (lower level)
Last offered: Autumn 2013
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 189:
Literature of Adoption (ENGLISH 189, ENGLISH 289, TAPS 289C)
From Sophocles to Barfield, adoption has been at the center of Western literature. This course will explore adoption as both plot point as as symbolic structure for meaning-making in myth and fiction. While this course will not count as Creative Expression, final projects can be creative and/or scholarly.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 190:
Special Research
Individual project on the work of a playwright, period, or genre. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-5
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 191:
Independent Study
Individual supervision of off-campus internship. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-18
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 197:
Dance in Prison: The Arts, Juvenile Justice, and Rehabilitation in America (AMSTUD 197, DANCE 197)
This class works collaboratively with a local juvenile hall to use civic engagement and performance to explore the aesthetic, cultural and legal issues in the lives of incarcerated youth. In the process students gain an understanding of incarceration on an immediate and personal scale. Taught jointly by a Dance Studies scholar and a lawyer specializing in Juvenile Justice, we will consider what unique understandings are possible if we position the arts as central to an exploration of punishment, rehabilitation and recidivism in America. The course will examine case studies, historical and contemporary narratives about the social, imaginative and behavioral change possible through arts programs in prison.Half of the class meetings will be in Hillcrest Juvenile Hall in San Mateo, where our class will join with a group of 13-18 year old youths currently detained there. Dance will be used to help shape their individual expressive voices, and ours, through collaborative hip hop dance classes. Books to be read are Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson, and Last Chance in Texas by John Hubner.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP
TAPS 200:
Senior Project
All TAPS Majors must complete a Senior Project that represents significant work in any area of theater and/or performance. The project must be an original contribution and can consist of any of the following: devising a performance, choreographing a dance, stage managing a production, designing a large theater work, performing a major role, writing a play, directing a show, or researching and writing a senior essay. Work for this project normally begins in Spring Quarter of the junior year and must be completed by the end of the senior year. Students receive credit for senior projects through TAPS 200. A minimum of 4 units is required, but additional units are available for larger projects. Students pursuing senior projects must submit a two-page proposal to a faculty advisor of their choice, which must be approved by the Undergraduate Advisor and the department faculty no later than the end of Spring Quarter of the junior year.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 2-9
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 201:
Theater History
A survey of the history of theatre and dance from the ancient Greeks to the modern world. While primarily intended to help TAPS graduate students prepare for their Comprehensive Exam, this course may also be taken by undergraduates or non-TAPS graduate students in order to gain a broad understanding of some of the seminal plays, dances, theories, and performance practices of the past 2500 years.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
TAPS 201A:
Honors Colloquium
See "Undergraduate Programs" for description.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 1
TAPS 201B:
Honors Colloquium
See "Undergraduate Programs" for description.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 1
TAPS 201C:
Honors Colloquium
See "Undergraduate Programs" for description.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1
TAPS 201D:
Honors Colloquium
See "Undergraduate Programs" for description.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 1
TAPS 210V:
Vocal Production and Audition
An introductory study of the vocal mechanism and the development of voice and articulation for the stage. Students will be introduced to the actor's tools of phonetics, verbal action and text analysis. Vocal technique will then be applied to the actor's process in preparation for audition. Actors will fully participate in the audition process, from beginning to end. Emphasis will be on relaxation, selection of appropriate material, and versatility to show contrast and range.
Last offered: Autumn 2013
| Units: 1-3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 6 units total)
TAPS 220:
Academic Publishing
This course offers systematic opportunities for students to develop a publishable article for a scholarly journal. We will examine a range of successful articles in journals and carefully consider a variety of effective writing techniques and styles.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
TAPS 220A:
Being John Wayne (AMSTUD 220B, FILMSTUD 220)
John Wayne's imposing corporeality and easy comportment combined to create an icon of masculinity, the American West, and America itself. Focus is on the films that contributed most to the establishment, maturation, and deconstruction of the iconography and mythology of the John Wayne character. The western and war film as genres; the crisis of and performance of masculinity in postwar culture; gender and sexuality in American national identity; relations among individualism, community, and the state; the Western and national memory; and patriotism and the Vietnam War.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
TAPS 223:
Game Design: Making Play
Do you want to make games? This is a project-oriented workshop course that will teach you how to apply design thinking to create new kinds of play. We'll teach you about mechanics, playtesting, drama, narrative, and more. You'll work in teams to produce a new play form in whatever medium and style you like. We want zippy mobile games. We want intensely serious board games. We want socially conscious interactive theater games. We want kinds of fun we've never even imagined.
Last offered: Spring 2015
| Units: 3
TAPS 231:
Advanced Stage Lighting Design
Individually structured class in lighting mechanics and design through experimentation, discussions, and written reports. Prerequisite: 131 or consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-5
| Repeatable
55 times
TAPS 232:
Advanced Costume Design
Individually structured tutorial for costume designers. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: 132 or consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-5
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 233:
Advanced Scene Design
Individually structured workshop. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: 133 or consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-5
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 234:
Advanced Stage Management Project
For students stage managing a Department of Drama production. Prerequisite: 134.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 2-9
TAPS 250T:
Transnational Sexualities (CSRE 150T, FEMGEN 150T, FEMGEN 250T, TAPS 150T)
Transnational Sexualites is an inter-disciplinary course that considers the aesthetic, social, and political formation of sexual subjectivities in a global world. How does the transnational traffic of people, media, images, finance, and commodities shape the force-fields of desire? What is the relationship between political economies and libidinal economies? The course will explore the erotics of race and religion, neoliberalism and globalization within a wide range geo-political contexts including Indonesia, China, Egypt, India, South Africa, US, among others.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
TAPS 251A:
Theater of the Asia-Pacific Region
This course offers a historical and cultural exploration of theatre forms and performance cultures from various countries that border the Pacific Ocean, as well as from island communities within Oceania. Taking the term 'Asia-Pacific' as a provocation and point of interrogation, we will assess how theatrical production from this broad area can help us think through questions of nationalism, regionalism, interculturalism, and diaspora, while deepening our appreciation of world theatre history. The first part of the course focuses on theatre in specific sites, covering classical forms from China, Japan, and Indonesia, as well as indigenous theatre and performance from several Pacific Islands, including the Cook Islands, S'moa, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and Hawai`i. The second part of the course centers on the ocean as a dynamic space of mobility, examining a range of recent plays and performances that trace identities on the move and across borders, and which reveal how various Asian and Pacific Islander communities have engaged with each other in locations from Australia to the west coast of the United States. In so doing, our course will chart connections and divergences that enable fresh insights into the geographical and cultural dimensions of global theatre.
Last offered: Spring 2015
| Units: 4
TAPS 260:
Performance and History: Rethinking the Ballerina (DANCE 160, FEMGEN 160, TAPS 160)
The ballerina occupies a unique place in popular imagination as an object of over-determined femininity as well as an emblem of extreme physical accomplishment for the female dancer. This seminar is designed as an investigation into histories of the ballerina as an iconographic symbol and cultural reference point for challenges to political and gender ideals. Through readings, videos, discussions and viewings of live performances this class investigates pivotal works, artists and eras in the global histories of ballet from its origins as a symbol of patronage and power in the 15th century through to its radical experiments as a site of cultural obedience and disobedience in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
TAPS 262:
Performance and the Text
Formal elements in Greek, Elizabethan, Noh, Restoration, romantic, realistic, and contemporary world drama; how they intersect with the history of performance styles, character, and notions of action. Emphasis is on how performance and media intervene to reproduce, historicize, or criticize the history of drama.
| Units: 5
TAPS 263:
Introduction to Dance and History: From Postwar to the Present (DANCE 163, FEMGEN 163D, TAPS 163)
This course explores the cultural and historical unfolding of the genre of contemporary performance known as postmodern dance over the past six decades. It begins with the formative influence of the émigré Bauhaus artists of the 1930s, then the postwar experiments of the Beat artists in the 1950s, to Merce Cunningham, the Judson Dance Theatre, postmodern formalism, neo-expressionism, dance theatre and through to the global, spectacle-rich, cross-genre dance work of the early 21st century as the most recent extended legacy of this history. This course uses dance history to trace with special emphasis the effects of these visual art and movement experimentalists on gender representation and nationalist identity construction in the negotiation of boundaries between dance and life.
Last offered: Autumn 2015
| Units: 4
TAPS 265C:
Ancient Dance and its Modern Legacy (CLASSICS 137, CLASSICS 237, TAPS 165C)
Descriptions of dance in the Greek and Greco-Roman world; theories about dance in antiquity; dance and the senses; modern and modernist dancers and choreographers discussing ancient dance
Last offered: Winter 2015
| Units: 3-5
TAPS 267:
Revolutions in Theater (TAPS 167H)
This course surveys the period from the turn of the 20th century until WII, during which the European avant-garde movements transformed modern art. This period in history is marked by dynamic political events that had a deep impact on experimental art and on culture in general. This interaction between poetics and politics makes the first decades of the 20th century the formative period of western and global theater.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 4
TAPS 268H:
Poor Theater (TAPS 168H)
The goal of this class is not to offer a survey of Happenings and other happening-related art of the late twentieth century. Instead, we will use Happenings as a paradigm of "poor theater" and "poor art" - umbrella terms for a number of experimental performance and art practices that emerged in the aftermath of the WWII. We will use the idea of poor theater as an organizing principle in our investigation of the main currents in the experimental performance in the last five decades. The class has a tripartite structure. First we will outline the paradigm of happenings, then trace the origins of Happenings in music, visual arts and theater of the mid twentieth century, and finally look at Happenings' immediate impact, as well as at its ripple effects that continued to reverberate long after the disappearance of this new art form. This course counts as a Writing in the Major course for TAPS in 2016-17.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
TAPS 272:
Out of Place: (W)riting Home (CSRE 172, FEMGEN 172, TAPS 172)
A creative writing workshop; all genres. This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of a productive creative writing practice, including "the beginner's mind" (as founded in Eastern spiritual practices); and, an indigenous approach to "authenticity¿" in one's work and one's words. Through w(riting), one returns to the body of home-knowledges, languages, and geographies to uncover what is profoundly original in us as artists, writers and thinkers.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 277:
Dramatic Writing: The Fundamentals (CSRE 177, FEMGEN 177, TAPS 177)
Course introduces students to the basic elements of playwriting and creative experimentation for the stage. Topics include: character development, conflict and plot construction, staging and setting, and play structure. Script analysis of works by contemporary playwrights may include: Marsha Norman, Patrick Shanley, August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, Paula Vogel, Octavio Solis and others. Table readings of one-act length work required by quarter's end.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
TAPS 278:
Intensive Playwriting (CSRE 178B, TAPS 178B)
Intermediate level study of fundamentals of playwriting through an intensive play development process. Course emphasizes visual scripting for the stage and play revision. Script analysis of works by contemporary playwrights may include: Suzan-Lori Parks, Tony Kushner, Adrienne Kennedy, Edward Albee, Maria Irene Fornes and others. Table readings of full length work required by quarter¿s end.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 279C:
Chroniclers of Desire: Creative Non-Fiction Writing Workshop (CSRE 179C, CSRE 279C, FEMGEN 179C)
This course emphasizes the study and practice of personal memoir writing and literary journalism. The class will explore those writings that contain a public and private story, navigating an intimate and institutional world. Student writers will serve as public chroniclers whose subjective point of view and experience attempt to provide a truth greater than what ¿the facts¿ can offer.
Last offered: Spring 2013
| Units: 3-5
TAPS 279F:
Flor y Canto: Poetry Workshop (CHILATST 179F, CSRE 179F, NATIVEAM 179F, TAPS 179F)
Poetry reading and writing. The poet as philosopher and the poet as revolutionary. Texts: the philosophical meditations of pre-Columbian Aztec poetry known as "flor y canto," and reflections on the poetry of resistance born out of the nationalist and feminist struggles of Latin America and Aztlán. Required 20-page poetry manuscript.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 279G:
Indigenous Identity in Diaspora: Women of Color Art Practice in América (CSRE 179G, CSRE 279G, FEMGEN 179G, NATIVEAM 179G, TAPS 179G)
This course is part of the core curriculum of the IDA emphasis in CSRE. This year it will focus on the art and art practice of women of color in the areas of literature, visual art and the performing arts. Through readings, screenings, on and off campus events, and visiting artists, the course will examine the aesthetics, cultural inquiries, and related politics of Indigenous-identified women artists (especially but not limited to Xicana, Northern Native and African American). Issues of gender and sexuality in relation to cultural identity are also integral to this exploration. Students will be required to produce a mid-term and final work, integrating the critical concepts of the course into creative projects.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
TAPS 284:
Empathy Lab (ANTHRO 379)
This lab-based class examines the ways in which various disciplines and art forms conceive of, and tell stories about, the experiences and stories of others. With permission of instructor.
Last offered: Winter 2015
| Units: 5
TAPS 289:
Buechner and Wedekind (GERMAN 289)
Modern theatre owes an incalculable debt to two German playwrights: Georg Büchner (1813-1837) and Frank Wedekind (1864-1918). We will read their still-shocking portraits of sex, madness, and social brutality in plays such as Woyzeck and Spring's Awakening, and explore the international journeys these works have made from stage to film and from opera to musical theatre.
Last offered: Winter 2015
| Units: 3-5
TAPS 289A:
Interactive Art / Performance Design (ME 289A)
This class is for those who want the experience of designing and creating interactive art and performance pieces for public audiences, using design thinking as the method, and supported by guest speakers, artist studio visits and needfinding trips to music festivals, museums and performances.nnDrawing on the fields of design, art, performance, and engineering, each student will ideate, design, plan and lead a team to build an interactive art and/or performance piece to be showcased to audience of 5000 at the Frost Music and Art Festival held on the Stanford campus on May 17th 2014. Projects can range from interactive art to unconventional set design, and from site-specific sculpture to immersive performance.nnThis is a two-quarter long commitment during which students will first learn the design, planning, story boarding, budgeting, engineering, proposal creation and concept pitching of projects for applying for grants and presenting to funders. The second quarter will concentrate on prototyping, maquette making, testing, team forming, project management, creative leadership, construction, site installation and documentation.nPart one of a two course series: ME 289A&B.
Last offered: Winter 2014
| Units: 2
TAPS 289B:
Interactive Art / Performance Creation (ME 289B)
This class is the continuation of ME289A where students experience the designing and creating of interactive art and performance pieces for public audiences, using design thinking as the method, and supported by guest speakers, artist studio visits and needfinding trips to music festivals, museums and performances.nnDrawing on the fields of design, art, performance, and engineering, each student will ideate, design, plan and lead a team to build an interactive art and/or performance piece to be showcased to audience of 5000 at the Frost Music and Art Festival held on the Stanford campus on May 17th 2014. Projects can range from interactive art to unconventional set design, and from site-specific sculpture to immersive performance.nnDuring this second quarter students will concentrate on prototyping, maquette making, testing, team forming, project management, creative leadership, construction, site installation and documentation.nPart two of a two course series : ME 289A&B.
Last offered: Spring 2014
| Units: 3-4
TAPS 289C:
Literature of Adoption (ENGLISH 189, ENGLISH 289, TAPS 189)
From Sophocles to Barfield, adoption has been at the center of Western literature. This course will explore adoption as both plot point as as symbolic structure for meaning-making in myth and fiction. While this course will not count as Creative Expression, final projects can be creative and/or scholarly.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
TAPS 290:
Special Research
Individual project on the work of a playwright, period, or genre.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-5
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 311:
Performance and Historiography
This graduate seminar introduces you to advanced methodologies in two key areas of theatre and performance studies research: historiography and ethnography. The course is divided into two sections. The first concentrates on questions of historiography and the archive as they relate to studies of theater, dance, and performance. We will think about how events have been historicized, how absence has been represented, and how bodies are re-figured and remembered, and we will investigate important principles and best practices of performance documentation and historiography. The second part of the course explores the relationship between performance and ethnography. We will discuss different critical perspectives on ethnographic methods and data gathering, including participant-observation fieldwork and interview techniques. This course purposefully blends theory and practice, connecting philosophical discussions to concrete case studies, field trips, and your own research practices. In this spirit, you will also be encouraged to conduct research and present findings in different modes and media.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
TAPS 313:
Performance and Performativity (ENGLISH 313, FEMGEN 313)
Performance theory through topics including: affect/trauma, embodiment, empathy, theatricality/performativity, specularity/visibility, liveness/disappearance, belonging/abjection, and utopias and dystopias. Readings from Schechner, Phelan, Austin, Butler, Conquergood, Roach, Schneider, Silverman, Caruth, Fanon, Moten, Anzaldúa, Agamben, Freud, and Lacan. May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1-4
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 314:
Performing Identities (CSRE 314, FEMGEN 314)
This course examines claims and counter-claims of identity, a heated political and cultural concept over the past few decades. We will consider the ways in which theories of performance have offered generative discursive frameworks for the study of identities, variously shaped by vectors of race, gender, sexuality, religion, class, nation, ethnicity, among others. How is identity as a social category different from identity as a unique and personal attribute of selfhood? Throughout the course we will focus on the inter-locking ways in which certain dimensions of identity become salient at particular historical conjunctures. In addition, we will consider the complex discourses of identity within transnational and historical frameworks. Readings include Robin Bernstein, Ann Pellegrini, Tavia Nyong'o, Jose Munoz, Michael Taussig, Wendy Brown, Talal Asad, Jasbir Puar, among others. Note: This course satisfies the Concepts of Modernity II requirement in the interdisciplinary graduate program in Modern Thought and Literature.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
TAPS 315:
Dramaturgy
In this seminar, we will take the conventional idea of dramaturgy for narrative performance as developed in Western European theater since the enlightenment, and investigate its relation to non-narrative forms of performance in 20th and 21st (performance art, conceptual dance). Further, we will use dramaturgical procedures to explore the ideological content of performance and position of art institutions in our society. Finally, the students will get acquainted with production dramaturgy and get necessary tools to take the role of dramaturgs in actual performance productions.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
TAPS 319:
Modern Theatre (GERMAN 119, GERMAN 319, TAPS 119)
Modern theatre in Europe and the US, with a focus on the most influential works from roughly 1880 to the present. What were the conventions of theatrical practice that modern theatre displaced? What were the principal innovations of modern playwriting, acting, stage design, and theatrical architecture? How did modern theatrical artists wrestle with the revolutionary transformations of the modern age? Plays by Büchner, Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, Chekhov, Wilde, Wedekind, Treadwell, Pirandello, Brecht, O¿Neill, Beckett, Smith, Parks, and Nottage.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 1-5
TAPS 332:
Performance and Ethnography
This graduate seminar explores the relationship between performance and ethnography. We will discuss different critical perspectives on ethnographic methods and data gathering, and learn about participant-observation fieldwork and interview techniques, with an emphasis on developing ethical, generative research approaches that are beneficial to the subject as well as to the scholar. This course purposefully blends theory and practice, connecting philosophical discussions to concrete case studies, field trips, and your own research practices.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-4
TAPS 335:
Introduction to Graduate Production
This course introduces first-year TAPS PhD student to the TAPS production process and resources. Meetings will be scheduled ad hoc.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 1
TAPS 336:
Comprehensive 1st Year Exam
Required course for first-year Ph.D. students in Theater & Performance Studies. Credits for work toward the Comprehensive 1st-year Exam taken in late February or Early March.
Terms: Win
| Units: 2
TAPS 341E:
English Drama Before Shakespeare
English dramatic and theatrical culture from the mystery cycles of the late medieval period to the establishment of professional playhouses in late sixteenth-century London. Different dramatic genres (interludes, moralities, farces, tragedies, comedies, histories, pastoral plays), performance venues (streets, households, inns, schools, universities, court, playhouses), and dramatic traditions (classical, native, continental European) will be represented. Authors (of those who have names) range from Medwall, Skelton, Heywood, Preston, and Edwards to Lyly, Kyd, Greene, Peele, and Marlowe.
Last offered: Winter 2015
| Units: 5
TAPS 344:
Puppetry with a Twist
Creative course is an introduction to puppetry with a survey of important styles and techniques from around the world including Twist's own. Hands on and individualized experience with the aim of each student creating or contributing to a puppet or object/figure performance. Course is as broad as the individual's creative expression.
Last offered: Winter 2015
| Units: 3-4
TAPS 344A:
Gender and Performance (FEMGEN 434, FILMSTUD 434, MUSIC 434)
This seminar seeks to investigate relationships between performance, gender, and the body politic through a discussion of embodiment, body cultures, queerness, desire, representation. Through a weekly engagement with film texts from across the world as well as theoretical perspectives on gender and performance in various geo-political contexts, we will explore the intersections of gender with race, class, national discourse, and performance traditions. The seminar is conceived to be interdisciplinary and participants are encouraged to introduce and work with texts from other disciplines, including visual arts, theatre, dance, literature etc. No prior engagement with film studies is required. Screening times may range from 90 to 180 minutes.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
TAPS 345:
Choreography and Corporeality
In this course, we explore American-derived theoretical praxes for analyzing organized movement. How has dance studies been constituted as a field? What theoretical lines of inquiry have served it, and how have they fared over time? What tools do scholars bring to bear on the study of dance, choreography, and corporeality, and where have these tools been most effective? Weekly parings of creative works and theoretical approaches to considerations of dance practice and performance. Special emphasis on practices of writing about bodies in motion and dance.
Last offered: Autumn 2014
| Units: 4
TAPS 350V:
The Idea of Virtual Reality (TAPS 150V)
What is virtual reality and where is it heading? Was there VR before digital technology? What is the value of the real in a virtual culture? How, where, and when do we draw the line between the virtual and the real, the live and the mediated today? Concentrating on three aspects of VR simulation, immersion, and interactivity this course will examine recent experiments alongside a long history of virtual performance, from Plato's Cave to contemporary CAVEs, from baroque theatre design to Oculus Rift.
| Units: 4
TAPS 351:
Great Books: Dramatic Traditions (COMPLIT 151B, COMPLIT 351B, TAPS 151T)
The most influential and enduring texts in the dramatic canon from Sophocles to Shakespeare, Chekhov to Soyinka. Their historical and geopolitical contexts. Questions about the power dynamics involved in the formation of canons. This course counts as a Writing in the Major course for TAPS in 2016-17.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
TAPS 351H:
ID21 STRATLAB: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Improvising Identities (AMSTUD 151H, CSRE 151H, DANCE 151H, DANCE 251H)
A quarter-long exploration of improvisation in relationship to identity and race in the 21st century in which students investigate new dynamics of doing and thinking identities through the arts. Panel discussions, performances, and talks that engage critically with the theme, concept, and practice of improvising identity across a variety of contexts and genres such as jazz music, modern dance, contemporary art, race comedy, food, and hip-hop poetry/freestyle. Strategies that artists/scholars have used to overturn essentializing notions of identity in theory and practice.
Last offered: Spring 2013
| Units: 4-5
TAPS 353:
Representation and Theatre Culture in 20th Century France (FRENCH 210)
This course will examine some major French playwrights such as Alfred Jarry, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Jean Tardieu, Albert Camus or Jean Anouilh in their global cultural environment. Discussion in English; French majors read in French.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 5
TAPS 356:
Performing History: Race, Politics, and Staging the Plays of August Wilson (AFRICAAM 156)
This course purposefully and explicitly mixes theory and practice. Students will read and discuss the plays of August Wilson, the most celebrated and most produced contemporary American playwright, that comprise his 20th Century History Cycle. Class stages scenes from each of these plays, culminating in a final showcase of longer scenes from his work as a final project.
Last offered: Autumn 2013
| Units: 4
TAPS 356A:
Warhol: Painting, Photography, Performance (ARTHIST 156A, ARTHIST 356A, TAPS 156A)
This course focuses on the career of Andy Warhol as a means to consider the broader history of American art and culture since 1950. It examines little-studied aspects of Warhol¿s visual production (e.g. his career as a commercial artist in the 1950s and his everyday photographs of the 1970s and 1980s) alongside his now-canonical Pop paintings of the 1960s. Warhol?s critical and scholarly reception will be scrutinized in detail, as will published interviews of and writings by the artist. Finally, we will consider Warhol¿s legacy and wide-ranging influence on American culture in the decades since his death in 1987.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
TAPS 357:
World Drama and Performance
This course takes up a geographically expansive conversation by looking at modern and contemporary drama from nations including Ghana, Egypt, India, Argentina, among others. Considering influential texts from the Global South will also enable us to explore a range of themes and methodologies that are radically re-shaping the field of Performance Studies. We will examine the relationship between colonialism and globalization, empire and capital, cosmopolitanism and neoliberalism. Re-situating our perspective from the Global South and the non-western world, we will 'provincialize Europe' and probe the limits of its universalizing discourses.
Last offered: Autumn 2014
| Units: 4
TAPS 358H:
Proximity and Temporality in Performance
This course considers the relationship between proximity and temporality in live performance, looking quite literally at the distance in space and time between performers and audiences. Alongside case studies of performance works, class readings will be drawn from current Performance Studies scholarship as well as discourses in postmodern geographies and anthropological studies of `proxemics¿ as well as key philosophic works such as Lefebvre¿s The Production of Space and Heidegger¿s The Concept of Time.
| Units: 4-5
TAPS 358L:
The Ethics of Storytelling: The Autobiographical Monologue in Theory, in Practice, and in the World (ETHICSOC 201R)
Recently a theatrical monologuist gained notoriety when it was revealed that key aspects of one of his "autobiographical" stories had been fabricated. In this class another autobiographical monologuist -- who has himself lied many times in his theater pieces, without ever getting caught -- will examine the ethics of telling our life stories onstage. Does theatrical "truth" trump factual truth? We will interrogate several autobiographical works, and then -- through autobiographical pieces created in class -- we will interrogate ourselves.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 4
TAPS 359:
The Other Body/The Body Other
Writing creatively through critical thinking. Writing critically through creative imagination. Advanced Creative/Critical Writing course, designed for those "other" creative writers and thinkers who want to use language in original, innovative and embodied introspective ways to respond to (and from) non-dominant cultures, themes and identities. All genres. Readings, performances, films assigned to provoke an(other) response. Permission of Instructor.
Last offered: Winter 2015
| Units: 4
TAPS 359B:
The Body Other/The Other Body: Intensive Creative Writing Seminar - Part Two
A small peer-driven writing workshop for graduate students working on book and/or full length performance projects (independent of their dissertation work). The course builds on themes and writing perspectives established in TAPS 359, with an emphasis on form and structural considerations. The facilitated workshop intends to guide students to uncover original embodied ways to use language and form in order to speak to (and with) non-dominant cultures, themes, identities and public inquiries. All genres are welcomed.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1-4
TAPS 364T:
Queer Art and Performance (TAPS 164T)
Examines the late 19th, 20th and 21st century forms of performance-- including examples from drama, theater, cabaret, and performance art -- through the perspectives of contemporary critical gender and queer theories. Texts and movements range from early avant-garde (Dada, Futurism) to gay and lesbian drama (Lillian Hellmann, Joe Orton, Tony Kushner) to post-liberation Queer performance and video (Split Britches, Carmelita Tropicana, Kalup Linzy). Theorists include Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
Last offered: Spring 2013
| Units: 4-5
TAPS 370:
Directing and Dramaturgy: Composition and Adaptation for Theatre (TAPS 170)
This course explores dramaturgy and directing in the research and production of theatre primarily through practical creative projects with secondary readings on dramaturgy as a discipline. In this course we will consider the role of the dramaturg in its broadest sense, running across theatrical production from research to playwriting, adaptation, choreography, devising and directing. Students will work individually and in small groups researching, adapting, crafting and workshopping material.
Last offered: Spring 2013
| Units: 4-5
TAPS 370A:
The Director's Craft (TAPS 170A)
This workshop class guides students through the directing process from investigating the big ideas of a play and analysing the action to organizing and running rehearsals to building up the world of the play through character work and visual composition. Over the quarter we will look at the use of creative visualization and improvisation alongside working with actors on ideas, emotions, relationships, textual analysis and blocking. This course also attends to the process of communicating with designers and production teams as well as structuring rehearsals, run-throughs and technical and dress rehearsals. Each student will select a theatrical text to work from across the quarter. In many cases the student¿s text will be a play that they are planning to direct in future, such as productions for student groups like Ram¿s Head or Stanford Shakespeare Company, TAPS capstone projects, TAPS 2nd year grad shows and/or TAPS Second Stage productions. No previous directing experience in necessary.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
TAPS 371:
Performance Making (TAPS 171)
A studio course focused on creative processes and generating original material. Students will be encouraged to think critically about the relationship between form and content exploring the possibilities of site specific, gallery and theatre settings. Students will reflect throughout on the types of contact and communication uniquely possible in the live moment, such as interaction or the engagement of the senses. The emphasis is on weekly experimentation in the creation of short works rather than on a final production.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
TAPS 372:
Directing Workshop: The Actor-Director Dialogue (TAPS 170B)
This course focuses on the actor-director dialogue. We will work with actors and directors developing approaches to collaboration that make the actor-director dialogue in theater.
Last offered: Autumn 2014
| Units: 4
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 373:
Theater Production Lab: Dramaturgy and Development (TAPS 173D)
173/373: In this course students will explore general dramaturgical history and methodology as well as engaging in applied dramaturgy from evaluating works for a productions seasons, to developing dramaturgical materials for specific productions. Students will agree the focus of their course-work with the instructor depending on their specific interests. The TAPS 2nd year grad students enrolled in this course will act as a dramaturgical team, supporting the TAPS winter production of The Tempest in Pigott Theater March 2-11 2017, directed by Amy Freed. Students will support the actors and the creative team through providing research materials and presentations and helping actors with guided research, write program essays for general audiences, attend rehearsals and provide constructive notes, and curate and/or present on a Preface panel prior to opening night.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
TAPS 373W:
Solo Performance
Students learn how to draw from the specificity of their own unique experiences, connecting with ideas, issues and questions that resonate with race, class, gender, environmental, and global issues. The course gives students the creative and critical tools to enable them to connect the personal with the political and see the solo voice as a powerful, potent form of artistic expression. Students have the opportunity to hone their own creative talents in writing, devising, composing, producing and creating work.
Last offered: Winter 2013
| Units: 4-5
TAPS 374A:
Performance Making: Production
A structured, creative environment for students working toward the realization of Senior Projects and 2nd year graduate productions. Instructors will work with students to develop the relationships between the content and the form of their productions using critical and creative tools to develop and reflect on the work. There will be a staged class showing at the end of the quarter followed by critiques designed to help students as they begin preparing for their final public performances (beyond the class).
Last offered: Autumn 2013
| Units: 5
TAPS 376:
Projects in Performance
Creative projects to be determined in consultation with Drama graduate faculty and production advisor
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
TAPS 377:
Graduate Directors' Staged Reading Project
Presentation of a new or newly adapted work for the stage, in a mode employed in professional theater for the development of new plays. Two to four rehearsals. Public performance.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 2
| Repeatable
for credit
TAPS 379:
Chicano & Chicana Theater: Politics In Performance (CHILATST 179, TAPS 179)
This is a practicum course, where the basic tenets and evolving politic and philosophies of Chicano and Latin American liberationist theater are examined through direct engagement with its theatrical forms, including, social protest & agit-prop, myth & ritual, scripting through improvisation, in-depth character and solo work, collective conceptualization and more. The course will culminate in an end-of-the quarter play performance in the Nitery Theater (Old Union) and at a Mission District theater in San Francisco.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 4
TAPS 379A:
Empathy Lab II: The Potential of Anthropology for the 21st Century (ANTHRO 379A)
This interdisciplinary arts/anthropology lab class will study and practice methods from performing arts to expand our understandings of cultural contact and develop methods of thinking more expansively about the creative elements and possibilities for ethnographic fieldwork and critical cultural studies. Prerequisite, by instructor consent.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 1-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
TAPS 390:
Directed Reading
Students may take directing reading only with the permission of their dissertation advisor. Might be repeatable for credit twice for 6 units total.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-6
| Repeatable
4 times
(up to 12 units total)
Instructors: ;
Brody, J. (PI);
Elam, H. (PI);
Hill, L. (PI);
Jakovljevic, B. (PI);
Kumaran, L. (PI);
Looser, D. (PI);
Menon, J. (PI);
Moraga, C. (PI);
Paris, H. (PI);
Phelan, P. (PI);
Rehm, R. (PI);
Ross, J. (PI);
Smith, M. (PI)
TAPS 802:
TGR Dissertation
(Staff)
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 0
| Repeatable
for credit
Instructors: ;
Brody, J. (PI);
Elam, H. (PI);
Hill, L. (PI);
Jakovljevic, B. (PI);
Menon, J. (PI);
Paris, H. (PI);
Phelan, P. (PI);
Rehm, R. (PI);
Ross, J. (PI);
Smith, M. (PI)
