Playwriting Genres (382-0-20)

Topic

Theatre of Healing: Devising a Dialogue With Natur

Instructors

Julie Marie Myatt

Jessica Margaret Thebus

Meeting Info

Wirtz 230 Instruct Black Box 1: Wed 12:00PM - 2:50PM

Overview of class

Julie Marie Myatt and Jessica Thebus are working on a new theater project for the Wirtz Center in Spring 2024 titled, How to Know The Wild Flowers: A Map. It will be a theatrical ritual of communal healing involving many disciplines—text, dance, music and projection. The exploration will use the first field guide for flowers published in America as a launch point. HOW TO KNOW THE WILD FLOWERS by Mrs. William Starr Dana (Frances Theodora Parsons) was published three years after her husband died in the Russian Flu pandemic or 1890. Its poetic passages invite every person to find their way forward through whatever haunts and grieves them. In addition to this text, poetry, recipes, and Indigenous stories and perspectives on the land will fuel the devising process. To know the natural world - to identify its gifts and share them - is perhaps the best way to preserve it. How do we bring this task into the theater? Students will craft their own pieces inspired by text and movement, some of which may be included in the larger project as it develops.

Registration Requirements

Permission numbers required. Cap: 13 students. Meets Wednesdays, 12pm-2:50pm. Professors: Julie Marie Myatt and Jessica Thebus