Advanced Acting Topics (375-0-23)

Topic

PLAY. WRITE. REPEAT.

Instructors

Shawn Douglass
Theatre and Interpretation Center, 1949 Campus Drive, Room 220
Office Hours: Tues/Thursday 11am-12pm, and by appointment

Meeting Info

Wirtz Center STRUB: Tues, Thurs 1:00PM - 2:50PM

Overview of class

PLAY. WRITE. REPEAT.
PLAY. WRITE. REPEAT.
PLAY. WRITE. REPEAT.

This acting class will be a laboratory for investigating the use of repetition technique as a tool for actors, writers, and directors to generate new work in a collaborative way. The goal will be to create a playfully competitive performance process/product that demands immediacy from each actor. Actors, Actor-Writers, Actor-Directors will all have a part in generating and shaping content in addition to performing. All students will participate as actors. Students with writing or directing experience may also participate using those skills.

After learning a shared repetition technique, students will use it to improvise story possibilities based on short, student-written prompts. The results of those experiments will form the basis of a longer and more specific scene generated by an Actor-Writer. These scenes will be rehearsed with an Actor-Director, with emphases on honoring the written material and using repetition as an ongoing tool to keep the meaning, objectives, and stakes of the scene immediate and clear. The work of the quarter will culminate in a public presentation of the developed material and acting process.

GOALS
An acting process that is never done
A creation process that is community driven
A collaboration process that is generous
An acting process that is playfully competitive
An acting, writing, and directing process that encourages continual "now-ness;" spurs pursuit of the written want; and cajoles the actor beyond polite engagement.