Theater Arts Class Schedule | Spring 2025

In this hands-on studio course, students collaborate in all aspects of staging Antigonick, a contemporary, visual adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone by Anne Carson, with evocative illustrations by Bianca Stone. The play asks how we live through loss, and how individuals navigate tensions between deeply held values, processes of the natural world, and the laws of the state. Opportunities abound for students to engage in myriad ways – as actors, designers, assistant stage managers, musicians, dancers, and technicians. All are encouraged to enroll, and all experience levels are welcome! The production course will be co-taught by actor and director Blythe de Oliveira Foster and designer Sara Brown. MIT students will receive 12 credits, HASS-A.

Prereq: None 
Units: 4-0-8
HASS-A

Explores the actor's tools: body, voice, mind, imagination, and the essential self. Through studio exercises, students address issues of honesty and creativity in the theatrical moment, and begin to have a sense of their strengths and limitations as communicating theatrical artists. Provides an opportunity for students to discover their relationship to "the other" in the acting partner, the group, the environment, and the audience. Limited to 20 per section.

Prereq: None
4-0-5
HASS-A

Thorough exploration of the voice in the context of human communication, provides a progression of exercises designed to free, develop, and strengthen the voice — first as a human instrument and then as the actor's instrument. Explores a progression of voice work that begins with physical awareness and breathing, moving into breath awareness, discovery of the body as the source and amplifier of sound vibration, opens the vocal channel, and develops strength and range in creative expression. Uses historical speeches and heightened language text to expand use and freeing of voice and self. Subject may culminate in a public presentation. Final grade highly dependent on attendance. Limited to 20; preference to Theater majors, minors, and concentrators who have pre-registered.

Prereq: None
3-0-9
HASS-A

Examines the theatrical event from the perspective of composition in a performance workshop. Studio exercises address the process of developing a theatrical work through an internalized understanding of compositional principles in theater. Examines physical action in time and space. Includes outside readings, videos, short essays, and in-class discussions. Provides the performer, director, choreographer, designer or writer opportunities to engage with large and small group ensembles in creation of theatrical events. Topics include image, motion, shape, repetition, gesture, and spatial relationship. Preference to majors, minors, concentrators. Admittance may be controlled by lottery.

Prereq: None
4-2-6
HASS-A

Explores the realities of the body in space and motion - interacting with gravity, momentum, inertia, alignment, negative space, one's imagination, one's body, other bodies, the present room and rooms from memory, geometry, stillness, and more. By releasing tension and abandoning the notion of pre-planning, students experience a natural, spontaneous flow of movement, opening themselves up to, and diving into, whatever might happen. Develops alertness in order to work in an energetic state of physical disorientation, self-correcting what doesn't work and reinforcing what does on the spot, discovering physical/emotional truths and shared moments that leave students aware, centered, incredibly present, and sharply alive. Limited to 20 per section.

Prereq: None
3-0-9
HASS-A

ENROLLMENT LIMITED. MUST PRE-REGISTER!

Explores drawing as a fundamental component of the design process. In-class drawing exercises focus on developing the hand-to-eye relationship and pre-visualization skills essential to any designer. Studies the use drawing as a route to understanding space and form and achieving accuracy through expression. By drawing figures, landscapes and/or still life compositions in a variety of media, students investigate the figure/ground relationship while dealing with tone, line, and composition, which are all requisite elements of design. Provides exposure to designers who have used drawing as a central component of their work. Students create a portfolio that includes in-class drawings, studies done outside of class, and one research-based written project. Lab fee of $35 required. Limited to 20 per section. 

Subject meets with 21T.530
4-0-8 units. HASS-A

Integrates media and communication technologies in performing arts. Studio exercises provide a forum for experimentation. Contemporary and historical techniques for media integration examined through readings, viewing videos and short written essays. Technologies examined include digital imaging, composite and live feed digital video, and web-based performance. Engages the designer, director, choreographer, performer, visual artist or programmer in the practice of integrating media into live art events. Equipment is provided. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Prereq: None 
Units: 3-0-9 
HASS-A, CI-H

Focuses on reading a play's script critically and theatrically, with a view to mounting a coherent production. Through careful, intensive analysis of a variety of plays from different periods and aesthetics, a pattern emerges for discerning what options exist for interpreting a script from the distinct perspectives of the playwright, the actor, the designer, and the director. Students discuss the consequences of those options for production.  Enrollment limited.

Prereq: 21T.101 or permission of instructor
4-0-8 units. HASS-A
Can be repeated for credit.

Gives students who have begun the process of bringing themselves to a dramatic moment the opportunity to apply their skills to scripted material. Studio work in this class further develops the completeness, spontaneity, and honesty of expression of the actor's body, imagination, and voice; and introduces written material and the problems of synthesizing the self, the moment, and the scripted word. Weekly rehearsals with a scene partner. Enrollment may be limited.

Prereq: None
4-0-8 units. HASS-A

Laboratory-style class explores and invents techniques used to create dances. Students practice techniques focused on how and where to begin making a dance - sampling some of the endless ways to start a process, such as from the body, an idea, text, or a song - and then how to build up from there. Students make dances that are more than just a collection of moves, but events that do something, say something, or ask something. Builds a clear understanding of how a dance has an arc, a clear beginning, middle, and end, so that by doing it or watching it, both participants and audience end up somewhere new. Develops an understating of, and facility with, a wide variety of topics used to explore, start and generate movement, dance and performative events involving bodies moving through space. Enrollment limited.

Prereq: Permission of instructor
4-0-8 units. HASS-A

Explores the history, concepts and techniques of sculpting space with light within a contemporary context. Students experiment with a wide range of approaches, tools, and skills to develop their own creative vision. Focuses on discrete forms that include live performance, installation, architecture, and developments in applied technologies. Studio projects alternate between conceptual studies and realized designs reflective of students' own unique interests and talents. Enrollment may be limited.

Prereq: None
4-0-8 units. HASS-A

Introduces the elements of a sound designer's work, such as music and sound effects which inform and make stage action plausible, to sound system design and placement and the use of microphones. Discusses how effective sound design enhances live performance by clarifying storytelling, heightening emotional experience, and making words and music legible to an audience. Provides students with the tools to continue practicing and appreciating the art regardless of their professional ambitions. Enrollment limited.

Prereq: None
3-0-9 units. HASS-A

Pursues detailed study of a particular playtext or theme and is related to some planned production activity during the following IAP. Seminar activities may include guest speakers from various disciplines who approach some aspect of the playtext or theme from the perspective of their fields; various theatrical practitioners; and critical and scholarly presentations by seminar members. Participation in the IAP production is not required.

Prereq: None
3-0-9 units. HASS-A

Interdisciplinary dance theater studio invites students to investigate the spaces between dance and theater. Students engage in an array of acting and dance techniques to generate text from movement and movement from text. In-studio exercises examine the process of melding the expressive languages of words with languages of the body. Students use existing texts and compose original texts in the development of solo, duet, and ensemble projects. Explores the process of seeing and providing peer feedback to further expand the process of revision. Readings, short writings, video viewings, and guest lectures provide multiple avenues of understanding and illumine differing ways of making. Culminates with an opportunity for students to refine, develop, and share their projects in performance.

Prereq: None
3-0-9 units. HASS-A

Students write and produce a pilot episode of a narrative podcast (about fifteen minutes in length); sources come from interviews or research that students conduct. At the start of the term, students pitch possible stories. Discussions of selected episodes of narrative podcasts such as Serial, Homecoming, and This American Life. Introduces the basics of podcast recording with a primer on using Logic Pro X and hardware like the Apogee Duet. Students record and edit a rough draft of their podcast using provided portable recording studio kits. Podcasts shared with the larger MIT community at the Podcast Listening Room at the end of term. Enrollment limited.

Prereq: None
3-0-9 units. HASS-A; CI-H

Examines the exciting terrain of contemporary American writing for the theater, focusing on what is known in New York as "Off Broadway," "downtown," or "indie theater." Students read work by influential playwrights from earlier generations alongside plays by new voices currently in production in Boston, New York, and across the country. Students also examine the changing institution of American theater, reading a selection of plays in order to determine what constellation of issues and concerns they engage. Discussions unpack how these plays reflect, challenge and re-construct the idea of America in the 21st century. Enrollment limited.

Same subject as 21W.774[J]
Prereq: None
3-0-9 units. HASS-A

Builds understanding of the methods playwrights use to transform an idea - drawn from their own lives, news and current events, even the plays of other writers - into a reality. Students use a variety of inspiration to write their own new scenes and short plays. Examines how research can help develop an idea for a new play and discusses ways to adapt a classic text for the contemporary stage. Writers also conduct personal interviews and use the transcript as source material for a new scene. Enrollment limited.

Subject meets with 21T.555
Prereq: 21T.350[J] or permission of instructor
4-0-8 units. HASS-A
Can be repeated for credit.

Students workshop their full-length play completed in 21M.780/21M.781 as part of the MTA Playwrights Lab, a collaboration between MIT students and professional actors and directors. Each writer engages in note sessions with a director and prepares a rehearsal draft. Writers attend rehearsals for a staged reading of their work and collaborate with their director and cast. Writers are expected to participate in other readings in the Lab, as a stage direction reader and as an audience member. Following the public presentation of the play, students process the experience and complete a final revision of the script. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 10.

Prereq: None
3-0-9 units
Can be repeated for credit.

Communicates how hip-hop music was born out of the necessity to express one’s true self in the face of adversity. Course features dance instruction for all levels from beginner to experienced. Discussions, lectures, and demonstrations will explore musicality, gestures, beats, and polyrhythms, while tracing the genre back to the cultures of West Africa.

Prereq: None
4-0-8 units. HASS-A
Can be repeated for credit.

Students enrolled in Rehearsal and Performance 21T.421 will be involved in a creative process culminating in a live multimedia dance performance during the spring semester. The process will be collaborative in nature and include learning set movement material, generating movement through improvisation, engaging with video projection and other media in a performance setting. Students will be given assignments to work on both in class and in their own time in order to move the process forward.  The course will offer hands-on experience for those interested in participating on a choreographic, performance, design and /or production level. Some past dance experience is required. All forms and styles welcome.

In Dancing with Cameras we will learn skills for planning, filming and creating your own dance films, or screendances. The form is a hybrid of the various techniques of film/video and the practice of choreography. Participants will be encouraged to use items they have available to them including smartphones or a DSLR camera, and free or non-free editing software. No dance experience is required though you will move and become the subjects in each other’s films! During the course we will make multiple studies and one-minute films culminating in longer final projects to be presented in our mini dance film festival at the end of the semester. We will watch screendances, learn about the history of the genre, and experiment with forming unique cinematic voices.

Catalog Description

Class explores elements of performance in a studio setting. Topics vary from term to term; may be taught by visiting faculty. May be repeated for credit if content differs. Enrollment may be limited.