AAAS 31.50 Black Theatre Workshop: The August Wilson Experience
Using legendary playwright, August Wilson’s ten-play cycle of African Americans' experiences throughout American history as our inspiration, this course provides hands-on, experiential learning of acting, script analysis, and theatrical production. With no previous performance, design, or production experience required, students will read Wilson’s plays and related commentary with opportunities to perform selected scenes from the Wilson cycle while exploring possibilities for design and technical elements. In this process-oriented course, students also learn basic acting techniques by strengthening observation and listening skills, risktaking, imagination, improvisation, concentration, exploration of self, voice, and body. Activities include textual analysis of Wilson’s plays and related works as well as documenting and revising performance philosophy and process. While providing a safe space for exploring the roles we play in our daily lives and taking on the roles of others in given or imagined circumstances,
students will learn widely accepted theories, practices, and terminology of the actor’s craft in order to facilitate the practice, writing, and discussion of acting and producing Wilson’s plays and others.
Cross Listed Courses
THEA 10.56