Performing Arts Courses

DR25: Performing Arts

This course is an intensive year-long course that focuses on all aspects of theatrical performance including acting technique, theater studies, movement, character development, and stage combat. Students will prepare and perform scenes for an in-class performance and produce a ten-minute play festival at the end of the year. Enrollment in this class is not a prerequisite for after-school drama.

DR50: Advanced Drama

This course is a continuation of the drama sequence and open to students who took DR25 in ninth grade. Students will create an ensemble work based on stories found in the media. The tasks students will be asked to perform include: research on the topic, writing monologues and scenes from group improvisations, edit their written material into a final script, design and construct a set, stage, and perform the piece for the student body.

DR80: Advanced Drama Seminar

Students are asked to analyze Shakespeare from the standpoint of literary criticism, but how does a performing artist approach Bard’s work? Does an academic approach the work differently from an actor or director? Where do their respective approaches differ or coincide? How do Shakespeare’s biography and knowledge of his era affect performing his work? What unique skills are required to act in a verse drama as compared to a contemporary work?  These are the kind of questions we explore in this yearlong course. Students will prepare and perform a sonnet and monologue in class and perform in an end-of-year ASM. Suggested reading will include Russ McDonald’s Bedford Companion to Shakespeare, John Barton’s Playing Shakespeare, and Thinking Shakespeare by Barry Edelstein.