THEA 200 Leveling the Playing Field

Immersive Visual Environments with Commonplace Technology

Contemporary theater—especially as performed on Broadway—has become a high tech multimedia production with budgets in the millions. How can emerging theater artists compete with this level of spectacle and/or create new work that is equally compelling? In this course students will learn how to check the boxes of the newest innovations in big budget theater and performance without the financial demands. We will level the playing field by creating forms of high spectacle through economical means. Students will learn to devise spectacular visual stories using commonplace objects. Throughout this project based course, students will study the fundamentals of visual storytelling both through playing with lights and shadow led by cutting-edge artist Christine Marie and through developing story with performance artist and professional storyteller David Crabb.