Drama

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Term
Time & Day Offered
Level
Credits
Course Duration

Faculty Performance Production: Phillip Christian Smith's 2017 political thriller, "The Chechens" — DRA4143.01

Spring 2021
Instructor: Jean Randich
Credits: 4
This is a faculty performance production of a new play, “The Chechens,” by Phillip Christian Smith, Black playwright and 2020-2021 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow. “In modern Chechnya homosexuals are rumored to be held in camps. Can one family protect their brother suspected of being gay, or will they honor kill him to protect the name of the family? What prevails in the end
Drama

Faculty Performance Production: Sarah Gancher’s “The Place We Built” — DRA4160.01

Spring 2019
Instructor: Jean Randich
Credits: 4
Sarah Gancher’s award-winning 2016 play, "The Place We Built": “In a deserted neighborhood in post-communist Budapest, young bohemians squat in an abandoned building and build a bar. Reclaiming the Jewish identity their parents’ generation abandoned after the Holocaust, they create a vibrant new subculture that combines big ideas and intense debates with wild parties.
Drama

Faculty Performance Production: Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" — DRA4308.01

Spring 2016
Instructor: Jean Randich
Credits: 4
“The course of true love never did run smooth.” Shakespeare weaves the rebellious lovers, rude mechanicals, and fairies into the woods and everyone is transformed. This production will cast a dada/surrealist light on this popular comedy of gender friction, identity confusion, and the push and pull of rationality and dream logic. In this multi-media production we will re
Drama Music

Faculty Performance Production: Sweat by Lynn Nottage — DRA4383.01

Spring 2024
Instructor: Shawtane Bowen
Credits: 4
Filled with warm humor and tremendous heart, Sweat tells the story of a group of friends who have spent their lives sharing drinks, secrets, and laughs while working together on the factory floor. But the post Y2K economy is changing, NAFTA is a new reality and rumors fly about layoffs. Promotions and pride inevitably collide, forming cracks in decades-old friendships that
Black Studies Drama

Faculty Performance Production: Unibeauty Her Wicked Daughters, a corporate fairy tale in process, by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig — DRA4152.01

Spring 2023
Instructor: Jean Randich
Credits: 4
In Spring 2023 Bennington students have the opportunity to collaborate with director/devisor Jean Randich, playwright Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, and designer/video artist Sue Rees on the development of an in-progress script whose themes and form are situated in the crosshairs of Cowhig's teaching focus at Bennington: Crafting It-Narratives (stories centering non-human subjects
Drama

Faculty Performance Production: “H G, a great and terrible story,” by Anna Maria Hong, Jean Randich, Sue Rees, and Allen Shawn — DRA4407.01

Spring 2022
Instructor: Jean Randich
Credits: 4
This is a faculty performance production of a new multimedia music theater piece freely inspired by Anna Maria Hong’s novella, “H G,” a cubistic re-envisioning of the Grimm’s tale of Hansel and Gretel as a surreal, feminist hero’s journey. Here abandonment, enchantment, and the fear of being consumed challenge the protagonists to imagine the unimaginable: how do you give birth
CAPA Drama Music

Fascinating Rhythm: Costume Design for Musicals — DRA2283.01

Fall 2021
Instructor: Charles Schoonmaker
Credits: 4
This class will focus on designing the costumes for a series of increasingly complex stage musicals. We will listen to recordings, read and discuss scripts and investigate character. Possible projects might include a non- scripted work such as ‘Songs for a New World’ by Jason Robert Brown, a documentary based musical such as ‘Grey Gardens’ by Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and
Dance Drama Music

Fascinating Rhythm: Costume Design for Musicals — DRA4266.01

Spring 2017
Instructor: Charles Schoonmaker
Credits: 4
In this class we will focus on designing the costumes for a series of increasingly complex stage musicals. We will listen to recordings, read and discuss scripts and investigate character. Possible projects might include a non- scripted work such as 'Songs for a New World' by Jason Robert Brown, a documentary based musical such as 'Grey Gardens' by Doug Wright, Scott Frankel
Drama Music

Finding Form: Dance — DAN4319.01

Spring 2022
Instructor: Dana Reitz
Credits: 4
Looking at forms found in nature, architecture, music, drama, literature, etc., we search for examples to help formulate ideas and structures for movement-based creation. When making new artwork, we are constantly balancing and integrating the need for exploratory freedom and the desire for structural integrity. How do we use spontaneous impulse to help find form, and how do we
Dance Drama Visual Arts

Finding Form: Dance — DAN4319.01

Spring 2023
Instructor: Dana Reitz
Credits: 4
Looking at forms found in nature, architecture, music, drama, literature, etc., we search for examples to help formulate ideas and structures for movement-based creation. When making new artwork, we are constantly balancing and integrating the need for exploratory freedom and the desire for structural integrity. How do we use spontaneous impulse to help find form, and how do we
Dance Drama Visual Arts

Five Approaches to Acting — DRA4170.01

Spring 2019
Instructor: Kirk Jackson
Credits: 4
Taking as our premise that when we study acting we study the art of human relationships (actor to actor as well as actor to audience), this course is an overview of the theories behind the practice of various ways actors work from a script to create characters to tell a story. Analysis of film performances, written responses, and extended work on one scene will be the focus of
Drama

Five Approaches to Acting — DRA4170.01

Spring 2015
Instructor: Kirk Jackson
Credits: 4
Taking as our premise that acting is the study of the art of human relationships (actor to actor as well as actor to audience) this course is a comprehensive overview of the theories behind the practice of various ways an actor works from a script to create a character to tell a story. Using the text book "Five Approaches to Acting" by David Kaplan as a study guide, as well as
Drama

FLEABAG: A Workshop about Structure — DRA2224.01

Spring 2020
Instructor: Sherry Kramer
Credits: 1
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s transcendent ode to longing creates some of the most inescapable structural gravities in recent memory.  Spend three Saturday afternoons talking about the precision and elegance of the way structure works in this remarkable piece of time bound art. We’re going to talk about direct address, structural reasons why season 2 is better than season 1,
Drama

FOCUS FLOW: Developing a Generative Playwriting Practice — DRA2318.01

Spring 2023
Instructor: Dina Janis
Credits: 4
There has been a war on our attention spans, and yet it is this attention span that must be cultivated and strengthened in order to create meaningful work. How can we become the artists and thinkers we wish to be if we can’t find clear, lucid focus within ourselves on a regular basis—and learn how to safeguard it? This course is offered in the spirit of rebuilding our attention
Drama

Framing the World - Animating the World — MA4212.01

Fall 2025
Instructor: Sue Rees
Days & Time: TH 8:30am-12:10pm
Credits: 4

The course will be for sustained work on an animation or projection design project, and should be a space for both experimentation, ambition and consistent endeavor. The first half of the semester will be concerned with conceptualizing and framing the world of the animations or projections, by research, drawings, investigation, imagining. The second half will be creating the

Drama Media Arts

From Process to Performance — DRA4253.01

Spring 2023
Instructor: Jennifer Rohn
Credits: 4
In this course we will use Viewpoints, Meisner and other improvisation based acting techniques to fully explore, rehearse and present a play. The goal of our work will be to retain the truth, life and presence that we discover in the process of improvisation as we move into performance. How do you hold on to the fullest expression of what was discovered when you have to repeat
Drama

Ghost Stories — DRA2386.01

Fall 2025
Instructor: Abe Koogler
Days & Time: WE 2:10pm-5:50pm
Credits: 4

In this course, we will read and write ghost stories. We will pay particular attention to the uses of ghosts in plays, with some diversions into film, fiction, and our own personal ghost experiences. You do not need to believe in the paranormal to take this class: we will consider traditional ghosts (the spooky kind) while also thinking more broadly about memory, absence,

Drama

Greek Tragedy: Plays and Theory — DRA4105.01

Fall 2013
Instructor: Kathleen Dimmick
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 4
This course investigates the great beginning of the western dramatic tradition in fifth-century Athens. We'll read plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and theories of tragedy by Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Hegel. Students will write two essays.
Drama

Henrik Ibsen — DRA4391.01

Fall 2024
Instructor: Maya Cantu
Credits: 4
“All around is stone/And all is soft inside.” –Aurora Aksnes Described as the second most frequently produced playwright in the world after William Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen continues to provoke, challenge and inspire contemporary audiences with the contradictions in his work. This course explores Ibsen’s immense influence and innovations as an architect of modern drama. The
Drama

Historical Dress: Baroque and Rococo — DRA2284.01

Fall 2017
Instructor: Charles Schoonmaker
Credits: 2
This class will examine the fashions of the late 17th century and the 18th century in the western world. We will consider the fashions of the period in the context of the culture and the political and technological shifts of the time. We will familiarize ourselves with the silhouettes and fashion terms of the time.
Drama