Spring 2026 Course Search

In her essay, Violence, director Anne Bogart writes, "Richard Foreman, perhaps the most intellectual of American directors, said that, for him, creation is one hundred percent intuitive. I have learned that he is right. This is not to say that one must not think analytically, theoretically, practically and critically. There is a time and a place for this kind of left-brain activity, but not in the heat of discovery in rehearsal and not in front of an audience. As soon as the door closes in rehearsal or as soon as the curtain goes up in performance, there is no time to think or reflect.

This two-credit course involves working on the conceptualization and editing of the national print literary magazine Bennington Review. Students will serve as Editorial Assistants for the magazine. The course will also engage students in how to approach fiction as an editor: from the selection process, macro edits, and micro edits—to the conversation with the writer.

Dance, Musicals, Opera - a costume studio practice

The class will consist of three elements-

1) Designing a produced piece in drama or dance

2) A paper project designing costumes for a music based narrative piece (ie:opera, musical theatre, dance)

This intensive advanced translation workshop focuses on student work. Meant for those who have taken Ethical Translation and learned the nuts and bolts of translation there – or otherwise have translation and/or extensive foreign language experience – here we dig into your longer translation projects. The aim of the course is to leave with a polished translation that is worthy of publication and a general audience.

Born to a multilingual family and culture, with connections to both India and Pakistan, and educated at Cambridge in the UK, Rushdie was already a celebrated writer when an Iranian clerical fatwa against him in 1989 launched him to another level of fame (or infamy). Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini charged Rushdie with blasphemy in his novel, Satanic Verses, published the prior fall (1988), offering a bounty for his life. The fatwa was never repealed.

How do actors bridge the gap between themselves and the role they are playing? How do actors rehearse with other actors in order to explore the world of the play? 

This non-performance based class is designed to help individual actors discover their own organic, thorough rehearsal process. Step by step we will clarify the actor’s process: character research, character exploration, text analysis, identifying actions, working with scene partners, emotional preparation, and scene presentation. 

This course is an in-depth exploration of improvised comedy scene work, with a central focus on finding and playing “Game.” Game is loosely defined as a pattern of unusual behavior that breaks from the pattern of your everyday life. In other words, Game is what's funny about your scene.

To play Game in a long-form scene, you’ll learn to answer three key questions:

• What is the situation?

• What is the first unusual thing?

• If this is true, then what else is true?

This two-credit course involves working on selecting and editing the content of Bennington’s recently relaunched national print literary magazine, Bennington Review. Students will serve as Editorial Assistants for the magazine, studying and practicing all aspects of magazine editing. The course will also engage students in discussions of contemporary print and digital literary culture, and of the history of literary magazines. Students will be selected in part based on their familiarity with contemporary literature, as well as for prior experience in editing or publishing.

This class is fundamentally an advanced rehearsal techniques class for actors and directors with a focus on physical sensory work. The questions investigated include: What is substitution and how can it help bring the relationships of a play to life? How do you create the physical, sensory world of the play? Where are you coming from when you enter a stage from the wings? How do you personalize and endow the set and props your character thinks of as real?

The course will be for sustained work on an animation or design project, and should be a space for both experimentation, ambition and a consistent endeavor.  Students will be expected to create a complete animation, a series of experiments, projection or interactive project.  The expectation is that students will be fully engaged in all aspects of the class from critiques, to experimenting with ideas, undertaking research and being present.

The dramaturg serves as a powerful medium in the theatre. They bridge the past and the present, the creative team and the audience, while providing critical generosity and historical and literary insight. In this course, we will learn about the history and practice of dramaturgy, while learning how the critical and research skills of the dramaturg can apply to a wide array of theatrical and artistic disciplines. Through a varied blend of weekly readings, discussion, small-group activities, and independent projects, students will engage with various tools and methods of dramaturgy.

The dramaturg serves as a powerful medium in the theatre. They bridge the past and the present, the creative team and the audience, while providing critical generosity and historical and literary insight. Focusing upon the practical application of dramaturgy, this course will offer students a credited platform for dramaturgical work oriented toward production.

“If you are really doing it, you don’t have time to watch yourself doing it.” Sanford Meisner was an actor and founding member of the Group Theater. He went on to become a master teacher of acting who sought to give students an organized approach to the creation of truthful behavior on stage within the imaginary circumstances of a play. This class focuses on developing an actor’s ability to listen, follow their impulses, trust their instincts, and work from moment to moment off of an acting partner.

This course is designed to teach the student the many steps involved in creating a finished garment from a simple idea, piece of research, or sketch. Students will learn the basics of draping, flat patterning, and fitting. Construction of a final garment will allow them to explore and employ sewing skills beyond the fundamentals.

In this project-based class, students will undertake intermediate or advanced level work in lighting design, scenic design and/or stage management. The course is designed for those developing and implementing theatrical designs, as well as stage managers of faculty or student directed projects being produced on campus. In a studio atmosphere, students will share work in process each week, from inception through realization of their respective production projects. Particular attention will be placed on collaboration and communication between members of design/production teams.

In this project-based class, students will undertake intermediate or advanced level work in lighting design, scenic design and/or stage management. The course is designed for those developing and implementing theatrical designs, as well as stage managers of faculty or student directed projects being produced on campus. In a studio atmosphere, students will share work in process each week, from inception through realization of their respective production projects. Particular attention will be placed on collaboration and communication between members of design/production teams.

What is action? What is character? What is an “event”? What are gestures, timing, rhythm and stakes? How do actors, playwrights, and directors collaborate to create an experience/event in space and time? How do illusion and anti-illusion collude and compete to make the representation “real?” This workshop/seminar offers theater artists the chance to examine their craft from the inside out. We meet twice a week with a 4-hour block on Tuesday afternoons to allow for in class rehearsals and showings.

From Novel to Opera to Bluegrass Musical

Set in 1940’s Arkansas and then 1960’s Nashville at the Grand Ole Opry, Gancher's bluegrass musical Eugene Onegin retells the story of Eugene and Tanya—one of history’s greatest tales of The One Who Got Away. 

The captivity narrative is a uniquely American literary form, a distinct, adventure-driven offshoot of the Puritan spiritual autobiography--with affinities to the slave narrative--that has more in common with today's reality-based media programming that you might think. We'll spend the term looking closely at the captivity narratives that form the canon, beginning with the Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682), and charting developments in the genre as it exploded with the so-called Indian wars between the U.S.

This is a 2 credit course to support the Faculty Drama Production of Eugene Onegin. Voice and style instruction will be provided for the singers in the musical, and some research on American singing styles. 

“When I combine imagery and text, I'm really just trying to surprise myself,” writes poet Diane Khoi Nguyen. In fact, there are many pathways to surprise when we start to experiment with multimedia. Certainly the result must have been surprising when the late John Giorno, in 1968, developed the phone-based, poetry performance project, Dial-a-Poem.

Scholar and translator Elizabeth Gray traces the uncertain history of the ghazal in The Green Sea of Heaven: Fifty Ghazals from the Diwan of Hafiz: "Some believe that the classical Persian ghazal evolved from the nasib, the brief and often erotic prologue t

This course will support the rehearsal and performance process of the student-directed productions. Students who are cast in the productions through the Drama Auditions will enroll in this 2-credit section.

This course will support student directors in the rehearsal and production process of their faculty-approved projects. It will provide a structured framework for students to conceive, rehearse, and present their theatrical productions under the guidance of faculty. Students will develop a collaborative process as they direct and manage productions from inception through performance.

Drawing from news articles, interviews, archival materials, and more, writers throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries have sought to document the world through poetry.

What is the lyric? How did lyric poetry emerge as a genre, and how have reading practices evolved alongside it? This is a 2-credit survey class exploring theoretical engagements with the modern idea of the lyric, including readings in genre theory, new criticism, structuralism,  post-structuralism, and beyond.

Three-Card Monte. Blind Man's Bluff. Poker. Charades. Chicken. What do onstage games reveal about our characters? Are onstage games always dangerous? How can the play itself become a game played with the audience?

The essay is an intellectual and an artistic endeavor, and work in the form means work in thinking—about life, values, our own ideas and the ideas of others. Good personal essays entertain, inform and move us through the rendering of, and reflection over, our own life experiences. Essays and stories by artists such as Virginia Woolf, E. B. White, Daniel Orozco, Annie Dillard, Alexander Chee, Alice Walker, and James Baldwin will provide students with a foundation for approaching and understanding their own stories.