Something from Nothing

Course Description

Summary

A class and a provocation: you can make stunningly beautiful, wildly theatrical work…with nothing except bodies, language, and the everyday objects that surround you. Drawing from plays with minimal production elements -- Martín Zimmerman’s On the Exhale, Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia, Diana Lynn Small’s Mad and a Goat, Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 Days/365 Plays, Samuel Beckett’s Not I, Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, and many others— we will investigate extravagant minimalism and look for the most essential elements of theatricality. We will also explore parallels with the first moments of the creation process, in which the writer must look around them to see what can be made from what exists. As a final project, students—working in teams—will be required to create a theatrical event using only resources they can gather themselves, staged on campus during Bennington Fringe. King Lear said “nothing will come of nothing”...we will prove him wrong.