What's Popping: The Contemporary Black Theatre Workshop

Open to all Brown students, this course introduces students to contemporary (post-1980) Black theatre history, theory, and artistic practice. Students will read, analyze and interpret a range of influential plays such as What to Send Up When It Goes Down, Hurt Village, Twilight, Topdog/Underdog, Choir Boy, Bootycandy, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, and Fences. Course work includes opportunities to perform scenes and monologues, see live theatre in and around Providence, and devise original performance works through in-class writing, movement, and improv theatre exercises. The semester culminates in an Artists Salon featuring students' work. No previous acting, improv, movement, directing, playwriting or Black theatre experience required. No prereqs. All are welcome.