Requirements

Moderation Requirements

The program’s curriculum emphasizes courses in context and technique, ensuring that a strong foundation is built in the first two years of study.

Moderation Requirements (five courses total):

1. Introduction to Contemporary Performance
2. Two of the following three technique courses: Introduction to Acting: The Actor and the Moment, Introduction to Playwriting: The Theatrical Voice, Introduction to Directing
3. Introduction to World Theater Traditions (fall semester only, typically taken in the sophomore year)
4. Theater Making (spring semester only, typically taken in the sophomore year)

Students also participate in the creation and performance of a group-devised Moderation project.
*This course is only available to second-semester sophomores intending to moderate into the Theater and Performance Program.

Beyond Moderation

In addition to the five courses required to moderate, students must take two courses from a menu of options in three areas of study (Context, Technique, and Creative Practice & Research) and complete a Senior Project.

Courses and Areas of Study

Senior Project

For the Senior Project, students choose from one of the following three categories:

Theater and Performance Program Guidelines for the Senior Project
The Theater and Performance Program encourages students to explore all aspects of the analytical, interpretive, creative, and collaborative practice of the art form during their time at Bard. Consistent with this philosophy, the program encourages students to fashion their Senior Project from a wide menu of possibilities.

Students should arrive at proposals for Senior Project after consultation with their advisor and proposed collaborators.

1) Senior Project Festival

Students participate in a collaborative work-in-progress festival in the fall, with each senior allocated a ten-minute slot to share and develop their work with the support of faculty advisors and Fisher Center technical staff. In the spring semester festival, students may present a continuation of the same project, with greater technical resources; a new ten-minute piece as a work-in-progress showing; or may team up with another student's project. Students may also choose to self-produce their spring project elsewhere on campus.
2) Independent Playwriting Project

Students may write a full-length or one-act play or a collection of short plays as their Senior Project, with an optional staged reading as the culmination of the work.
3) Independent Research Paper

Students may write a 50-60 page research paper on a significant topic in theater or performance studies, working closely with an academic advisor, with a presentation to classmates and faculty as an optional culmination of the work.
Senior Project Guidelines

The Bacchae. Photo by Jacques Luiggi

Recent Senior Projects in Theater and Performance

Audience Patina: An Enmeshment of Architecture and Theater
Writing a Play, Creating a World: The Stars Come Out at Night
Love and Loss and Cake for Breakfast
Accommodation and Coping in Medieval Catholic England: A Historical Dramaturgy Casebook for The Chester Mystery Cycle’s Play 14: Christ at the House of Simon the Leper, Christ and the Moneylenders, and Judas’ Plot