B.A. IN THEATER ARTS

Students can earn a B.A. degree in theatre by taking courses already approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and they can also earn a degree in theatre education. Cheyney’s theater arts program has a strong second area of concentration in black drama, as well as other second areas of concentration in music, design, and art. These areas are not listed elsewhere in the description of the theater arts major. Theater, by its very nature, demands participation. The student who desires to major in this art form will be led to understand that theater demands the total commitment of the person, involving intellectual, emotional, and physical attributes.

The student who enrolls in this program will be required to learn the history, styles, and content of drama. Students will participate in plays as actor, director, crew member, stage manager, and technician. Upon completion of the program, students should be qualified (depending on his/her individual talents), to work as an actor, director, teacher, technician and manager in the professional, academic, or community theater setting.

Requirements for Admission

In addition to meeting the general requirements of the university for admission, each applicant will be required to demonstrate his or her aptitude for his or her chosen program through an audition or interview.

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

HEN321 Shakespeare (3). Fifteen major plays of Shakespeare studied, analyzed, and evaluated; life and times of Shakespeare; works and contributions of his contemporaries; Elizabethan theaters and stage techniques discussed and, the entire Elizabethan period studied in outside reading.

HTA107 and 129 History of the Theater I and II (3 each). Survey of dramatic and theatrical history from the Greeks to the present. Extensive readings in the dramatic literature of the various periods.

HTA113 Movement I (1). Basic dance technique to increase the flexibility, range, and strength of the actor’s body. Exploration of the medium through improvisation; use of rhythm, dynamics, space, and gesture. The body as a dramatic agent.

HTA144 Movement II (1). Advances technique and further work in improvisation. Survey and study of styles of movement. Prerequisite: HTA 113.

HTA203 Acting for Beginners (3). Acting as the organic interrelation of self and environment. Release of the actor’s individuality through improvisational exercises in relaxational and physical freedom; uses of the senses; observation; justification action; handling of objects; speaking and listening. Beginning work on dialogue and text.

HTA224 The Art of Staging (3). The course will assist the student in learning how to stage
artistically satisfying productions in various kinds of settings, particularly non-traditional performance space.

HTA235 Creative Uses of Light (3). Elementary theory relating to light, pertinent optics, and electrical control. General principles and practices of stage lighting, with emphasis upon the creative use of light with available equipment.

HTA246 Costume Design (3). Principles and practices of costume design and construction; evolution of stage costume; survey of historical periods and their application to the stage-period play; color, line, cutting work; work on costumes for production.

HTA314 Speech for Stage (3). Speech techniques for the stage: relaxation, breath control, resonance, articulation, and projection. Physiology of the vocal tract. Early training in speech appreciation and speech analysis. The phonetic alphabet and standard American pronunciation; elementary phonetic transcription.

HTA411 Modern Drama (3). Survey covering the principal playwrights, movements, and trends in European and American drama from Ibsen to the present day. Students required to read, study, and analyze works of major dramatics.

General Theater Courses

HEN325 Introduction to Theater (3). In this course, the student is expected to understand
the several forms of drama, the historical development of theater and drama, and to understand, at least on the elementary level, the complexities of the language of drama.

HTA159 Theater Practice I (1). A laboratory for
performance encompassing all work required toprepare and present a play

HTA160 Theater Practice II (1). Continuation of Theater Practice I.
HTA160 Theater Practice III (1). Continuation of Theater Practice II.
HTA269 Theater Practice IV (1). Continuation of Theater Practice III.
HTA379 Theater Practice V (1). Continuation of Theater Practice IV.
HTA380 Theater Practice VI (1). Continuation of Theater Practice V.

HTA258 Make-up Techniques (1). Theories and principles of stage make-up, as related to
dramatic production as a whole, covering anatomy, color, light, character, age, type, race, and period make-up with practical laboratory experience.

HTA317 Play Production (3). Study of physical plant, organization, and production problems of the educational, community, and professional theaters.

HTA422 Playwriting (3). The conventions and techniques that playwrights use to communicate in the theater. Analysis of selected plays, lectures, and discussion, combined with exercises in the planning and writing of scenes and short plays.

HTA433 Honors Tutorial in Theater (3). Directed study and research in special areas of theater arts, in which the student will have an opportunity to manifest a high degree of creativity. May be repeated to a maximum of six semester hours. Prerequisite: Permission of department.

HTA444 Theater Workshop (3). Workshop experience in all phases of theatrical production: acting, directing, theater management, and technical production. May be repeated to a maximum of six semester hours.

HTA455 Dramatic Criticism (3). History, method and theories of dramatic criticism from Aristotle to the present.

HTA466 Directed Study in Theater Arts (3-12). Prerequisite: Permission of instructor.
Independent study of problems in particular areas of theatrical concern.

Theatre Education Courses

HTA321 Speech and Drama Methods in the Secondary School (2). Curricular and
extracurricular use of dramatization in secondary schools; methods and materials for teaching speech in the classroom, including voice, articulation and pronunciation; choral speaking, and dramatic activities.

HTA477 Educational Theater Seminar (2). Seminar discussion concerning the issues and practices of drama as applied to the learning situation. Areas of interest include: philosophy and history, as well as current techniques in the field.

HTA488 Student Teaching and Seminar (12). Classroom practice teaching in the areas of Theater Arts and English or Speech; production within the schools of a play or musical.

Black Drama Courses

HTA332 Black Community Theaters (3). A study of black community theaters’ contribution to American drama.

HTA344 The Federal Theater Project (3). The Federal Theater Project, although only lasting from 1935 to 1939, provided blacks with a workshop permitting experimentation in all phases of the theater. This course will concern itself with an evaluation of the impact of this project.

HTA356 The Maturation of Black Drama: The 1950’s (3) (African-American Heritage Course). The 1950’s witnessed a coming of age of Black Drama. The old images were discarded in favor of psychologically and emotionally credible presentations. This course will examine primarily the contributions of Louis Peterson, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, William Branch, and Loften Mitchell.

HTA361 Toward the Liberation of Black Drama: The 1960’s (3). The 1060’s sounded the death knoll for the stereotypes and found the black dramatist exploring a myriad of subjects of interest to him. Ossie Davis, Lorraine Hansberry, Adrienne Kennedy, Douglas Turner Ward, Lonne Elder, Edgar White, and Charles Gordone have made contributions which have had and are having far- reaching implications on the American stage. This course will study these contributions.

HTA372 Black Revolutionary Drama (3). ) (African- American Heritage Course). Though most contemporary, the black revolutionary drama can claim an ancestry on the Medieval morality plays in its insistence upon the dramatization of a creed. LeRoi Jones may be considered the high priest of black revolutionary drama. This course will examine this drama of a revolt with the aim of delineating the black dramatist’s view of the universe.

HTA462 The Stereotype Images of Blacks in American Drama (3). From as early as 1769,
certain images of blacks were popularized in the American theater. The Buffoon, The Tragic Mulatto, the Carefree Primitive, The Christian Slave, and the Black Beast became stereotypes whose perpetuation was reinforced, although for different reasons, by both black and white playwrights. The satirization of these stereotypes has been the point of departure for more recent black drama. This course will examine the development of these images.

HTA473 Contemporary Black Drama (3). This course will examine black drama since 1950. The ‘50’s witnessed the coming of age of black drama with contributions from such playwrights as Louis Peterson, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, William Branch, Loften Mitchell, and James Baldwin. The ‘60’s produced dramas by Ossie Davis, Adrienne Kennedy, Douglas Turner Ward, Lonne Elder, Charles Gordone, and Edgar White, to name a few. Also, the plays of LeRoi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka), Ed Bullins, Ben Caldwell, Ron Milner, Kngsley Bass, Jr., and Richard Wesley will be studied as a drama of revolt.

HTA478 Mimicry, Minstrelsy and the Black Musical (3). This course proposes to examine the derivation of the black musical drama by tracing its development from the mimicry of the chants and dances of the old plantation to the minstrel shows of the 1840’s to the black authored musicals of the early 1900’s.

HTA491, African Roots of African American Drama (3). In this course, the African roots of
African American drama will be explored for the purpose of identifying common elements and reestablishing important links with values in the African tradition.