The Program

Violet 22-23 Production Photo

Violet; Curricular Project ‘22-‘23

Who are we?

As a branch of the humanities and as a complex cultural practice, theater, dance, and performance claims a rich history and literature and an equally rich repertoire of embodied knowledge and theory. TDPS emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between practice and scholarly study. The major combines practical training with theory and history, while stressing creative critical thinking. Students are encouraged to engage intellectual and physical approaches to explore diverse cultural forms, historical traditions, and contemporary life.

BNBB 2023 Production Photo

Black N Blue Boys/Broken Men; Curricular Project 23-24

Additional Programs Integrated In Our Mission

The Dance Studies curriculum features studio and seminar courses that cover the practice, history, and theory of diverse dance forms and movement phenomena. Students are guided in physical techniques and movement research across a wide range of temporal, geographic, and cultural sites. They link dance to the other arts, the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, and explore the fluid and fraught relationship between movement and language. Contact: Emily Coates, Director of Dance.

The Shen Curriculum for Musical Theater examines the American Musical Theater as an indigenous art form, one informed and influenced by changing cultural and socio-economic conditions and musical tastes and styles. Shen’s courses combine a grounding in skill-based study with history, analysis, and theory. The faculty comprises scholars and working professionals, including composers, directors, lyricists, librettists, directors, and performers. Additionally, the Shen Curriculum supports a co-curricular program that includes the Fridays at Five series of master classes and voice lessons in musical theater technique. Contact: Daniel Egan, Coordinator of the Shen Curriculum.

Computing and the Arts is an interdepartmental major designed for students who wish to work at and across the intersections of computing and theater, dance, and/or performance studies. Through a mix of practical and theoretical exploration, students consider how technological intervention reconfigures, reimagines, and reifies the live body on stage. Contact: Elise Morrison, affiliated faculty in Computing and the Arts.

TDPS also supports three substantial co-curricular initiatives: the Performance Studies working group, the Yale Playwrights Festival, and the Yale Dance Lab.

The study of theater is interdisciplinary in scope and global in perspective. Students are expected to take courses in cognate disciplines such as history, philosophy, anthropology, political science, film, art, literature, and foreign languages. Faculty members are affiliated with a range of departments; their diverse expertise lends breadth and depth to course offerings and enables students to devise a course of study reflective of their developing interests.

News

Contact Information

  • Hal Brooks

    Lecturer
    Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) for TDPS

  • Alana Conti

    Registrar, Chair's Assistant, Senior Administrative Assistant

  • Shane Vogel

    Professor of English and African American Studies
    Chair, TDPS