TDPS Major Requirements

The prerequisites for the major are THST 110 Collaboration and THST 111 Modes of Performance.

Yale Course Search: Artistic Practice

This domain encompasses techniques and compositional strategies in theater, dance, musical theater, design, and intermedia performance. Practice-based courses emphasize the knowledge of doing, moving, creating, devising, composing, designing, and craft. Courses move through existing aesthetic practices and histories to cultivate individual and collective expression and new creation. Skills: heightened attention to energy, time, and space; the artist’s self-knowledge and body; fluency in synthesizing movement and language in compositions; and innovative approaches to researching history and culture through performance.

As a TDPS major, you must take two “THST: Artistic Practice” courses.

Yale Course Search: Histories

This domain includes courses in which the scope of study is defined by period, genre, and/or geographic region, in which students research past practices, texts, performances, and cultures. Courses in Histories may also ask students to employ performance-based research methods to analyze, discover, reconstruct, or intervene in diverse global, local, and personal historical narratives. Skills: engaging with material from disparate time periods, geographies, and cultural forms; methods of archival research and oral histories; and reenacting historical performance and adaptation in new forms.

As a TDPS major, you must take two “THST Histories” courses.

Yale Course Search: Performance Theory

Courses in this domain introduce students to foundational theories of performativity and theatricality as applied to a range of cultural contexts and global histories. Theory courses bring together intersecting literatures of feminist and queer theory, linguistic theory, critical race studies, dance studies, and anthropology that together form the theories and methods of Performance Studies and Dance Studies as fields of study and practice. These courses may also invite students to respond to and use theoretical concepts in the creation of live art. Skills: facility with performance studies analysis; application of theory to dramatic texts and embodied practices; and investigating dynamic relationship between archives and repertoires.

As a TDPS major, you must take two “THST Performance Theory” courses.

Yale Course Search: Interarts

This domain invites students to experience art-making between disciplines and within interdisciplinary forms. Courses in this area may draw connections and inspiration between established artistic disciplines, such as theater and dance, or reach beyond the program, putting the performing arts in conversation with ideas and approaches in diverse fields including film, visual art, new media, psychology, and science. Ideally, students use the Interarts requirement to explore disciplinary practices outside of their main track and comfort zone, expanding the boundaries of methods, resources, and questioning that feed into their creative practice. Skills: collaboration; interdisciplinary research and creation; and the integration of methods and systems of knowledge drawn from diverse fields. 

As a TDPS major, you must take two “THST Interarts” courses.

Majors satisfy the senior requirement in one of four main ways: 

1. A substantial senior essay written in an upper-level seminar. With the DUS’s approval, a student may take a one-term, upper-level seminar as a senior seminar. In such cases, the expectations for the final thesis will be substantially higher than for other students not taking the class as a senior seminar. Participation and enrollment in a production seminar may similarly fulfill the senior requirement. Additionally, students may take a course marked as Production Seminar and, with permission of the instructor and the DUS, apply this course towards their senior requirement. 

2. THST 491. Under the supervision of a faculty adviser, a student may undertake a one-term senior project in either the fall or spring semester by enrolling in THST 491  which culminates in a production as part of the curricular production season. Depending upon an individual student’s preparation, coursework, and research objectives, a senior enrolled in THST 491 may direct, design, or devise a theatrical production, create a documentary film or digital media production, perform a role, choreograph a dance piece, or design an original work of performance art. Seniors engaging in production-based senior projects (THST 491) must complete an essay (15-25 pages in length). For a production-based project to be considered for inclusion in the TDPS curricular season, a proposer must have previously served as a producer of a TDPS curricular production (or partner with someone who has).

3. THST 492. Under the supervision of a faculty adviser, a student may undertake a one-term senior research project in either the fall or spring semester by enrolling in THST 492 which culminates in a full-length essay (35-50 pages in length), a writing portfolio or other work of performance-based writing (plays, screenplays, etc.). Seniors pursuing this thesis path are permitted to use their curricular thesis research to support their extracurricular work in a production that is organized and funded through the Creative and Performing Arts process or other approved entities. In THST 492 students’ research falls into one of these three areas:  

   1. Literature, History, Theory, and Criticism
   2. Writing Performance-based Art and Media
   3. Performance Research, Analysis and Design
4. THST 499. With permission of the DUS, a student may take THST 499, Senior Independent Study, in fulfillment of their Senior Requirement.

To ensure that their coursework aligns with their goals, students should begin discussing senior project ideas and plans with the DUS at the start of their junior year. Senior Project orientation meetings for all juniors are held once in the fall and twice during the spring semester, with research and production proposals due the Friday before spring break.