Special Topics: Production Lab in Realism, Somatic Practice, & Immersive Staging

(Students may participate in part or outside of class time; please reach out to Ann at amshanahan@wisc.edu with interest or questions) This advanced production laboratory explores the psychophysical and somatic foundations of modern theatrical realism through embodied investigation of the plays of Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, Susan Glaspell, Lorraine Hansberry, Lillian Hellman, and others, alongside contemporary immersive adaptations and experimental responses to their work. Designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate actors, directors, designers, dramaturgs, scholars, and technicians, the course functions as a rigorous creative research laboratory in which students pursue individual areas of interest through practice-as-research, collective dramaturgy, and staging experiments. The course explores the dramaturgy of domestic space and contemporary site-specific performance practices that engage performance within lived domestic architecture. Drawing on embodied and collective approaches to performance, the course investigates how realism stages the body in relation to architecture and community. Living rooms, parlors, thresholds, and corridors serve as liminal performative environments where power, gender, and social identity are negotiated. We will work with major texts including plays by Ibsen, Chekhov, Glaspell, Hansberry, and Hellman. Special attention is given to María Irene Fornés’s Fefu and Her Friends, Summer in Gossensass, and Abingdon Square, which expand the spatial and feminist possibilities of realism. The course follows a trauma-informed rehearsal process grounded in somatic awareness and collaborative practice. The course culminates in the collaborative creation and public performance of an immersive staging of an Ibsen play (A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler, or Ghosts), supported by a Fall Competition Grant and developed with professional guest artists and designers. The project does not conflict with major fall productions including The Compass, Urinetown, the CTM collaboration on Annie, or other University Theatre projects.