Imagine the first major project of your new theater or dance company and write the project description portion of your grant proposal to secure the funding necessary to create it.  The grant is for young, emerging artists who show a…

Choose one of two preselected videos (one theater-based, one dance-based) and write the director/choreographer’s program note which will introduce that work to an audience that is sitting in its seats 10 minutes before the show begins.  You will find that…

Paper #1:  Critique a Theoretical Text (5-6pp.) Assignment:  Using Vanessa Schwartz’s case study of the Paris Morgue, critique and refine Michel Foucault’s theory about the role of crime narratives in the reflection, and exercise, of power in modern life. Common…

Essay 03. Performance Review. 6-8 pp. Attend a live performance and write about it from two different perspectives (detailed below). In essence this assignment is really two separate writing tasks on the same topic; students should submit two papers stapled…

Essay 02. Inferring musical meaning. 6-8 pp. Select a scene from an opera, film, novel or television show in which music provides crucial information that is otherwise absent from the narrative. Analyse the specific musical features of the music and…

Essay 01. Musical description. 5-6 pp. Choose a short piece of music (ca. 3 mins) and describe first the piece and then the listening experience in as much detail as possible. Note that the two aspects of this task will…

I. Critical Assessment of an Argument I (3 pages) Critically assess the author’s main argument for his or her conclusion. Determine whether the argument is (i) valid, and (ii) sound, and explain your reasoning for each answer. (Alternately: Pick a…

Essay #2 – a 4-6 page review essay of a theater performance (either seen live at Queens College or on video; if the latter e.g. Anna Deavere Smith’s Fires in the Mirror) Assignment Continuing to practice your skills of description…

Essay #1 – a 4-6 page review essay of a dance performance viewed on video (eg: Martha Graham’s Night Journey) Assignment Using the principle of “description-as-evidence” as elucidated in the Jowitt article, characterize the experience of watching this performance for…

Paper #2:  Distillation of a Theoretical Critique (1-2pp.) Assignment 2:  In this short paper assignment, you will write a critical summary of selected pages from Edward Saïd’s Orientalism.  Your task is to locate Saïd’s key claims, explore their implications and…