In investigative theatre class , students will learn how to “tell a tale about climate change that automatically engages its audiences.”
This spring, Princeton University students can find out more about” Investigative Theater for a Changing Climate.”
Kids will make” an initial work of drama” by “pursuing a imaginative investigation into some aspect of weather change”, according to the course outline. Students may also” research climate change efficiency texts and movies to grasp important ideas that facilitate the development of eco-theater.”
This program counts as upper-level theater or musical theater record, but “previous theatre experience is not required”. It is graded on a “pass”,” D”, or” Fail” base, and membership qualifies for 30 percent of the total level.
Kids will be taught by Steven Cosson, who helped build the process called “investigative drama” along with his band” The Civilians”.
The College Fix sent two emails to him last month asking for his opinion on the grading scale, the sure ideas, and the link between theatre and climate shift.
Past plays by the Citizens include’ Sex Variations,’ a look at the “intimate lives of Depression-era queers”,” Black Feminist Video Game” about a “biracial girl with autism”, and” The Disbelieving” that looks at” the lives of practicing church members — Catholics, Episcopalians, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Jews, Mormons, Muslims—who have stopped believing in God”.
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Cosson co-conceived” Sexual Derivative” and directed” The Unbelieving”, as an musical director for the party.
The other professor, Khristian Aguirre, also did not respond to requests for comment over the same time span. He is described as an “emerging expert in the field of performance and ecology” according to the course description. Aguirre is also featured as” theatre director and researcher” in Howlround Theatre Commons: a site that “amplifies progressive, disruptive ideas about the art form and facilitates connection between diverse practitioners”.
His website, devoted to” Theater + Education + Intersectional Equity + Environmental Justice”, was made private after The Fix emailed him.
In a comment to The Fix, an Emory University emeritus professor of English and a senior editor at First Things criticized the program.
” At a time when American youth, including elites, have poor reading habits, meager knowledge of history, vulgar tastes ( having been fed vulgar social media for years ), and humanities enrollments are plummeting, the assignment of course time and effort to climate change is pedagogical malpractice”, Mark Bauerlein told The Fix.
The Lewis Center for the Arts, which provides the theater and music programs, did not respond to a voicemail and email left last month.
The course is a component of” a multi-year project about environmental storytelling led by The Civilians, Princeton’s High Meadows Environmental Institute, and the Lewis Center for the Arts”. The project is called” The Next Forever: New Stories for a Changing Planet”.
What tales can we tell to escape the planet’s crisis that we are currently in? relating to climate change, biodiversity loss, ecological collapse, and food insecurity,” the initiative asks.
” The initiative provides forward-thinking artists unparalleled access to a cross-disciplinary range of knowledge and ideas—of scientists, conservation psychologists, historians, and policy and communications experts, and fellow artists, among others, “according to the Lewis Center website.
MORE: A professor at CU Boulder dresses like a butterfly to combat” climate anxiety.”
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