Stage Design Propaedeutic 1

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Subject guarantor

Jan NEBESKÝ

Name of lecturer(s)

Jan NEBESKÝ

Learning outcomes of the course unit

The study goal is the conscious development (cultivation) of the set-design sense of directors, dramaturgists, set-designers, theoriticians and critics with respect to grasping and creating stage tableaux or drama situations. This involves both practical (instinctive) application at the level of imaginative thought and familiarization with relevant terms allowing a review of relevant stage activity necessary with respect to successful formation in connection with possibilities for mutual understanding of the production team.

Mode of study

Classes, exercises and reflection upon them.

Prerequisites and co-requisites

Creative participation in producing at least one (developed) staged scene with dramaturgists, directors and stage designers in their respective fields and theorists in principle dramaturgists.

Course contents

The 1st semester proceeds from simple static scenes (tableaux) expressing a certain situation to their playing out in time and space. This playing out involves developing of students' stage sense, a decisive component of which is feeling for a spatial solution allowing relevant movement in a given arrangement, based on awareness of the corresponding energy properties of each (stage) space. This stage sense is developed both with respect to the visual (i.e. stage design in the narrow sense) at the level where there is a meeting of the view of the director, stage designer and public, and with respect to internal feel (i.e. the dramatic) that is decisive for actual, conscious stage action (and for audiences experiencing it). One could speak of acting sense, if directors, stage designers, dramatists, dramaturges and even critics and theorists did not also need it to an appropriate degree. Clearly the playing out of the given scenes is based primarily on developing stage sense at the level of directing/stage design or dramaturgy and not specifically at the acting level, although participation by students from all fields as actors is also important for real learning of the basics of stagecraft (i.e. learning „from within“). When conceiving and developing individual scenes, students alternating in various roles also learn teamwork or the art of a creative production dialogue.

Recommended or required reading

Jaroslav Vostrý: Režie je umění, Praha (AMU) 2001

Otakar Zich: Estetika dramatického umění, Praha 1986

Michail Čechov: O herecké technice, Praha 1996

Also see the literature for the Creative Writing course.

Assessment methods and criteria

Creative participation in production of at least one (developed) stage performance, as the dramaturgist, director, set designer in the appropriate study in theory, usually dramaturgy.

Schedule for winter semester 2018/2019:

• Week view
• List

Schedule for summer semester 2018/2019:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

The subject is a part of the following study plans

• Stage Design (B.A.) (required subject)