CCOG for TA 101 Winter 2025
- Course Number:
- TA 101
- Course Title:
- Theatre Appreciation
- Credit Hours:
- 4
- Lecture Hours:
- 40
- Lecture/Lab Hours:
- 0
- Lab Hours:
- 0
Course Description
Intended Outcomes for the course
Upon completion of the course students should be able to:
- Articulate how attending a theatre production challenges one's own lived experience, in relation to the playwright’s lens of the world.
- Analyze the experience of attending a live theatre production using criteria from the course.
- Relate historical themes and cultural ideas presented in production to real life problems and situations.
- Differentiate the shared experience of being an audience member to a live theatrical production from other narrative art forms.
Integrative Learning
Students completing an associate degree at Portland Community College will be able to reflect on one’s work or competencies to make connections between course content and lived experience.
General education philosophy statement
Theatre is a cross cultural discipline, incorporating and expressing in verbal, sensory and ideological ways the cultural values of its producers. Exploring theatre’s historic, cultural and gendered contexts through viewing live theatre allows a student to reflect on their own experience as well as the human experience through a variety of lenses. Each student is required to analyze their experience witnessing a theatre production from both a subjective (in class discussion) and objective perspective (See Signature Assignment- Theatre Production Critique). By attending and exploring multiple productions each term, the student is tasked with organizing aesthetic, artistic, cultural (which include racial, gender, socio-economic and and spiritual identity), ethical concepts. Portland Theatre offers the student community of each particular class numerous productions of these varying perspectives to meet this need. The instructor is tasked with selecting a wide range of between four to six productions to cover these areas.
Course Activities and Design
Theatre Appreciation is a course which includes attendance at live theatre productions, small group projects, and in-class discussions of viewed productions. It may include the reading of plays as well as guest speakers, slides and video to supplement such discussions. This course is transferable to four year educational institutions and may be taken to satisfy a General Education Arts and Letters requirement.
Suggested Textbook: Some instructors might benefit from contacting a publisher to create a custom version of a book that they find useful from larger textbooks used for longer Theatre Appreciation courses.
Outcome Assessment Strategies
Students are expected to complete several papers, detailing their critical evaluation of theatre productions following a format provided by the instructor. The assessment of these will be based on the criteria provided and discussed in class.
For Outcomes #1 & 2
Written play critiques and evaluations. These will be graded, and the criteria will be both discussed as well as handed out in class. With each critique the student is asked to step deeper into their inquiry, evolving from description to analyzation to synthesis.
The assessment of Outcomes 3 &4 are generally ungraded, but will be done through the following:
Small group problem solving or interactive discussion of a critical question, with instructor time for further discussion or suggested refinement.
Oral presentations based on group projects or individual inquiry, based on prompts from the criteria (facilitated by the instructor)
At the beginning of the course, the instructor will detail the methods used to evaluate student progress and the criteria for assigning a course grade.
Class discussions will review the information and students will be asked to contribute to the discussions with their ideas based on the criteria given.
Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)
Theatre as a social and cultural event
- The concept of otherness.
- Cultural appropriation vs cultural synthesis
- The other world of the theatre
The styles of drama and their reflection in life
- Tragedy as it celebrates to the human capacity to persevere
- Comedy as the commentary on the absurdity, randomness or order of cultural norms.
Theatre as a collaborative art
- Playwright as the original artist
- Directors/Actors as interpreters
- Designers and the concept
- Technicians
- Audience as the final contributor
COMPETENCIES/SKILLS:
- Identify and describe basis theatrical terminology.
- Identify the various artists who contribute to the theatrical event.
- Apply understanding of live performance to live productions attended by written critiques and verbal discussion.
- Illustrate and demonstrate the job of the actor, playwright, director, technical designers.
- Apply understanding of the playwright's language by examining and explaining such language.
- Identify and explain the uses of various theatrical spaces.
- Illustrate the difference between comedy, tragedy, tragi-comedy and farce.
- Describe and identify the role of the audience in theatre.