TMA Announcements

Verbatim Theatre is created by interviewing people and using their words to create scripts. This class will have a dual focus. You will be developing a script through verbatim theatre practices, including interviewing people and developing the skills of creating a script from your transcripts. Alongside that, we will be examining the ethics and efficacy of verbatim theatre, especially in relation to its role in the landscape of democratic praxis and thought. We will also be studying in depth the work of two to three leading verbatim theatre practitioners. Through studying verbatim theatre practices both critically and practically, you will develop a deepened knowledge and skill set surrounding this unique and powerful modality of new play development. The focus of our own in class verbatim script will be the Return to Faith journey, building from the rich research and publishing of BYU scholar Jessica Zurcher in the School of Communications. Zurcher’s scholarship emerged from acknowledging there is a great deal of study on the journey away from faith, but little to no scholarship on the return to faith having left it, a gap her work has met. This class will be the beginning of developing a full-length fully staged verbatim performance that explores the return to faith narrative. At the conclusion of the class we will share a staged reading of the work-in-progress script we have developed together to explore the return to faith journey. If you have any questions about the class, please reach out to Professor Alexandra Mackenzie Johns.

Would you like to see your ten-minute, one-act, or full-length play produced on the BYU Theatre Season as part of the fall Microburst New Play Festival?

We want your films! Submit your projects (made for any production classes, Public Domain Film Festival submissions, and any other late submitters from our Early Bird deadline) by FEBRUARY 18TH for a chance to be accepted! As an extra incentive, all students who submit will get free admission for the festival! For more information, click here!

Students in TMA 201: Dramatic Performance Antiquity to Renaissance, have been developing and exploring their own projects. Please come and celebrate their journey, ask them questions, and share in their learning!

TMA Playwriting Students will be sharing staged readings of their scripts developed this term. Come and enjoy!

Applications are open for TMA 418: Advanced Visual Storytelling.

The Student Theatre Association is proud to present STA Hour! This weekly activity focuses on building community and camaraderie among theatre-loving students as well as providing a space to talk about upcoming events with the association and department! Come play games, talk, get audition help, and enjoy theatre! All are welcome and encouraged to bring friends. Snacks provided for students who join the Student Theatre Association on clubs.byu.edu or follow the STA Instagram (@sta_byu)!

Join us this week, Thursday October 26th 5-7pm in the WCAS Common Room for our very special Women in Film Mentorship series with the amazing Hazel Oliver.

Basic Information

Would you like to create and perform a play about medieval women and their faith? Look no further! Some medieval women recorded their faith through words and music, writing remarkable Christian texts, for example Julian of Norwich’s “Revelation of Divine Love” (late 1300s), or Christine de Pizan’s “City of Women” (1405) to name but a few. Their faith echoes down through the centuries via these archival records. However, faith, whilst seemingly spiritual in nature, is fundamentally an embodied experience and practice. In other words, the spiritual is accessed through the body. Understanding and unpacking this dichotomy, “City of Women: Medieval Women’s Faith from Page to Stage” will explore the faith-filled (and faith-fueled) writings of these medieval authors in and through a richtheatrical devising process which culminates in performance, sharing their faith through our bodies and voices. Theclass will include the following: exploring the socio-political landscape these women were writing in and its resonances with our own time and cultures today; studying and applying various devising methodologies and approaches in workshops which practically explore these texts; a study of the discourse surrounding site-specific theatre, applied in the process of finding space(s) for this performance, and preparing and staging a performance for the public throughthese workshops.

Register Today for Fall 2nd Term!

Media Arts faculty Brad Barber will be moderating a discussion with documentary filmmaker Chris Simon, following a free screening of her film This Ain’t No Mouse Music! at the Granary Arts' Film Feast this Saturday 10/7 at 5pm in Ephraim. The event is programmed by Media Arts alumnus Jared Jakins and his wife and frequent collaborator Carly. More info here: https://www.granaryarts.org/film-feast/this-aint-no-mouse-music.

It's going to be an awesome event where every university in Utah is having a service project on the same day. BYU's service project will include a blood drive, making bed mats for refugees and homeless populations, writing cards to the elderly, and even going off-campus to build homes for those in need. It will be an amazing event and we're hoping to spread the word to as many people as possible.