What is the enduring appeal of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town? Is the Barbie movie comic or ironic? How can we more deeply experience a play, musical, or movie for its meaning and fully understand the intent of its authors? Discuss some of your favorite plays and movies and provide techniques to enhance your experience attending (or making) theatre and film. Learn to identify the forms of drama and how they reflect the changing values of society. Participants will learn the tools that directors and actors use to interpret a script for performance and production.

Instructor: Scott Edmiston, BFA’83, is an educator, award-winning theater director, and author. Hailed as “one of Boston’s finest directors” by the Boston Globe, he is the recipient of the Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence and the 2012 Penn State Distinguished Alumni Award. Since relocating to Boston in 1997, he has directed more than 60 productions. Currently a professor of theatre at Berklee, previously he was dean of theater at Boston Conservatory and chair of theatre at Northeastern University, and he has taught at Boston University, Brown, and Brandeis.

Course dates May 8 and 15.