Christopher Baker

Teaching

Experience

Thoughts on Teaching 

My primary goal is to get students to think theatrically.  To read plays as instigations for productions—live events that will affect audiences emotionally and intellectually and will generate a host of meanings.  To think first about how a play looks and sounds and how it can be experienced in space.  To appreciate that suspense, mystery, the clash of opposites, shouting, whispers, the unexpected, the fantastical, and jokes are ways that theatre artists communicate great truths while keeping audiences engaged. To remember that time is a crucial element in live performance—no skipping ahead or pausing—and so the structure of a piece shapes an audience’s experience and conveys meaning.  To know that audience and performers are the only necessary and sufficient elements in the theatre.   more...

Representative Courses and Syllabi 

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

Textual Analysis (TH 730)

     syllabus

What are the methods of analysis that are most applicable (and helpful) to the creation of productions and most useful to theatre practitioners?   

3 credits - graduate - 7 students

World Theater Repertory 2 (TH793)                                                                                      

After discussing Neo-classical, Romantic and Enlightenment ideas that inform 19th and early 20th century drama, this course explores the various modes of the Modern Theatre. 

3 credits - graduate - 14 students

Avant Garde Theatre (Dramatugy Seminar) (TH729)

    syllabus

This course traces the contentious, rebellious, inventive and self-destructive impulse of the avant garde from the beginning of the 20th century to contemporary practice.

3 credits - graduate - 5 students

Production Dramaturgy (Dramaturgy Seminar) (TH729)

A project-based seminar on the "toolbox" of the production dramturg.

3 credits - graduate - 5 students

Producing (Dramaturgy Seminar TH 729)

A project based seminar introducing concerns and techniques of producing, from mission statements to budgets to season curation.

3 credits - graduate - 5 students

Play Analysis for Production (TH 120)

     syllabus

A "gateway" course for theater majors,  the class explores strategies to analyze plays for performance as well as placing those plays within an historical context .

3 credits - undergradate - 20-30 students

Classical Repertory (TH320)

     syllabus

What do the plays of fifth-century Athens and the Roman Republic have to offer us in the twenty-first century?  How might contemporary theater artists produce these works?

3 credits - undergradate - 20 students - Fufills UMass Junior Year Writing requirement  

Modern Repertory (TH 322)                                                  

This course traces the development of Modern drama and theatre including the expectations and social conditions for which the playwrights wrote. 

3 credits - undergradate - 20 students - Fufills UMass Junior Year Writing requirement 

American Repertory (TH330)

     syllabus

This class explores American theater and drama from its beginnings to contemporary practice, including texts, acting techniques, producing organizations, business and politics.

3 credits - undergradate - 20 students - Fufills UMass Junior Year Writing requirement 

Introduction to Theater (TH100)                                                                                  

What makes the theatrical event unique?  How do we read dramatic literature?  What is the role of theater in different cultures and communities?  How is theatre made and why? 

4 credits - undergraduate - 80 sudents - general education course

From Top: Visual analysis by UMass graduate student Bethany Eddy; plot bead analysis diagram by UMass  graduate student Samantha Doolittle;students rehearsing scene in Classical Repertory class at UMass; ; Costume design for Orestes chorus member at University of North Carolina by Lara Knight.