EVDOL 39 - Theater This Season

Shana Komitee
Designed for novices and afficionados alike, this course explores a mix of the most exciting theater happening in New York in Fall 2024 - revivals and premieres, straight plays and musicals, on Broadway and Off-Broadway. Each week, students will analyze a given production’s source texts, enjoy spirited lectures and discussions about its history and creators, and encounter video and audio footage and guest artist visits (recorded and live) that reveal a work’s deeper dimensions. Whether you’re a longtime NYC theatergoer and want greater context for shows you plan to attend – or prefer to survey the rich scene from the storied perch of a Juilliard classroom – all are invited!

The plays/musicals surveyed include, but are not limited to:

Our Town (the beloved American classic, now reborn under acclaimed director Kenny Leon);
The Outsiders (2024 Tony Award for Best Musical),
Yellow Face (the highly-anticipated Broadway premiere of David Henry Hwang’s semi-autobiographical comedic stunner about race);
Gypsy (starring the unmissable Audra McDonald);
Reconstructing (Still Working but the Devil Might Be Inside) (The TEAM’s genre-defying largest writing project to date, at BAM);
Suffs (Shaina Taub’s political powerhouse, especially timely this election year);
McNEAL (a meditation on the power of AI by the Pulitzer-winning visionary Ayad Akhtar);
Gatz (Elevator Repair Service’s final NYC encore presentation of their legendary riff on Fitzgerald’s masterpiece);
Our Class (an astonishing new look at Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s famous study of a 1940s Polish village);
Bad Kreyol (the newest from theatrical heavyweight Dominique Morisseau); and many more.

Additionally, students who register for the class will be eligible to receive one complimentary ticket to the opening production of the Juilliard Drama Division 2024-2025 Season “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Biography: Shana Komitee has been a Juilliard faculty member since 2012. She teaches Vibrant Legacies in Theater, covering influential movements and artists in the U.S. and globally, and serves as dramaturg on Drama Division productions. Komitee is the author of the Harvard Writing Project’s A Student’s Guide to Performance Studies, essays for the Juilliard Global Ventures episode on Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, and dozens of program notes and director interviews for Juilliard mainstage productions. She received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University and pursued an interdisciplinary MA/PhD at Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Performance Studies. At Harvard, she was a multi-year recipient of the university’s top teaching fellowship prize. A former New York City Urban Fellow, Komitee has also taught at Columbia University, Bard Prison Initiative, and Juilliard Extension (since 2013), and in numerous adult education programs in Boston and San Francisco. She has provided dramaturgy at theaters and museums throughout the United States, including the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Frick Art Museum, WP Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Signature Theatre, and the American Repertory Theatre.

10 weeks

Tuesdays 6:30–8pm ET

October 1–December 10

In Person Only

$510

Or to register by phone, contact Juilliard Extension at (212) 799-5000 ext. 273, Monday–Friday, 9am-5pm ET.