Specialty Course Catalog
Explore our wide selection of optional afternoon specialty courses! From podcasting and debate to acting, art, Shakespeare and beyond - a broad selection of courses is available every afternoon!
Add these to your Great Books or Writer’s Workshop Online sessions or purchase them separately for $250 when added to a core program or $295 sold separately (plus one time registration fee.) These optional programs give you the ability to add time and diversity to your summer program.
The choice is yours. You can even create your own custom summer program by choosing one or two of these courses any week -- or every week-- for up to SIX WEEKS!
- Character Design: Developing & Sketching your Character's Story to Life – Senior West Coast July 26: A class that give the students exposure to various aspects of character design. What makes a memorable character come to life? How can you, the artist, help shape the realization of their story?
- Portrait Drawing – Senior East Coast July 5: Students will learn the basics of figure drawing using standard a #2 pencil and paper. We will go over rules of proportion, do timed sketch exercises, analyze different portrait styles and create a final portrait for the end of the week.
- Grimm to Disney: The Evolving Art Style of Myths & Folktales – Senior West Coast July 12 & Intermediate West Coast July 26: How the stories and art of fairytales, myths, and legends have changed throughout the course of history. How does history shape art making and story telling? What messages are hidden within the storylines? How have these stories been rebranded / reshaped by time and various companies' lenses?
- Illustration: Intermediate East Coast July 19: Read stories and then create images to accompany them. Images have been inseparable from the written word, serving to clarify, emphasize, and sometimes even contradict the words on the page. We will explore picture books, illuminated manuscripts, and book covers, and try our hand at some of these forms.
- Mixed-media Blackout Poetry – Senior East Coast July 26: Choose a page of text, scan the text for words that evoke inspiration, write down those words and work out their poem. Using pencil, the students will then sketch out their drawing, making sure to highlight and create visual links to their poem for comprehension. They will then use a drawing or material of their choice to complete their drawing.
- Photography - Senior East Coast June 28 & Intermediate East Coast June 28: Study the history of photography as art, and explore the medium by taking (and discussing) photos of our own. We will ask questions about subject matter, technique, and the question of truth.
- Scripts, Storyboards, and Shots - Sequential Art for Films – Senior East Coast July 12: This course will introduce and discuss the visual art-making that goes on behind the scenes of film production, and how to move an idea from the page to live-action using visual narrative tools. We will break down a movie scene into parts to understand how it was made, and then pitch our own scenes using storyboards and shot composition techniques. No prior skills necessary.
- Zines and Mini Graphic Novels - Senior West Coast July 26, Intermediate East Coast July 19, & Intermediate West Coast July 26: Students will create a short graphic novel or zine on a topic of their choice. They can fill their zine with art, poems, musings, narratives, etc. We will learn basic book making, perspective drawing, graphic design and composition.
- Acapella Music and Instrument App Layering – Senior East Coast July 5: Have you seen videos on Facebook/Instagram/Tik Tok recently where musicians or singers perform great songs, operas, instrumental music together, but from their own homes? That is what we do in this class!
- Building Character – Senior East Coast July 19, Senior West Coast July 19 & Intermediate East Coast June 28: A course where we'll pick a character from a musical and practice immersing yourself in that character. We'll explore truly embracing a characters entireÿ narrative through a musical, their emotional journey as well as their songs and scenes.
- Garage Band Music Creation: Beats and Rap – Senior West Coast July 12 & Intermediate West Coast July 12: Garage Band literally allows you to create any type of beat and backdrop that your imagination can create. We're going to go over all the rules and then we'll let our imaginations run wild. We can create new beats for your favorite songs, or create entirely new ones. We'll record everything and then play it at the end of the week!
- Kankyō ongaku: Japanese Ambient Music – Senior East Coast June 28: This class introduces the tradition of Kankyō ongaku, Japanese ambient music, as a means of infusing everyday life with moments of respite . Using found sounds recorded on your phone, you?ll learn to build ambient loops which will then be used to animate short clips of the corners of your own world and the places you most like to hang out.
- Lyrics, Poetry & Spoken Word – Intermediate East Coast July 5, Intermediate West Coast July 5: We'll explore the basics to songwriting lyrically. How to take an idea and inspiration and create a lyrical piece of work that can stand alone or be written specifically to music.
- Podcasting – Senior West Coast June 21 : Students will explore a variety of topics for original Podcasts. Students will be introduced to Soundtrap, an online recording studio where we can record our podcast, edit and transcribe the text, add background music and get our Podcast ready for publication.ÿ No previous recording experience!
- Video Game Soundtracks – Intermediate East Coast June 28: Dig deep in the archive and find out how the original NES creators got the world hooked on gaming. Experiment with classic, 8-bit technology and write your original loops to accompany throwback titles like Mega Man and Castlevania III.
- Game Play – Delve into academic, theoretical, literary, and mathematical manifestations of games. We'll look at a diverse array of materials, political science and economic game theory to science fiction texts (movies, books, and short stories), board games, video games, and tabletop role-playing games. We'll seek to understand what games are, where games are, and how to play.
- Micro Mystery: Forensic Science and Mystery Writing – Intermediate East Coast July 12: Create a mini-mystery using real detective skills! Learn and apply forensic science techniques while creating your own unique mystery short story.
- Political Fiction, and Fictional Politics – Senior East Coast July 26, Intermediate East Coast July 26: This course seeks to analyze politics at its intersection with fictional elements. We'll look at seminal works of political fiction in novel form (e.g. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, We, by Yevgeny Zamiatin, and The Castle, by Franz Kafka), in science fiction (e.g. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson), and in television and film (e.g. The West Wing, The Death of Stalin). We'll seek to understand how political fiction, and fictional politics, are constructed and relate to each other. Students will be asked to play an active role in course discussions.
- Oscar Wilde: Dry Wit in Prose and Theatre – Intermediate East Coast June 28: An entry to the works of Oscar Wilde. Beginning with his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which Wilde lays out his express opinions on art, we will work through selections from his short stories, poetry, and his final play. We will discuss whether his humor is still applicable today.
- Building an Anecdotal Speech – Intermediate West Coast June 28 & Intermediate West Coast July 12: To many, speaking in front of a large crowd both digitally and in-person can be quite intimidating. To become more confident and proficient, we must learn how to get comfortable with this uncomfortable situation. We will go through the fundamentals of public speaking as well as create and present speeches based off of personal experiences.
- Presenting an Impromptu Speech – Senior West Coast June 28 & Intermediate East Coast June 28, & Intermediate West Coast July 5 & Senior West Coast July 5: Have you ever felt like you were being put on the spot when someone asks your opinion in a group of people? Or have you ever been not quite sure how to articulate an answer when a teacher poses a question to the class? In this class we will learn techniques on how to confidently express your thoughts on a given topic with a short amount of time to prepare.
- The Art of Persuasive Speech – Senior East Coast July 19: Stating your opinion in a speech is one thing, attempting to make everyone agree with your standpoint is another. Find a topic of your interest and then use research to craft a speech in which your audience sees and understands your position.
- Acting For the Camera Senior East Coast July 26, Intermediate East Coast July 26 : Turn your home into a studio! Learn tricks of the trade from film, TV, and commercial actors to help prepare you for your big break! Industry guests TBA.
- Fairytales (Remixed) - Senior East Coast July 12, & Intermediate East Coast July 12: Everyone knows fairytales, but not everyone knows what happened before or after the fairytale ended or began.
- Improv! - Intermediate West Coast July 5 & Intermediate East Coast July 12: Looking to boost your self-confidence and improve your public-speaking skills? Then Improvisation, or “improv”, is for you. In this class, you’ll experience the power of play through made-up scenarios and improvised characters. No prior experience necessary!
- Devil’s Advocate: Shakespeare’s Villains - Senior West Coast July 26, Intermediate West Coast July 26: Embrace your inner scoundrel as we delve into Shakespeare’s baddies. Equal parts rhetorical analysis and performance, Devil’s Advocate takes a deep dive into the world of The Bard’s greatest villains.
- Monologue Intensive - Senior West Coast July 19 & Intermediate West Coast July 19: We will spend the week learning the basics to performing monologues! Need help finding a monologue to audition with? This class will help you gain the tools needed to memorize, execute and perform a monologue. All levels welcomed!
- Science Fiction Theater - Senior West Coast July 19 & Intermediate West Coast July 19, Intermediate East Coast June 21: Can "strange new worlds and new civilizations" be created without the special effects of film and television? Of course! All you need is a story to tell and writers and performers to tell it. We will read and discuss plays that feature SF themes such as AI, cloning, and apocalypse/dystopia; using these texts as inspiration, we will create our own short performance pieces.
- Shakespearean Character and Performance – Senior East Coast June 21: Examine the interpretive choices that make up our interpretations of a character. Reading and watching selected scenes we will explore how each character may be portrayed in multiple ways. The week will culminate in performances.
- Sitcom for the Camera - West Coast Senior June 28 An exploration into the world of acting for multi-camera sitcom comedies (ie. Friends, The Big Bang Theory). We will work with a real television script and learn how to make your comedy chops pop for the camera.
- Superhero 101: Exploring our Modern Mythology - Intermediate East Coast July 19, Intermediate West Coast July 19 & Senior West Coast July 5: Create your own superhero origin story! Explore ancient and modern superhero mythology to build your own unique superhero story.
- Tell your Story! - Senior East Coast July 26: Tell your own story or adapt a poem or short story through words, movement or music through acting, music, dance, poetry or all of the above! This fun and exciting art form allows you to take an idea of a story and make it your own!
- Unpacking Shakespeare's Text - Senior East Coast July 5: What if there is more information, more clues and codes within the lines of the play that not only give life to the text, but even tell Shakespearean Actors exactly what to do on stage? We will explore the difference between verse and prose, colons and semi-colons, and discover the now-hidden messages in Shakespeare's plays.
- Verbatim Theatre - Intermediate East Coast July 5: Create an original theatre piece! Create a rich character through interviews and physical transformation.
- Criticism 101: Writing about Film & TV – Senior East Coast July 12, Senior West Coast July 26 & Intermediate East Coast July 12: With social media anyone can share their opinion about that movie they just saw. But if your interest in media is matched by your love for writing, you might be a critic in the making. we will explore the role of the media critic, read a variety of different styles of criticism, and create our own media studies magazine with original reviews.
- Exploring the World and the Self: Documentary Nonfiction – Senior East Coast July 12: We will cover the basics of interviewing, researching, and nonfiction storytelling, following our curiosity to produce essays such as profiles, portraits of places, and memoirs. We will also share and discuss our work in a supportive setting.
- Fan Fiction – Intermediate East Coast July 19: Coming soon!
- Intro to Playwriting - Senior West Coast July 26: A workshop devoted to writing for the stage through practice and discussion. We will examine the work of contemporary playwrights, engage in writing exercises, and share our work with the group, all with the goal of developing our own voices as writers. By the end of the class, all participants will finish a short play.
- Language Learning through Literature: Simple Spanish Poetry and Prose – Senior East Coast June 21: Know Spanish? No Spanish? Readers will gain an enriched knowledge of the language as they read and craft short pieces aimed at exposing all the sense and nonsense of the words we inhabit.
- Ludic Language: Writing with Borrowed Words – Senior East Coast July 19: Choose a poem in a language you hardly know. Listen to it read aloud and as you do so black out all of the words except those you recognize.
- Micro Mystery: Forensic Science and Mystery Writing - Intermediate West Coast July 26: Create a mini-mystery using real detective skills! Learn and apply forensic science techniques while creating your own unique mystery short story.
- Perspective; Changing A Narrative Event – Senior West Coast July 19 & Intermediate West Coast July 19: Investigate elements that give a story perspective, and manipulate these elements to radically change our original stories- without compromising their core meaning. Nothing is different, but everything's changed.
- Reading in Translation: The Creative Intermediary – Senior East Coast July 19: Translation: it’s (a lot of) what you read. This course centres translation’s creative force by first comparing multiple renditions of canonical texts before students, themselves, turn translators and transform the weary into the weird. No foreign-language knowledge required.
- Reliable Unreliable Storytellers: Senior East Coast June 28: Why do we listen to storytellers? Are they answering our burning questions? Are they entertaining us? How did they get our attention in the first place? Reliability is central to any form of credibility or trust a storyteller—or narrator—establishes with their audience. However, just because a narrator seems reliable does not necessarily mean that the story they are telling is “true.” In Reliable Unreliable Narrator, we will investigate dimensions of reliability and unreliability in fiction and poetry. While we want our own stories and poems to be taken seriously (i.e. credible), we also want them to be incredible. By examining our own intentions as writers, we will better understand the intentions of our characters in our fiction and the personas that emerge in our poetry.
- In Reliable Unreliable Narrator, we will investigate dimensions of reliability and unreliability in fiction and poetry. While we want our own stories and poems to be taken seriously (i.e. credible), we also want them to be incredible. By examining our own intentions as writers, we will better understand the intentions of our characters in our fiction and the personas that emerge in our poetry.
- Rumor Poetics – Senior West Coast, June 21: Rumors are popularly considered to be an ‘unconfirmed story’ at best, a ‘nasty, persuasive lie’ at worst. Yet they persist in many forms, appearing everywhere. In this course, we will confront the poetics of rumor-making in 20th century fiction & nonfiction from around the world.
