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Description: 

Course fee: $225

A 6-week course

As long ago as Aristotle's Poetics, tragedy was understood to achieve catharsis by means of pity and terror. Do you scare easily? While music and drama seek to stir the audience, not everyone likes to be terrified. However, theatre has long played upon our emotions, often pushing us to extremes. Over the centuries, the technologies of terror have been refined, so that the thrill of pure horror is now sought out as an end in itself: because of course it is now its own genre.

From the musical and dramatic perspectives, this course will investigate how terror has been done best. As artists, and as audience members, we will explore how this genre works when it works well. We will dissect a few bodies - the scores and films that is - to see what makes them tick or bleed. Maybe as we explore their anatomy AND our own we can discover a few things about what makes us scream.

About the Instructor:

Leslie Barcza is a musician and composer whose focus has been on music theatre and opera, as well as some scores for film. Leslie's academic study grew naturally out of his practical work, in research on the dramaturgy of opera and film. He maintains an arts and culture blog at barczablog.com.

* A 10% discount will be applied automatically at checkout for students who are enrolled concurrently in any of the following Royal Conservatory School music classes: Individual Instruction, Group Classes, Learn to Play/Sing, Small Ensemble, Theory and History.