Classroom magic
This fall Diane Paulus ’88 was back in a class stirring up a little magic. The artistic director of the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), whose circus-inspired revival of the musical “Pippin” nabbed four Tony awards in June, co-taught the freshman seminar “Theater and Magic” with Shakespeare expert Marjorie Garber. The group gathered Tuesdays at the Mahindra Humanities Center to explore the English Renaissance, contemporary theater, and magic on the modern stage. “Both the pleasure of theatricality and its dangers have long been linked to ideas about the power of the magus, the witch, the wizard, and the arts of illusion,” read the seminar’s online syllabus. It was the third time Garber and Paulus tied a course to a production at the A.R.T. — this spring the theater will stage a magic-infused version of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” — but the first time they joined forces for a freshman seminar, a small, discussion-driven class that...