Arts

Acting 1

This course, for ninth graders only, offers basic training: body awareness, relaxation, and development of story and monologue. The techniques we use, from the LeCoq School in Paris, are steeped in the physical style of theatre. In acting, your body is your tool—gestures say so much! We use mask training to awaken your body skills: How do I stand and walk? Who am I? Where is my weight? With your most expressive element—your face—covered, you develop your weaker tool—your body—and build physical courage, grace, and ease. Using minimal tools, you will learn to convey emotions, content, and the physical universe around you.

I have a really strong sense of movement and my own body and the power of movement when I'm building a character.

Acting Advanced (Acting 2, 3, 4)

The next three years of acting are open to a blend of sophomores, juniors, and seniors. We investigate classical and contemporary drama, tragedy, comedy, Shakespeare, Chekhov, and original scenes. Continuing body awareness exercises, we study style and different worlds—the worlds of dream, combat, confrontation, clowning, and commedia dell’arte, a form of Italian masked improvisation. You cultivate voice, grace, timing, rhythm, and responsiveness to an audience. In addition, if part of class is doing, an equal part is watching—heightening your awareness of one another’s work and giving feedback. You develop an eye for directing: within classes and performances, advanced students often lead warm-ups and actor training.

One of the best times for me was the day I directed a scene from scratch by myself—the only scene where Liz’s character let loose and got angry. It was a vital scene for the character to win sympathy, and the way Liz ultimately played it, I knew, came in large part from my direction. This was thrilling for me.

Check out some recent acting performances on our YouTube page.

You’re guided by demonstrations and literal hands-on individual instruction as we study and experiment with the properties of clay. We have eight wheels in the studio, along with ample table space and elbow room for our small classes. Throwing may look easy, but your first pot may well end up looking like a mushy Frisbee. Don’t be discouraged! With concentration and practice, you will end up making bowls, plates, and perhaps a teapot that you will be proud of.

You can make such functional items, of course, but you may be tempted to try sculpture. Once your work is bisque fired, you will learn to decorate the surface using oxides, engobe, or glaze pencils. Glazes offer a complicated but fascinating opportunity to investigate texture and color.

It astonished me to see how many uses people can find for the materials in the studio. One of my friends modeled a circuit in clay to explain a physics problem he was thinking about. Another hand-built an elephant. Other kids in the class made pots, pitchers, teapots, and ramen bowls. Someone made a bathtub!

This forty-five-voice choir welcomes all students and teachers. Our eclectic repertoire ranges from Bach to gospel. Although the ability to read music is not necessary to join, you must love music and be open to taking risks and putting in your full effort. You learn vocal technique and musicianship skills: how to breathe, to listen critically, to manipulate different languages, to sing phrases—not just notes—and how to work responsibly as part of a larger whole. We have many opportunities for performance; in our fall and spring concerts we perform with the orchestra, student soloists, and the occasional guest professional musician.

Mr. Hodgkins [the music director] holds the chorus and orchestra to the same professional standard he maintains for his adult choirs. It’s incredible how far this allows the performance ensembles to get with pieces that many of us initially think are over our heads.

Check out some recent performances on our YouTube page.

A twelve- to fifteen-voice auditioned group. We focus on expressive and precise performances primarily of a cappella works from the Renaissance to the present day, including cantatas, motets, madrigals, and jazz. These different styles require an exacting sense of pitch as well as vocal prowess, a keen ear, and advanced musical maturity. The ensemble comes to sing and breathe as one, while you each develop the poise and independence necessary to perform collectively before an audience.

Looking out into the crowd, I wonder: ‘Who are all these people? What does the music mean to them? If each of our brains hears, or at least interprets music differently, then how amazing is it that we can gather together to enjoy it!’

Check out some recent performances on our YouTube page.

A Haydn string quartet, a Rachmaninoff sonata for cello and piano, a wind quintet—music making doesn’t get more intense and intimate than it does in these forms, where you are responsible not only for a demanding part of your own but also to a tightly knit ensemble. Matched with other students at your level, and based on your interests, you work toward performing a piece that pushes you to grow as a musician.

My interest in chamber music spilled over into Project Week, when I worked with a classmate to compose a duet for piano and cello. A duet turned out to be the right choice, as it was essential to be able to hear the music as it would sound on the instruments through every step of the composition process. Even though in the end, my friend would have liked a more minimalist piece, while I wanted more of a real melody and climax, we were both proud of what we had written, practiced, and performed.

Check out some recent performances on our YouTube page.

Drawing and Painting 1

As an observer and a draftsman in this class, you learn to articulate your goals as a picture maker. How do you go about achieving them? You develop technical skills, of course, and learn to use a variety of media effectively and expressively. Many of you will start the year with still-life arrangements, using pencil and dry media. Soon you will be choosing your own subjects and deciding on the length of your projects. By late fall or winter, most of you will be working with paint, studying color mixing and color relationships. Through both close looking and discussion of your compositions, you’ll become aware of the different ways you, personally, respond to visual stimuli. You work hard; your confidence builds; your artistic vision broadens; you tackle work of increasing complexity. You develop your own style.

I am concentrating purely on the physical part of what the difference is between what I see with my eyes and what I see on the paper. I think I should try less to copy but more to ‘describe’ the image that my eye sees. I want my drawing to be a suggestion of an actual object and to look at it as only tones, values, and colors. Then I’ll fill in the rest by drawing it the way I think it should be.

Drawing and Painting Advanced

Having established a strong base of skills—both technical and observational—you are ready to take artistic risks and enter untested ground. In drawing, that might mean a life-size self- portrait rendered in pastel on toned paper—a work where color relationship is as important to you as the features of the face. In painting you might undertake a vision of a magical landscape described in detail in a book you love. There are no limits. If an idea is worth exploring, you will get the time, materials, and support you need to see it through.

Paint and palette knife allow me to become fully immersed in what I create in a process that is wholly physical. Sometimes I can work so intensely that I don’t see the entire effect until I pull myself out of and away from my painting. But this is all pure joy to me. When I paint I feel I’m working without effort.

Open to all instruments, vocalists, and levels of skill. Learning and practicing leads us to a spirited concert in the spring. We play material drawn from all decades of jazz, including compositions by Duke Ellington, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, and John Scofield, to name a few. We also, of course, choose material based on how many of us there are in any given year and what instruments we play. Jazz ensemble members should be able to read music, although pieces are also taught by ear. Participation in the jazz theory classes is recommended but not required.

I’m amazed at [Jazz band director] Mark White's ability to assemble a jumble of instruments and distinctly Commonwealthian personalities into a functioning band. This weird, miraculous hodgepodge places serious-minded jazz players alongside bassoonists, metal drummers, and classically trained pianists, and somehow it all hangs together. For many students, the jazz program is a first taste of the joys of collaborative music making, of the trust and enthusiasm and exchange of ideas that form an improvising band.

Music Theory 1 and 2

We study notation, music history, rhythm, pitch, and intervals. You’ll do formal analysis and four-part writing, including secondary dominants and modulation. Heavy emphasis on ear training and solfège teaches you to listen. Music, like any language, is a system; understanding how it’s put together helps you comprehend—analytically and therefore more pleasurably—any kind of music and notice correspondences between different styles of music. In the second year, we deepen our structural and formal analysis of music and do more sophisticated ear training and composition exercises. Often students are ready to take the music theory AP by the conclusion of this course. All members of both classes must also join either orchestra or chorus.

If you’re interested in theory, the level of your musical background doesn’t matter. The program here can take people at any level and bring their theory to an AP level in just two years.

Music Theory 3

AP 

We study scores intensively—especially those from the classical symphonic literature. You may also study conducting. All members of the class must also join either orchestra or chorus.

All of us had already spent time in previous classes studying the smaller musical forms—their minutiae. Now we could move on to consider them in a larger context: how all those tiny details can add up to a glorious whole, like a delicate Mozart symphony or a grand Bach chorale.

Music Theory Advanced: Seminar in Conducting and Advanced Theory

This course is for those of you who have completed the school’s music-theory sequence and have scored a minimum of 4 on the music theory AP exam. We study basic and complex beat patterns and independence of hand gestures as we continue with advanced ear training and score analysis. You will discover ways to use physical gestures to mold individual phrases and to weave them into a unified whole. The goal is for you to learn the skills that will enable you to conduct the chorus or the orchestra during a rehearsal or performance in the spring.

The music program at Commonwealth is amazingly accommodating. Our teacher created a year-long conducting course for just three of us.

Independent Seminar

In extraordinary cases, by permission of the teacher and the faculty, independent study seminars are given in conducting, solfège, analysis, etc.

A small chamber orchestra whose overarching goal for players of varying experience and ability is to create a cohesive and musically expressive ensemble. You study classical music from the baroque to the contemporary era. In the fall, we prepare a major piece, such as the Vivaldi Gloria or a Bach cantata, to perform in collaboration with the Chorus. In the spring we undertake a broader range of works. Our orchestra has premiered five student compositions over the last nine years. With teamwork, intensive rehearsing, and dedicated individual preparation, you will grow individually as a musician and be an integral part of a larger experience that is uniquely rewarding for performers and audience alike.

Check out some recent performances on our YouTube page.

A strong case can be made that everyone should learn to draw the human figure. For the eager draftsman, regardless of experience, there is no more compelling subject. You draw from a nude model for a double period each week, choosing from among a wide variety of dry media (pencil, charcoal, chalk, Conté crayon, and more). Throughout the year, as you learn to pay meticulous attention to anatomical relationships, proportion, gesture, and light, you will come to develop your own style. A separate period once a week is devoted to anatomy: you study and sketch different sections of a skeleton. This class has no prerequisite other than a lively interest in drawing, hard-to-satisfy curiosity, and the willingness to work hard.

In that sunny fourth-floor studio, I learned to draw, I learned to talk, and I learned to think about art.

Beginning Photography

We start with traditional film-based photography—the basic functions of a 35mm manual camera, how to use its settings creatively, and how to develop your black-and-white film in the darkroom. Your efforts there teach you to recognize and produce prints with good tonal range, strong compositions, and expressive qualities. We take time as well to learn how to bleach and tone prints. It’s important to develop an observant eye and be able to make a well-crafted print first, so that you can judiciously navigate the overload of artistic choices that digital photography and Photoshop will dangle so enticingly in front of you next year. During second semester, you create your own pinhole camera, making your exposures on paper negatives. These we scan and use to introduce you to Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. Over the year, through books and the Internet, you gain a quick history of photography as we study the work of a range of photographers. All along the way, you are invited to share and discuss your prints.

Our teacher would examine each shot and tell me what spoke to him and what did not. By showing me how particular photographs were expressive, he allowed me to discover what well-composed images have in common. This way, any developments in my style were organic and uniquely mine.

Advanced Photography

You now have many photographic choices—from continuing to refine black-and-white darkroom procedures to exploring the many aspects of digital photography with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. You finally get your hands on digital imaging software, scanners, and large-format printers. You can also work with alternative printing techniques, including cyanotype, Van Dyke Brown, Polaroid transfers, and photo etching. As you make the acquaintance of the wide variety of approaches to photography, and as you experiment with them, you will define your own photographic interests and vision.

Taking pictures of strangers outside, you have to be quick, and often the image doesn’t come out the way you’d expect. But that’s part of the fun. In one of my shots, a woman sitting outside a deli with her kids and dog caught me as I was stealthily trying to photograph them. I feel sort of sheepish when I see her staring accusingly at me, but at the same time, I think her gaze and protective position are what make the photograph work.

Beginning Printmaking

From the outset, we combine observation and hands-on work. We study both traditional and contemporary printmaking methods, examining a wide selection of master prints created through the centuries. At the same time, you familiarize yourself with the requisite tools as you make monoprints, linoleum cuts (both monochromatic and color), and intaglio prints. You get to try out and discover your favorites among a number of techniques: line etching, aquatint, soft ground, spit biting and open biting, hand coloring, and collograph. While you work and experiment, you concentrate on refining your drawing and composition skills. You’ll soon find yourself developing your own visual vocabulary.

We started off with simple monoprints, learning the different textures we could get simply by pressing paper against ink in various ways. After printing successfully in one technique, we graduated to the next. In this way, we made linoleum cuts, drypoint prints, and, eventually, etchings. Printmaking is a slow process. I’m the kind of person who likes to do things quickly, so printmaking proved to be a much-needed lesson in the worth of slowing down and planning things out thoroughly.

Advanced Printmaking

After you’ve learned your way comfortably around the print studio, you’re ready to explore in greater depth the techniques that intrigue you the most. We also now begin to see what happens when you combine techniques. We try mixing traditional and modern (or unconventional) approaches and incorporating innovative elements into the prints we create. You learn as well to manipulate computer imaging software, scanners, printers, and photo etching techniques. The unexpected is always welcome in the print room!

[My teacher] never let me rest on my laurels. He told me where I could make a print better, but he also, always, told me what he loved about it. I never once felt discouraged. I could throw myself into something that mattered to no one but me.

What gives rise to color at an atomic scale? How do the form and finish of an object alter our perception of it? What happens to clay when it goes into the kiln? What is clay? What is happening when we make a photograph? How does the atomic-level structure and reactivity of an adhesive give rise to its properties? Art and science may be related, but there are fundamental differences about how information is gathered and presented—Pablo Picasso once said, "We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies." In contrast, Richard Feynman asserts, "The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific 'truth.'" This interdisciplinary class will explore how closely related the artistic and scientific processes are, and the power they have to catalyze one another. Themes such as color, perception, and empiricism will guide our study of materials and methods throughout the year. Each unit will focus on a particular set of materials and techniques, which could include clay, glaze, plaster, polymers, cement, pigments, electroplating, and crystal growing. We will apply the scientific method rigorously to develop, refine, and optimize artistic techniques, and we will create art. This class will push your aesthetic sense and challenge your analytical thinking.

A sculpture can be made from anything and everything, and in this class, we will revel in this fact. You’ll begin by exploring a variety of materials such as wood, cardboard, glass, clay, and found objects. As the class becomes versed in these new materials, you will begin to consider how to incorporate your ideas into the work that you are making. Your choices will be many, as a sculpture can be as representational or abstract as you choose. You will learn different strategies to generate ideas, and as the year goes on, you will begin to design projects and create the art you envision. By year’s end, you will have experimented, delved, and created in three dimensions.