From 'The Mikado' to 'Moulin Rouge' students sing praises of musicals course

Tamsen Wolff stands on the stage in McCosh 10 and, in a conversational tone, discusses the relationship between race and performance in "Showboat," using exaggerated hand gestures to explain important points.

In a lecture for ENG 347: The Curious Aesthetics of Musical Theatre, she cues an assistant to play a scene from "Showboat" to expand on her point. She frequently comes out from behind the podium to get closer to her audience and to visually mark out the set design on the stage.

Like a historian, she explains subtle significances of the words in the script, songs and film versions of the work.

During one lecture, she stopped lecturing to ask a coughing student — whom she knew by name — if she was okay and if she needed a drink of water.

In only her second year as an assistant professor at the University, Wolff is quickly rising through the ranks of the English department, just this week being named head of Program V, the section of students that focuses on literature and drama.

She is getting rave reviews for her course on musical theater. For the first year of this course, 240 students and 50 auditors are packing the lecture hall each Monday and Wednesday to listen to her insights.

"I had no idea that there would be this kind of a response to the class and that such a wide variety of students would enroll," Wolff said in an interview Tuesday. "It is not strictly a theater kind of crowd."

The upper-level course ended up attracting students from a spectrum of majors, including a large number of engineers.

"If you are going to take an English class, you might as well take something fun," said Un Jeoung Lee '05, an operations research and financial engineering major.

The syllabus for the course includes readings of "West Side Story," "Oklahoma!" and "My Fair Lady." It also includes works from the 21st Century, such as "Moulin Rouge" and a musical episode of "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer."

As a requirement for the course, students must attend a musical theater production and write a review of it. Students are also required to listen to each musical's score.

What sets this course apart from others is the personal attention Wolff gives to her students in this large lecture setting.

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"Professor Wolff is exceptional. She is so in tune with her students," said Ashley Frankson '03, who is enrolled in the musical theater class and also has Wolff as her senior thesis adviser. "She really cares that people are listening to and understanding the lecture."

Last year, Frankson took ENG 356: Contemporary Drama with Wolff. Within the first two weeks of lecture, Wolff managed to learn the names of all 60 students in the class, Frankson said.

Wolff said that while she would prefer a smaller class size, she is "enjoying this experience a lot."

In the spring, she will be teaching a freshman seminar on documentary theater and film and a revamped version of English 203: Public Speaking.

Wolff graduated from Smith College and earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University. She has worked as a professional director for contemporary theater productions.

She will be on leave next year, during which time she plans to direct a new play by Colin Denby Swanson and work on her book, titled "Mendel's Theatre: Performance, Eugenics and Early Twentieth-Century American Drama."