In this required two semester capstone sequence, you will prepare yourself to assume challenging roles in which performative practice can be applied to a variety of positions inside the theater field and beyond it. As is consistent with a culminating experience, the two courses will draw upon and test technique, skills and learning developed in previous courses - work in Foundations courses, Writing, Aesthetic Inquiry, History of Theater, Collaborative Research Studio, Collaborative Theater Practices among others – and in Performance. Students will engage in The Ancestor Project, a yearlong Devised Theatre Directed Research class devoted to the exploration of each student’s deep dive into the life of an ancestor. Familiar enough to research, but distant enough that the ancestor would be someone the student has never met. The project’s building blocks will be the stories, lives, and unpacked surprises found in learning about a specific ancestor. Binding us together- the journey each student takes to find a chosen ancestor. The culmination of the project will reveal itself in the walk history has taken through our individual connection to our ancestry, in moments our collective connections, and how that has most specifically landed us right here, right now. To take a step further we will ask how those steps are contributing or not contributing to the greater national conversation.