This course asks students to take up feminism (and its numerous intersections) as a method for theatrical presentation and composition, rather than merely a question of representation. We will not only interrogate the criteria by which a performance is deemed “feminist” but will also identify, analyze, and put into practice specific strategies and techniques for staging feminist questions and provocations onstage. Such techniques may range from erasure, to saturation, to fabulation, to distortion—a list that we will build upon as throughout our course. We will apply critical texts across feminist philosophy, critical race studies, and queer theory (including Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Iris Marion Young, and Audre Lorde among others) and analyze how these approaches to feminism are taken up by playwrights, performance artists, and dancers (including Caryl Churchill, Suzan-Lori Parks, Yoko Ono, and Narcissister among others).
- Instructor of record: Marissa Fenley
- Instructor of record: Amy Radbill
- Instructor of record: Justin McDaniel
- Instructor of record: Amy Radbill
- Other editing teacher: Liv Raddatz
- Instructor of record: Maiko Matsushima
- Instructor of record: Maiko Matsushima
- Instructor of record: Justin McDaniel
- Instructor of record: Jennifer Kidwell
- Instructor of record: Catharine Slusar
- Instructor of record: Jennifer Kidwell
- Instructor of record: Katherine Fritz
- Instructor of record: Maiko Matsushima
- Instructor of record: Jennifer Kidwell
- Instructor of record: Justin McDaniel
- Instructor of record: Catharine Slusar
This course offers an introduction to a number of significant dramatic works and seminal figures in the theorization of theater and performance. But the course's aspirations go further: we will concentrate on the intersection of interpretation and enactment, asking how these texts appear on stage and why. This is not merely descriptive work, but interpretive and physical work. We will spend a great deal of time and attention working on constructing a “performance analysis.” While theater has many aims—to move, to entertain, to produce meanings—we will be focusing on the latter. You will be challenged to engage theater on a conceptual level and ask: what thoughts does this particular production enable us to think that we wouldn’t have thought otherwise? We will be approaching theatrical texts and performances analytically, rather than from a place of aesthetic judgement (I liked it/didn’t like it) or your personal, emotional connection to the subject matter (I identified with a character’s experience) although both may provide entry points into analysis.
- Instructor of record: Marissa Fenley