Class Overview

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.

• Students will familiarize themselves with the methods for analyzing, comprehending, and appreciating works of dramatic art.
• Students will gain familiarity with theatrical canon and the history of theatrical form
• Students will learn to identify theatrical language and understand how this language signifies onstage.
• Students will engage in embodied explorations of dramatic literature and theories of performance.
• Students will draw meaningful ideas from central texts of dramatic literature and performance through analysis, physical interpretations, and play.
• Students will be able to construct a formal “performance analysis” that builds upon the above learning objectives.

We will read several plays that touch on difficult topics—topics to which you all will have individual relationships and responses. I welcome you to share your personal orientations to these works and topics and use these as points of entry into the material, as is comfortable for you. We will also hold a certain intellectual distance from these topics—we will contextualize, historicize, and analyze their wider social, historical, and cultural impacts beyond the personal. I expect each of you to navigate this dance to the best of your ability and be thoughtful and gentle in your approaches.