Fall Listings for Dramatic Literature
Core Course:
DRLIT-UA 110 6226 History of Drama and Theatre I T/R 11am-12:15pm Blake Although drama is possibly the oldest form of cultural expression, theater is a medium that exists entirely in the present tense: a theatrical performance is a live event, staged before a live audience, and therefore rooted in time and place. In its changing forms, its literature and its practices, however, the theater has a long and varied history. This course offers a broad survey of Western dramatic literature from the Classical to the Enlightenment period, and explores how those plays took their vitality from a specific historical moment and cultural context. Along with this focus on the changing nature and functions of the theater in the past, we will also be considering its present and active future: What is the place of local theater in a global world? How might past dramatic works preserve and educate us about our varied cultural heritages? What are the differences between religious and secular drama, or between community and commercial theater cultures? What valued or controversial place did the theater have in past cultures, and what place should it have in our own?
Before 1800:
DRLIT-UA 225 6228 Shakespeare I T/R 11:00-12:15 Archer In this survey of the first half of William Shakespeare’s career as a playwright we will consider the relation between the mingled genres of his plays (festive comedy, history, tragedy) and the social and political conditions that shaped his developing sense of dramatic form. Critical analysis of the plays as both performances and written works will form the fabric of this course; the connection of drama to its culture will be the lectures’ guiding thread. Excerpts from film, television and audio versions of the plays will be shown and discussed in class along with other visual materials. We will discuss ten great plays, including TheMerchant of Venice, As You Like It, 1 Henry IV, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar and Hamlet. The requirements include two essays, short writing assignments, a midterm exam, a final exam, and consistent attendance at both lectures and recitations.
DRLIT-UA 235 14244 Restoration and 18th Century Drama W 2:00-4:45 Blake
The reopening of theatres after a long hiatus in 1660, the emergence of female actors, and the renewed commitment to writing for the theatre provide the starting point for this course. The plays of Dryden, Aphra Behn (the first commercially successful female playwright of England), Wycherley, Congreve, Etherege, Otway, and Susana Centlivre are studied in the context of Restoration culture. Of special interest are topics such as spectatorship, public culture, censorship, propaganda, and antitheatricality. The survey of 18th-century British drama highlights the difference between ?laughing? and sentimental comedy, and includes the works of John Gay, Henry Fielding, Oliver Goldsmith, and R. B. Sheridan, among others. Textual analysis of plays is supplemented by available performance records and actor biographies.
Electives:
DRLIT-UA 101 14240 Introduction to Drama and Theatre R 3:30pm-6:10pm Mee
An introduction to the theatre: its practice, its power, and its place in the world. The main questions we will address this semester are: What is theatre? Why do we do it? What does theatre contribute to our society? What role does it/can it play in the world? In other words: why is theatre important? We will be concerned with the way performance both reflects and constitutes community and culture, and the numerous forms it takes around the world. We will also look at how we do it: what are the roles of the actor, director, playwright, and designer, and how do they work together? Introduction to Dramatic Literature is not a survey of theatre from the Greeks to the present. Instead, we use key texts in dramatic literature to examine the numerous ways and contexts in which theatre is performed, the numerous forms it takes, and its varying relationships to spectators.
DRLIT-UA 113 14243 Modern Drama M/W 12:30-1:45 Jarcho
Modern Drama: Confronting the Audience
“Modern art” has often been defined as art that interrogates the basic conditions of its medium. In this course, we’ll look at how playwrights and theorists of modern drama have dealt with one apparently fundamental aspect of theater: the audience. How do these writers anticipate the “built-in” fact of live reception by a group of physically present people? Do they celebrate, disavow, insult, attack, or otherwise activate our assembly? We’ll attend to the ways in which certain plays seem to represent the/an audience onstage, as well as the ways in which various formal qualities and experiments can be understood in relation to the audience. We’ll try to understand what is at stake, politically, aesthetically and philosophically, in the way works of theater address (or seem not to address) their audience. Readings will include plays by Henrik Ibsen, Georg Kaiser, Wyndham Lewis, Gertrude Stein, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, Peter Handke, and Suzan-Lori Parks, as well as theoretical work by Stein and Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Walter Benjamin, Michael Fried, Bert O. States, Erika Fischer-Lichte, and Jacques Rancière. We’ll also attend at least one theater production. Course requirements include three papers (a comparative analysis, a longer research paper, and a “phenomenological” response paper) and a final exam.
DRLIT-UA 130 6227 Theory of Drama T/R 3:30-4:45pm Osburn This course will examine dramatic theory from Aristotle to the present. A series of focused writing assignments will encourage a close reading of texts that trace an historical arc from theories of action on stage to “theory” in the contemporary sense. An historical focus on “drama” will be compared and contrasted with more recent theories of “performance”. The course aims to encourage participants to think theoretically rather than interpretively (while acknowledging that the two processes cannot be truly separated). Accordingly, the starting point in the class will be the theoretical readings themselves, rather than the play scripts that they purport to describe or explain.
Modern American Drama: American Drama and the American Dream
From Eugene O'Neill's transformation of the American theater in the twenties and thirties to the plays of August Wilson, Tony Kushner and other contemporary dramatists, American Drama has often embodied key social and political trends, including the ongoing fascination with the theme of the "American Dream." Other playwrights studied will include Clifford Odets, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Lorraine Hansberry, Suzan Lori-Parks and Sam Shepard
DRLIT-UA 270 15057 Contemporary French Theatre T 12:30-3:15 Bolduc
Study of the theatrical genre in France, including the golden-age playwrights (Corneille, Racine, Molière), 18th-century irony and sentiment, and the 19th-century theatrical revolution. Topics include theories of comedy and tragedy, the development of stagecraft, and romanticism and realism. Also, the theatre as a public genre, its relationship to taste and fashion, and its sociopolitical function.
DRLIT-UA 296 6233 Musical Theatre T/R 12:30-1:45 Nelson DRLIT-UA 300 6234 Drama in Performance T 2:00-4:45 Mee
This course will plunge you into the great variety of theatrical activity going on around us. During this semester we will submerge ourselves in the performances-- both theatrical and non-theatrical -- taking place in NYC and we will attempt to develop a useful vocabulary for discussing them. We will study “performance” as the dialectical relationship between dramatic texts and stage production, focusing on the interpretive decisions that are involved in the movement from the page to the stage. We will concentrate on the ways in which performance is a distinct, constitutive form of cultural production. In preparing to attend and in attending a range of performances and theatrical productions, we will engage many of the theoretical issues and practical questions raised in and by current performance activity and theory. As we do so, our classroom will become a stage and you will become players on it – critically attuned, actively curious and, ideally, surprised by what you discover hidden offstage and lurking behind the scenes. We will prepare for each show by reading and discussing the text of the play (if it is
available) and/or other related theoretical and visual material. We will follow each play with an in-class discussion of some of the major issues raised by the performance. STUDENTS MUST PAY THEATRE FEE OF $350.00, AND MUST BE AVAILABLE THURSDAY EVENINGS FOR THEATRE EVENTS.
DRLIT-UA 971.001 Topics: Hybrid Formations of Theatre and Literature R 3:30-6:10 Jerco Since its founding, Western literary theory has observed a fundamental divide between texts that imitate or “show” their subjects (mimesis) and those that narrate or “tell” them (diegesis). Although most literary works include both types of writing, the privileged example of mimesis has been the play; of diegesis, the epic poem—or, in the Modern age, the novel. In this class, we’ll consider a range of works that seem determined to overstep this kind of division, whether by making theatrical
presentation central to prose narratives, or by injecting narrative experiences into works for enactment onstage. What aesthetic opportunities do such mix-ups offer? Do these texts effectively challenge the classic divisions between mimesis and diegesis, stage and page—or do they court awkwardness and tension in ways that ultimately reaffirm the binary? And what might be the ethical or political stakes of an an artist’s decision to reach beyond the supposed limits of her medium? The course will begin by reviewing the concepts of mimesis and diegesis, epic and drama in ancient Greek thought and in contemporary critical adaptation. Subsequent topics will include the dramatic functions (and dysfunctions) of storytelling; Brecht’s idea of “literarization” and other uses of writing onstage; performativity and theatricality in writing; and theater as a shaping force in the modernist novel.
Authors will include Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, Henry James, Jean Toomer, James Joyce, Antonin Artaud, Samuel Beckett, Peter Szondi, Sam Shepard, Adrienne Kennedy, Jacques Derrida, Suzan-Lori Parks, Mac Wellman, Peggy Phelan, Martin Puchner, David Kurnick, Rebecca Schneider, and Elevator Repair Service.
DRLIT-UA 971.002 Topics: Making Art in the Anthropocene M 9:30-12:00 Chaudhuri “Either stop writing, or write like a rat!” In one of the most provocative texts in contemporary animal philosophy, the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari famously propose “becoming animal” as a liberating artistic practice. This workshop-cum-seminar will engage with key themes in recent “post-humanist” discourse by applying and testing them in our own creative practice. We will read recent theories of species, ecology, and matter (by writers like Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, Elizabeth Grosz, Jane Bennett, and Timothy Morton) and we will study a variety of literary, cinematic and visual art works that seem to resonate with key themes of that discourse (works like Wallace
Shawn’s Grasses of a Thousand Colors, Cesar Aira’s An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, Marina Zurkow’s “Slurb,” Marian Engel’s Bear, Robinson Devor’s Zoo). Our seminar-style investigations of these texts and artworks will regularly be applied in workshop sessions where we will use space, objects, movement, sound, imagery, and writing to explore the aesthetic implications of these theoretical ideas. A main interest of this course is to experiment with “creative research,” a way of doing intellectual work in which art-making is regarded as—and systematically used as—a mode of knowledge and inquiry, and in which ideas are developed by doing and makingas well as by thinking/writing/speaking. Prior artistic training/practice is welcomed but not required; however, all students must be willing to and interested in exploring their "inner artist."
Preference to CAS upperclassmen; if room permitting, course will open to all schools (upperclassmen only).
DRLIT-UA 971.003 Topics: The Ballad, Medieval and Early Modern Vitz There is a rich tradition of stories told in song throughout medieval and early modern Europe, from Scandinavia down to Iberia, from England and Scotland in the West to Greece (and beyond). This course focuses on high points from this tradition, which is full of fairies, trolls, and devils; knights (some of them outlandish) and strong women; love and adventure, violence and death. French, Spanish and Italian songs will receive special emphasis, along with the vibrant tradition from the British Isles. We will also examine the enduring appeal of the sung ballad in the modern period, in contemporary performances by major artists.
Cinema and Practical Theatre:
DRLIT-UA 294 16282 Traditional Drama of China and Japan W 3:30-6:10 TBA
The course compares a set of Chinese and Japanese pre-modern dramas, mainly as literature but also as performance, by exploring the contrasts and parallels of incident, character, plot design, and theme of the two theatrical traditions. Attention is given to the historical background of each work and to the social conditions and customs that each reflects. The cultural salience of each work is also considered. Where possible and appropriate scenes or entire plays are screened for the class or assigned for viewing.
DRLIT-UA 303 Japanese Cinema: Theory and History M 3:30-4:45, F 11:00-3:15 Kaffen Examines key theoretical and methodological issues in the study of Japanese cinema, such as the connections between Japanese films and cultural traditions, the effect of Americanization and modernization, the formation of national identity and specificity, and the otherness of Japanese cinematic form.
DRLIT-UA 503 Italian Films, Italian Histories I T/R 12:30-3:15 Albertini
Studies representation of Italian history through the medium of film from ancient Rome through the Risorgimento. Issues to be covered throughout include the use of filmic history as a means of forging national identity.
DRLIT-UA 504 6235 Cinema and Literature W 2:00-4:45 Wolf
Exposes the student to various modes, such as expressionism, social realism, and the projection of the hero. One film is viewed per week and analyzed with reading assignments that include novels, plays, and poems. The objective is to exploit the potentiality of different media and to make vivid and intellectual the climate of Europe on which these media so often focus.
DRLIT-UA 643 6237 Directing F 11:45-2:20 TBA
Elements of play scripts are analyzed and dramatized. Students may cast and rehearse brief scenes performed on Friday afternoons.
DRLIT-UA 649 6238 Fundamentals of Acting T/R 9:00-11:00 Michaels An introduction to the central tools and skills that make up the actor?s art and craft. Through theatre games, structured improvisation, and beginning scene work, students exercise their imaginations, learn how to work as an ensemble, and develop a sense of their bodies as expressive instruments. All
techniques covered have been developed by the most celebrated 20th-century theorists, such as Stanislavski, Grotowski, and Bogart, and are the same theories that underlie the training of the Tisch undergraduate acting conservatory. No prior experience necessary.
DRLIT-UA 649 6239 Fundamentals of Acting T/R 11:00-1:00 Michaels
Same as above
DRLIT-UA 878 8644 History of French Cinema R 12:30-3:15 Cortade DRLIT-UA 971.001 Topics: Hybrid Formations of Theatre R 3:30-6:10 Jarcho Since its founding, Western literary theory has observed a fundamental divide between texts that imitate or “show” their subjects (mimesis) and those that narrate or “tell” them (diegesis). Although most literary works include both types of writing, the privileged example of mimesis has been the play; of diegesis, the epic poem—or, in the Modern age, the novel. In this class, we’ll consider a range of works that seem determined to overstep this kind of division, whether by making theatrical
presentation central to prose narratives, or by injecting narrative experiences into works for enactment onstage. What aesthetic opportunities do such mix-ups offer? Do these texts effectively challenge the classic divisions between mimesis and diegesis, stage and page—or do they court awkwardness and tension in ways that ultimately reaffirm the binary? And what might be the ethical or political stakes of an an artist’s decision to reach beyond the supposed limits of her medium? The course will begin by
reviewing the concepts of mimesis and diegesis, epic and drama in ancient Greek thought and in contemporary critical adaptation. Subsequent topics will include the dramatic functions (and dysfunctions) of storytelling; Brecht’s idea of “literarization” and other uses of writing onstage; performativity and theatricality in writing; and theater as a shaping force in the modernist novel. Authors will include Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, Henry James, Jean Toomer, James Joyce, Antonin Artaud, Samuel Beckett, Peter Szondi, Sam Shepard, Adrienne Kennedy, Jacques Derrida, Suzan-Lori Parks, Peggy Phelan, Martin Puchner, David Kurnick, Rebecca Schneider, and Elevator Repair Service.
DRLIT-UA 971.002 Topics: Making Art in the Anthropocene M 9:30-12:00 Chaudhuri “Either stop writing, or write like a rat!” In one of the most provocative texts in contemporary animal philosophy, the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari famously propose “becoming animal” as a liberating artistic practice. This workshop-cum-seminar will engage with key themes in recent “post-humanist” discourse by applying and testing them in our own creative practice. We will read recent theories of species, ecology, and matter (by writers like Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, Elizabeth Grosz, Jane Bennett, and Timothy Morton) and we will study a variety of literary, cinematic and visual art works that seem to resonate with key themes of that discourse (works like Wallace
Shawn’s Grasses of a Thousand Colors, Cesar Aira’s An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, Marina Zurkow’s “Slurb,” Marian Engel’s Bear, Robinson Devor’s Zoo). Our seminar-style investigations of these texts and artworks will regularly be applied in workshop sessions where we will use space, objects, movement, sound, imagery, and writing to explore the aesthetic implications of these theoretical ideas. A main interest of this course is to experiment with “creative research,” a way of doing intellectual work in which art-making is regarded as—and systematically used as—a mode of knowledge and inquiry, and in which ideas are developed by doing and makingas well as by thinking/writing/speaking. Prior artistic training/practice is welcomed but not required; however, all students must be willing to and interested in exploring their "inner artist."
Preference to CAS upperclassmen; if room permitting, course will open to all schools (upperclassmen only).
