Course Description
Summary
This course offers an introduction to the history and development of world theater and drama. We will experience the dynamic pageant of theater history through an exploration of its conventions and aesthetics, as well as its social and cultural functions. We will study theater history from antiquity through the nineteenth century, reading representative plays ranging from Greek tragedy and classical Sanskrit drama; to an array of Japanese theatrical forms (Noh, Bunraku, and Kabuki); and through German Romanticism and American melodrama. Along the way, we will read key critical and theoretical texts illuminating the plays. The course encompasses not only the study of plays as dramatic texts, but also their contexts of theater architecture and stagecraft, performance conventions, debates of art and commerce, shifting relationships to the audience, and questions about expanding the canon. Through an interdisciplinary study of theater history, students will also learn to connect theatrical tradition to its contemporary practice.
