Course Description
Summary
A writer is a reader moved to imitation.
Appropriation, repurpose, pastiche, hybrid, sampling, remix, in conversation, mash up. Everyone knows that when you steal, steal from the best. When we write we may borrow the structure of a sonata, the plot from a story, the tang and tone of a novel, and characters from our own lives. Is everything we write adaptation?
We will look at Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, Amadeus by Peter Shaffer and its film adaptation, Ruined by Lynn Nottage and its inspiration Mother Courage, Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn and the episodes of The Simpsons used by the play, An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs Jenkins and The Octoroon by Dion Boucicault, Fat Ham by James IJames and Hamlet, and Huckleberry Finn and two parallel novels, Finn by Jon Clinch and James by Percival Everett.
We will adapt a myth, a poem, three inanimate objects, and a song. The final project for the class will be an adaptation of a short story into a play of 30 to 90 minutes.
