English: Introduction to Drama

Study of the play as a work of literature and as a dramatic experience. Continental, British, and American drama from all ages.

Open to Degree and PACE students

In this class we survey dramatic literature across a range of time periods, theatrical movements, and geographic locations. With a keen ear to the call and response between historical and modern plays, we explore issues of theatre history, dramatic form, genre, and language. As we investigate the function of world building in the theatre, we notice how drama operates as a blueprint – always attempting to map out what it means to be human across time and space. In our reading, conversations between playwrights are gleaned across centuries indicating the ways that the best writers are always prolific readers. A sample of plays we will explore include Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (429 BCE) alongside Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1955); the medieval morality play Everyman (ca. 1510) and Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’ Everybody (2017); Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1604-5), and James Ijames’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Fat Ham (2022); Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) with Lynn Nottage’s By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2013); and Brian Friel’s Translations (1980) and Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, English (2021).

Grading & Assignments Class Participation (10%) This includes your attendance, support and participation in class discussion, your involvement in small group presentations, and your completion of assigned reading. You must come to class having completed the assigned reading and be prepared to discuss it. Quizzes (10 @ 3%) reading & comprehension of primary plays (30%) Small Group Class Presentation 3-4 students lead discussion on play +critical essay (10%) Response Papers (2 @ 5%) (10%) Midterm – take home essay - 1000 words (20%) Comparative Dramaturgy Group Presentations: Test of dramaturgical skills development and execution (20%)