3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

In this course we study the playwrights whose intellectual brilliance and moral passions created a revolution in traditional theater, unleashing energies that continue to drive theater a century later. We will read major plays of Ibsen, Chekhov, Pirandello, Shaw, Brecht, and O'Neill in the context of their social/historical settings to understand how shifting philosophical, cultural, and scientific views required new ways of staging human stories, prompting innovations in both subject matter and technical form. Because drama is primarily a performance art, we will spend time comparing versions of the ‘play on the page' with ‘the play on the stage.' Our alternate-weekly, extended-class format will afford us the opportunity to analyze scenes from distinguished theater performances that have been captured on film.