3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

This course emphasizes powerful new trends within the American theatre, which bring together an important circle of playwrights, directors and theorists, who are shaping the future of the American stage: artists and thinkers who have long been confined to “off-Broadway,” but are increasingly becoming Obie winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, and are the new American theatre artists most in demand internationally. Increasingly the narratives of African American, Latino and LGBT playwrights a shifted the landscape of American Theatre. The emergence of new forms and styles in the theatre performance require new approaches to directing and acting, and are usually linked up with new theories of art. We will touch on the new approaches to directing the new works for the stage, and the theory and practice of the “new trend.” We will study these plays as “presecriptions” for widely differing sorts of performances, looking into them for both the new forms and the new content of current drama. To this end, we will view footage from various productions, including: Suzan Lori Parks: Topdog/Underdog; Sam Shepard: A Lie of the Mind; Sarah Ruhl: The Clean House; Jose Rivera: Marisol; Maria Irene Fornes: The Danube; Charles L. Mee: Big Love; John Patrick Shanley: Doubt; Tony Kushner: Homebody Kabul; Katori Hall, The Mountaintop; August Wilson, The Piano Lesson. We will conclude with a look an examination of the importance of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton.