COMP 104
Introduction to World Theatre and Performance Fall 2009
Division I Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed THEA 104
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

This introductory survey course will explore a selection of dramatic and performance traditions from around the globe, focusing on the foundations of theatrical collaboration: audience, actor, playwright, director, designer, and producer. Organized chronologically and historically, the course will consider the development of theatre from antiquity to the mid-nineteenth century, providing a foundation for future study of modern and postmodern performance. What is the nature of dramatic representation and what forms has it taken historically? What roles does theatre play in the establishment and growth of culture? Topics addressed may include: West African masquerade, Greek and Roman drama, Medieval and Renaissance English theatre, Spanish Golden Age drama, French comedy and vaudeville, Japanese Noh and Kabuki theatre, Indian Sanskrit drama, and American melodrama. Texts may include: Sophocles’ Oedipus T. Rex, Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Plautus’ Pseudolus, Shudraka’s The Little Clay Cart, Zeami’s Atsumori, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Calderon’s Life is a Dream, Molière’s Tartuffe, Behn’s The Rover, Racine’s Phaedra, Sheridan’s School for Scandal, Goethe’s Faust, and Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Some interpretive methods will be applied when relevant, derived from contemporary gender, sexuality, visual cultural, and postcolonial theory. Films and other media will be included to enhance our understanding of how theatre is made and for what purposes. This course meets the criteria of the Exploring Diversity Initiative as it both engages in a cross-cultural investigation of performance and explores how theatre is deeply embedded in political power relations.
The Class: Format: lecture/seminar
Limit: 20
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: midterm and final exam; one 5-page paper; in-class writing and discussion; all students enrolled in the course are required to attend the fall departmental theatre production
Prerequisites: none
Unit Notes: this course is a requirement for and is suggested as an introduction to the major in Theatre
Distributions: Division I Exploring Diversity Initiative
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
THEA 104 Division I COMP 104 Division I
Attributes: PERF Interdepartmental Electives

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