ENGL 411
Staging Identities: Selfhood, Theatricality and Performance in Twentieth Century Drama Spring 2010
Division I
Cross-listed THEA 411 / ENGL 411
This is not the current course catalog

The construction of selfhood is always to some extent a performative act–“All the world’s a stage /And all the men and women merely players” as Shakespeare’s Jacques famously remarks. And that performance is inherently dual, since constituted both for the audience of the wider social world and for the `self’ who seeks to act. Drama as a genre, with its constant negotiation of the competing claims of illusion and the operations of reality, has invariably been centrally interested in the exploration of social identity, in the tensions between public and private selfhood, and in the functions of ‘performance’. In this course we will examine theatre’s response to the challenge of self- fashioning in the modern era, and consider the wider ontological status of performance as a category within the context of twentieth century drama and theatrical staging. Readings will include plays by Chekhov, Pirandello, Beckett, Churchill, Pinter, Walcott, Mamet, Stoppard, Lori-Parks, Friel and others, along with selected criticism, theory, and psychoanalytical writings.