Theatre Arts 140
TOPICS IN THEATRE
HISTORY:
POPULAR COMIC
THEATRES
Professor Mazer
Spring 2002
519 Annenberg Center, 3-2659; cmazer@english.upenn.edu
Office Hours:
Tuesdays: 1:30-3:00; Thursdays: 10:30-11:45; and by appointment
January 8:
Introduction.
January 10: Commedia
dell’Arte: Background:
Reading: John Rudlin, Commedia dell’Arte: An Actor’s Handbook, pp.13-33; documents in Kenneth Richards
and Laura Richards, The Commedia dell’Arte:
A Documentary History, pp. 19-31 (bulk-pack).
January 15: Commedia
dell’Arte: the Stock Characters:
Reading: Rudlin, pp. 67-154.
January 17: Commedia
dell’Arte: Masks:
Reading: E.T. Kirby, “The Mask:
Abstract Theatre, Primitive and Modern” (bulk-pack); Richard Schechner, Between
Theatre and Anthropology, “Performers and Spectators Transported and
Transformed,” pp. 117-150; Rudlin, pp.
34-47.
January 22: Commedia
dell’Arte: Companies, Patronage, and
Audiences:
Reading: John Rudlin and Olly Crick, “Commedia dell-arte all’improvisso,”
in Commedia dell’Arte: a Handbook
for Troupes, pp. 1-49 (bulkpack)
January 25: Commedia
dell’Arte: Improvisation, Lazzi, and
Scenarios:
Reading: Rudlin, pp. 48-63; scenario for Pulcinella, The False Prince
(bulkpack).
PREPARED STAGING: ___________.
January 29: The
Commedia in France in the Seventeenth Century:
Reading: Virginia Scott, The Commedia dell’Arte in Paris, 1644-1697,
pp. 81-152 (bulk-pack); Molière, Scapin
(bulkpack).
PREPARED STAGING: ___________.
January 31: Italian
Commedia Transformed:
Reading: Carlo Goldoni, The Venetian Twins (bulkpack).
PREPARED STAGING: ___________.
February 5: Italian
Commedia Restored:
Reading: Carlo Gozzi, The Green Bird (bulkpack).
PREPARED STAGING: ___________.
[APPROXIMATE DUE DATE:
FIRST TAKE-HOME ASSIGNMENT]
February 7:
Eighteenth-Century England:
Political Comedy:
Reading: Henry Fielding, The Historical Register for the Year 1736
(bulkpack).
PREPARED STAGING: ___________.
February 12: Regency
England: the Harlequinade:
Reading: David
Mayer, Harlequin in His Element: The
English Pantomime, 1806-1836, pp. 19-74 (bulk-pack); Thomas John Pitt
Dibdin, Harlequin in His Element (multiple texts) and Harlequin
Harper (bulkpack).
PREPARED STAGING: ___________.
February 14: Comedy
and French Romanticism:
Reading: Robert F. Storey, Pierrot:
A Critical History of a Mask, pp. 93-138 (bulk-pack).
February 19: Comedy
and French Romanticism (cont.):
Film Screening: Marcel Carné, Children of Paradise
(to be arranged, either on video, or to be narrow-cast on RESNET).
February 21:
Victorian British Entertainments:
One-Act Farce:
Reading: Joseph Stirling Coyne, How to Settle Accounts with Your
Laundress (bulkpack); John Maddison Morton, Cox and Box (bulkpack).
PREPARED STAGING: ___________.
[REQUIRED THEATREGOING:
Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro, Theater Arts Program,
Studio Theatre, Feb. 21-23, March 1,2]
February 26:
Victorian British Entertainments:
Christmas Pantomime:
Reading: David Mayer, “The Sexuality of Pantomime” (bulkpack); Michael
Booth, Victorian Spectacular Theatre, 1850-1910, pp. 74-92, 161-171
(bulk-pack).
February 28:
Victorian British Entertainments:
Travesty, Burlesque, and Extravaganza:
Reading:
James Robinson Planché, Beauty and the Beast (bulkpack); H.J.
Byron, The Gaiety Gulliver (bulkpack).
PREPARED STAGING: ___________.
March 5: Victorian
British Entertainments: Operetta:
Listening Assignment: W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, Patience
(recording with full dialogue, on reserve in the Music listening room, 5th
Floor Van Pelt Library).
March 7: Victorian
British Entertainments: Music Hall:
Reading:
Dagmar Kift, “History” and “The Music-Hall Programme” (bulkpack), Peter
Bailey, “Custom, Capital, and Culture in the Victorian Music Hall” (bulkpack).
[Spring Break]
March 19: Victorian
British Entertainments: Theatre and
Prostitution:
Reading: Joseph W. Donohue, “The Empire Theatre of Varieties Licensing
Controversey of 1894” (bulkpack); Tracy C. Davis, “The Geography of Sex in
Society and Theatre,” Actresses as Working Women, pp. 137-163
(bulkpack).
[March 21: TO BE
ANNOUNCED]
[APPROXIMATE DUE DATE:
SECOND TAKE-HOME ASSIGNMENT]
March 26: American
Popular Entertainment: Minstrel Shows:
Reading:
Minstrel sketches: “Oh, Hush!
or, The Virginny Cupids” and “Othello” (bulkpack).
PREPARED STAGING: ___________.
March 28: American
Popular Entertainment: Minstrel Shows
(cont.):
Reading: Eric Lott, “Blackface and Blackness: The Minstrel Show in Americn Culture,” and Alexandra Saxton,
“Blackface Minsrelsy” (bulkpack).
April 2: American
Popular Entertainment: Vaudeville:
Reading: Reminiscences about Vaudeville, from American Vaudeville as
Seen by its Contemporaries, pp. 6-59, 114-123 (bulkpack).
Video Screening, PBS documentary on Vaudeville, TBA.
April 4: American
Popular Entertainment: Early Musical
Theatre:
Reading: Charles M. Barra, The Black Crook (bulkpack).
PREPARED STAGING: ___________.
April 9: American
Popular Entertainment: Musical Theatre
Transformed:
Listening Assignment: Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, Show
Boat (restored edition, on reserve in the Music listening room, 5th Floor
Van Pelt Library)
AND/OR Film Screening:
(to be arranged, either on video, or to be narrow-cast on RESNET): Show Boat (1936 version, dir. James Whale).
April 11: American
Popular Entertainment: Burlesque:
Reading:
Ralph G. Allen, “At My Mother’s Knee (and Other Low Joints)” (bulkpack)
April 16: Political
Commedia:
Reading: Theodore Shank, American Alternative Theater, “Theater of
Social Change,” pp. 50-90 (bulk-pack);
Rudlin, pp. 211-219.
April 18: Catch-up
and Conclusions.
You are responsible for participation in ONE prepared scene,
to be presented during the classes noted.
BRING YOUR SCRIPTS TO CLASS THAT DAY, even if you are not participating
in the prepared in-class staging; if no one has signed up in advance to stage a
scene, we might work through a scene and put it on its feet during the class
hour. There will be TWO take-home essay
assignments, plus ONE final research project, due at a date to be announced, on
a topic that must MUST BE APPROVED IN ADVANCE.
Attendance in class is crucial; CHRONIC ABSENCE OR LATENESS WILL BE
COUNTED AGAINST YOU.
The one book to be pruchased for the course, John Rudlin (Commedia
dell’Arte: An Actor’s Handbook) can
be purchased at the Penn Book Center, 34th and Sansom Sts.
The bulkpack can be purchased at the Campus Copy Center,
39th and Walnut.
The listserv for this course is
THAR140-401-02A@lists.upenn.edu. You
have been subscribed automatically. If
you do not seem to be on it, or if you drop the course and wish to be
unsubscribed, please send a note to cmazer@english.
The syllabus for this course is available in electronic form through the world wide web, at http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mazer/140sp02.html. Make a bookmark on your web browser for this site. In addition, we will be using an experimental web site for this course. Make a bookmark on your browser for http://courseweb.upenn.edu, click on Theatre Arts, and click on our course. If you are registered, you are automatically subscribed: your login will be your PennNet ID and your password is your PennNet password. CHECK THIS SITE DAILY. The web site will include daily announcements (including information about theatregoing assignments), and an electronic copy of the syllabus. The site also includes a discussion group, with access restricted to members of the course.