TOPICS IN THEATRE HISTORY:
"CONSTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION"
Professor Mazer
Spring 1999
Office Hours: Tu 11:00-Noon, 1:30-3:00; Th 1:30-3:00
Bennett Hall 305, x7382
e-mail: cmazer@dept.english.upenn.edu
January 12: Introduction: What is Theatre History?
January 14: Theatre, Theatres, and Cities
- Marvin Carlson, The Places of Performance,
Chapters 3 ("The Urban Hub"), 4 ("The Facade Theatre"),
and 5 ("Interior Space"), pp. 61-162.
January 19: The Theatre and the City-State
- Simon Goldhill, "The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology"
(bulkpack).
January 21: Ancient Greece I: Architecture and Stagecraft
- David Wiles, Tragedy in Athens: Performance Space and
Theatrical Meaning, Chapters 1 ("The Problem of
Space") and 2 ("The Theatre of Dionysus), pp. 1-62
(bulkpack).
January 26: Ancient Greece II:
- Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound.
- Prepared in-class staging: ___________.
January 28: Ancient Greece III:
- Euripides, Hippolytos.
- Prepared in-class staging: ___________.
February 2: Recreating Classicism: Italian Renaissance Theatres
- A.M. Nagler, A Source Book in Theatrical History,
pp. 73-86
- Carlson, Places of Performance,
Chapter 2 ("The Jewel in the Casket"), pp. 38-60.
February 4: Recreating Classicism: Italian Renaissance Scenes
and Machines
February 9: English Renaissance Popular Theatre I: Architecture
February 11: English Renaissance Popular Theatre II: Stage
Conventions
- Alan C. Dessen, "Shakespeare and the Theatrical
Conventions of his Time" (bulkpack).
February 16: English Renaissance Popular Theatre III:
Audiences.
- Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare's London,
pp. 13-79. (bulkpack)
- Nagler, pp. 133-138.
February 18: English Renaissance Popular Theatre IV
- Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker's Holiday (bulkpack).
- Prepared in-class staging: ___________.
February 23: English Renaissance Popular Theatre V: The Theatre
and the City
- Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage: License,
Play, and Power in Renaissance England, Chapters 1 ("Toward a
Rhetoric of Space in Elizabethan London") and 2 ("The Place of
the Stage"), pp. 1-59 (bulkpack).
February 25: The Stuart Masque (with slides).
- Ben Jonson, Oberon (bulkpack; BRING THE SCRIPT TO
CLASS)
- Stephen Orgel, The Illusion of Power.
March 2: Recreating the Rules: French Neo-Classicism I
- Pierre Corneille, Le Cid (bulkpack).
- Prepared in-class staging: ___________.
March 4: Recreating the Rules: French Neo-Classicism II
- Le Cid (cont.)
- documents from the controversy over Le Cid
-
(bulkpack).
[Spring Break]
March 16: Recreating the Rules: French Neo-Classicism III
- Molière, The School for Wives and The Critique
of The School for Wives (in Tartuffe and Other
Plays).
- Prepared in-class stagings: ___________;
___________.
March 18: Baroque Theatres and Scenography
- (BRING A PAIR OF SCISSORS TO CLASS)
March 23: Recreating the Rules: French Neo-Classicism IV
- Jean Racine, Phèdre (bulkpack)
- Roland Barthes, excerpts
from On
Racine (bulkpack).
- Prepared in-class staging: ___________.
March 25: Recreating the Rules: Neo-Classicism reconsidered
- Roger W. Herzel, "'Playing by the Rules' in Seventeenth-
Century France" (bulkpack).
March 30: Recreating a Theatre for a Nation: Wagner
- Frederick Spotts, Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner
Festival, pp. 29-78 (bulkpack).
April 1: (to be announced)
April 6: Reconstruction: Victorian Elizabethanism
- Cary M. Mazer, "Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Revival,
from Shakespeare Refashioned: Elizabethan Plays on
Edwardian Stages.
April 8: Reconstruction: The Globe I
- J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring, Shakespeare's
Globe Rebuilt, Chapters 2 ("Shakespeare's Globe: A
History of Reconstructions and Some Reasons For Trying,"
by Andre Gurr) and 8 ("The Iconography of the Globe," by
Siobhan Keenan and Peter Davidson), pp. 24-47, 147-
156.
April 13: The Globe II: Performances and Audiences
- Mulryne and Shewring, Shakespeare's Globe Rebuilt,
Chapters 9 ("Staging at the Globe," by Andrew Gurr) and 10
("Playing the Globe," by Mark Rylance), pp. 159-176.
- Alan C. Dessen, "'Taint Not Thy Mind...': Problems and
Pitfalls in Staging Plays at the New Globe" (bulkpack).
- Alan C. Dessen, "Globe Matters" (bulkpack).
April 15: The Globe III: The Shakespeare Industry
- Dennis Kennedy, "Shakespeare and Cultural Tourism"
(bulkpack).
- David Schalkwyk, "From the Globe to Globalisation:
Shakespeare and Disney in the Postmodern World"
(bulkpack).
April 20: Recreating an Aesthetic
- John Russell Brown, Free Shakespeare, skim first
three chapters, and then read Chapters 4 ("Elizabethan
Shakespeare"), 5 ("Original Shakespeare") and 6 ("An
Alternative Shakespeare").
- Screening (to be arranged): video version of the Royal
Shakespeare Company's 1976 production of Macbeth
(directed by Trevor Nunn, with Ian McKellan and Judi
Dench).
April 22: 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 following books can be purchased at the Penn Book Center:
- Marvin Carlson, Places of Performance; The Semiotics
of Theatre Architecture.
- Alois M. Nagler, Source Book in Theatrical
History
- Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound.
- Euripides; Hippolytos.
- Moliere, Tartuffe & Other Plays.
- Stephen Orgel, The Illusion of Power: Political
Theater in the English Renaissance.
- J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring, eds.,
Shakespeare's Globe Rebuilt.
- John Russell Brown, Free Shakespeare.
The bulkpack can be purchased at the Campus Copy Center, 39th and
Walnut.
The listserv for this course is mazer140@english. An electronic
version of this syllabus can be found at:
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mazer/140sp99.txt. Make a bookmark
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