Theatre Arts 275: Advanced Topics in Theatre
DRAMATURGY
Professor Mazer
Fall 2002
519 Annenberg Center, 8-7382 and 3-2659;
cmazer@english.upenn.edu
Office Hours:
Tu, Th 3:00-4:15, and by appointment
THERE IS NO SYLLABUS, PER SE, FOR THIS COURSE;
the course is not organized on a tight schedule of weekly readings and
occasional writing assignments. Rather,
there will be regular in-class discussions of ongoing topics through the
semester, with some of them cued to specific readings; and there will be
regular assignments of succinct oral
presentations (since much of the dramaturg’s work in the theatre involves
making succinct and persuasive oral presentations). One of the
presentations (weekly) will be individual; the other two assignments (alternating weeks) will be team presentations (since virtually all of the dramaturg’s work in
the theatre involves collaboration as a team member). At the end of the semester, there will be a team writing assignment.
I. Discussion Topics and Readings.
Topics include:
What is a dramaturg? What is the
dramaturg’s function? What is the
dramaturg’s function in relation to certain institutional structures, special
tasks, ways of organizing rehearsals, etc.
Readings will be drawn, for the most part, from Dramaturgy in American Theater: A Source Book, ed. Susan Jonas, Geoffrey
S. Proehl, and Michael Lupu. Essays to
be read include:
Anne
Cataneo, “Dramaturgy: An Overview.”
Joel
Schechter, “In the Beginning There Was Lessing ... Then Brecht, Müller and
Other Dramturgs.”
Martin
Esslin, “Towards an American Dramaturgy:
Adapting the function of dramaturgy to U.S. conditions.”
Geoffrey
S. Proehl, “The Images Before Us:
Metaphors for the Role of the Dramaturg in American Theater.”
and other essays to be announced.
We will also consider the process of “New Play
Dramaturgy”--ways in which the dramaturg works directly with the playwright in
creating or revising a script--possibly by reading Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, and considering the
revisions of the script for the revival of the play the Steppenwolf Theatre
Company, Chicago (and, subsequently, on Broadway). To be scheduled: a visit
with Michele Volansky, formerly the dramaturg for Steppenwolf, now dramaturg
for the Philadelphia Theatre Company, and playwriting lecturer for the Theatre
Arts Program at Penn.
II. Oral presentation A): the Grab Bag (weekly, individual).
Each Tuesday, each student will draw a
dramaturgical question at random from a hat.
BEFORE CLASS the following Tuesday, each student will post the answer to
the question on the
courseweb.library.upenn web site (see below), and bibliographical references
(reference book, web site, etc.) for the sources of the information; in the
Tuesday class, each student will make a brief
presentation of the answer to the question.
III. Oral presentation B): Dramaturging the Season (biweekly, team).
The class will be divided into TWO OR THREE
dramaturgical teams. We will imagine
that we are collectively serving as “production dramaturgs” for an ongoing
hypothetical theatre season of three plays.
For the first play, each team will be assigned two dramaturgical tasks, each of which will be reported on, orally,
every second week; different tasks will be assigned TO each team for each of
the other two plays (so that, by the end of the semester, each team will have
worked on all six different
tasks). The plays in our hypothetical
season are:
Euripides, The Bacchae
G. Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara
H. Granville Barker, The Voysey Inheritance
Dramaturgical
assignments include:
1)
Versions, texts, editions, translations, etc.
2) The play in the context of the playwright’s
life, career, other works, etc.
3) The specific period, place, and conditions
of the play’s composition and original performance, including relevant imagery,
iconography, artifacts, cognate art forms, etc.
4) The specific period, place, and conditions
of the play (or the performance’s) setting, including relevant imagery,
iconography, artifacts, cognate art forms, etc.
5) The play’s subsequent performance history.
6) Useful
scholarship and criticism, on the play and on related subjects.
IV. Oral presentation C): Planning Next Season (biweekly, team).
Throughout the semester while we are
collectively dramaturging our hypothetical three-play season, we will also be
planning the repertoire of plays for a hypothetical five- or six-play season
for next year. In the first few weeks of the semester, we
will establish the hypothetical criteria for the season (venue, budget,
audience, artistic mission, etc.), and develop a list of about 100 plays that
we wish to consider for this season.
Every second week (alternating with the team production-dramaturgy
reports), each team will make a brief
presentation in which each member of each team (i.e. every student in the
class) will be responsible for one
play from the list, describing the play (its plot, theme and significance; its
physical, budgetary, and personnel demands; etc.) and making a recommendation
about its inclusion in the next season.
At the end of the semester, we will collectively select the five plays
for the hypothetical season, based on the individual and team recommendations.
V. The final writing assignment (team).
At the end of the semester (at a date to be
announced) each team will present a set of written materials on a single play, including a) a program note
about the playwright; b) a program note about the play and the (hypothetical)
production; c) a packet of materials for a program insert or a subscriber
bulletin; d) a packet of materials to be sent to the press; and e) a packet of
materials to be sent to school groups.
Attendance
and participation are mandatory.
Persistent unexcused absences, especially an absence on a day of an
individual or team presentation, will be reflected in your semester grade.
The books for the course (Dramaturgy in American Theater:
A Source Book and Major
Barbara) are available for purchase in the Penn Book Center (34th and
Sansom). You should acquire your own
copy of The Bacchae; the differences
in translations may be useful for us in class.
There may be a bulkpack for
this course later in the semester, which may include The Voysey Inheritance, and one or both versions of Buried Child; if so, it will be
available at the Campus Copy Center, 3900 block of Walnut St.
The listserv for this course is
THAR275-401-02C@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.upenn.edu. You may wish to create aliases or listservs
for your individual teams.
An electronic version of this syllabus,
including a hot link to the dramaturgy web site, is available on line at:
http://www.english.upenn.edu/*cmazer/275f02.html. Make a bookmark on your web browser for this
site. In addition, we will be using an
“Blackboard” web site for this course.
Make a bookmark on your browser for http://courseweb.library.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. We may
discover class and team uses of this web site over the course of the semester.