Department of English

This course will examine the interplay of theatrical theory, theatrical practice, and dramatic writing, in relation to contemporaneous societies and cultures, from Romanticism and melodrama and the rise of “realism” in the nineteenth century, through theatrical aesthetics that position themselves beyond or against realism at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the present day. Areas of exploration include theatre and industrialization, the invention of the avant garde, the rise of the auteur-director, political theatre, competing theories about the actor’s body and the actor’s emotions, performance art, feminist theatre, queer theatre, and the integration of non-western theatre into shared theatre practice in the colonial and post-colonial world.