Educator

Why does Black theater matter? How does Black theater matter? In what ways have African American theater artists used the stage to promote racial justice, to protest white supremacy, and advance the cause of Black autonomy and pride? This course will survey more than two centuries of Black theater in the United States. Play texts, contextual readings and class discussions will allow us to examine how the stage has reflected and sparked important national conversations about equality, democracy, race, class and gender as they have unfolded throughout American history, and as they continue in the present. We will attend a performance together, take in other performances on video, and interact with guest scholars and professional theater artists as part of our engagement with this vibrant cultural tradition.

The popular scholar Harold Bloom argues, “We keep returning to Shakespeare because we need him; no one gives us so much of the world we take to be fact. .. Our ideas as to what makes the self authentically human owe more to Shakespeare than ought to be possible.” This course will test the ongoing validity of Bloom’s argument—seeking insight into Shakespeare’s knack for holding a mirror up to human nature, showing us the full range of our authentic human selves today, and connecting us with others across boundaries of nation and identity group.

The course will blend traditional classroom discussions with “on our feet” studio sessions in which students will learn by bringing Shakespeare’s plays to theatrical life. Throughout, we will interrogate how centuries old dramas continue to resonate with contemporary truths about race, gender identity, sexual orientation, national perspective, and human agency within our times. Both in the US and in England, we will engage with Shakespeare from multiple angles: as literary texts, as artistic blueprints, as vessels of transnational thinking, and as cultural phenomena on stage and film. We will work with with professional art and artists on both sides of the Atlantic to assist us in this inquiry.

A culminating trip to London will deepen our exploration of Shakespeare’s historical and contemporary salience and our creative, embodied exploration of the global contemporary truths contained within his characters. We will visit historic sites associated with Shakespeare’s age and career, attend theater productions, and engage with professional artists and scholars at sites such as: Shakespeare’s Globe, Bankside, The Tower of London, the Victoria & Albert Museum,  the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, and the British American Drama Academy. 

This course will survey selected eras in the history of Western theater, and expose students to key concepts, events, personalities and aesthetics from each period. We will read dramas for their historical significance—to discover how play texts help illuminate the historical moment that surrounded them, as well as how knowledge of theater history helps contemporary theater artists revisiting these texts today. We will study primary documents and visual records of theatrical productions from various periods of history to illuminate the dynamics of live performance— acting, directing, stage design, and audiences—within each chosen period. 

There’s no other way to say it: reading plays is difficult. To read a play in print is to encounter a work of art in unfinished and incomplete form. Visual artistry, physical presence and live audience dynamics are reduced to flat, static words on a page. In this course, we will explore and practice with various techniques for reading and analyzing scripts: techniques designed to help theater artists discover more fully the dynamic potential of theatrical texts as blueprints for live performance. We will explore dramatic worlds holistically, analyze scripts structurally in terms of the arrangement and sequence of events, investigate conventional play genre labels (tragedy, comedy and tragicomedy), and examine the ideas of key theorists in Western theater history to discover many different perspectives from which plays may be analyzed. Class discussions, online discussions and writing assignments will provide opportunities to develop and refine our skills with reading and understanding play texts. 

This course affords seniors in the Theatre Arts program the opportunity to work individually or in small groups to complete their Capstone projects.  The culmination of the course will be the presentation of Capstone projects at “Thesis Night” at the end of the semester.