Dramaturgy: The Art of the Dramaturg
Cartoon by Victoria Roberts
This class is an exploration of dramaturgy and the art of the dramaturg. Each week, students complete readings and assignments that provide context for the art and practice of dramaturgy, as well as afford practical, hands-on experience of the craft. Students learn how to read texts deeply and critically, how to research historically and creatively, and how to present that work to collaborators in a manner that is accessible, illuminating, and productive. By the end of the term, students are not only able to define dramaturgy and the role of the dramaturg clearly for how they relate to each individual artist’s practice, but they are also prepared to step confidently into that role in production, and/or to collaborate effectively with dramaturgs on their team.
“This is one of the best classes I’ve ever taken, point blank. I honestly think it should be a required part of the drama major.”
”I know that I will be using what I learned in this class for the rest of my career in theater.”
”The syllabus was really strong and I’m impressed we got through it. The content is so interesting and the readings were really well assigned and really quite accessible.”
Artaud and his Legacy
The Theatre and Its Double by Antonin Artaud, 1938
This course is designed to introduce students to one of the most prolific and influential theater theorists and practitioners of the Twentieth Century. Antonin Artaud’s ideas about performance, history, and culture far exceed the literal theatrical stage and his particular historical moment. Through the lens of Performance Studies, we explore Artaud’s dense, inter-medial “theater of cruelty” by means of his letters, essays, plays, films, magical spells, drawings, and radio texts, and consider how his radical proposals for creative upheaval – the notions of the Subjectile, Cruelty, the Double, and the Plague – have informed contemporary performance practice from the late 1950’s until the present. In the spirit of Artaud’s ideas about life as the ultimate origin and un-representational site of theater (its double), we engage with his life-long attempt to locate the (corporeal) genesis of his thought and to express it through various mediums. In studying Artaud’s ongoing legacy, we focus on the notions of personal trauma and grief as central cultural and historic forces shaping the subjectivities of the body in performance across the landscape of late modernism and postmodernisms, and question what Artaud can offer us as theater makers going forward, rebuilding performance culture in a post-pandemic(s) world.
“The material of this course and the way it was structured has had such a profound impact on me academically, artistically, and personally. I will be thinking about this man probably for the rest of my life.”
“Thank you again for such an enlightening and moving class. It really transformed my relationship with performance and has encouraged me to make so much art. I feel reinvigorated about my relationship with theatre.”
”This has by far been one of my favorite courses I’ve taken, in the drama department and at Vassar. I loved the way it was structured, I found the readings fascinating, and I think I finally understand the benefits of theatre of cruelty.”
Sources of World Drama I
Theater of Dionysus, Athens (2009)
This course is designed to introduce students to the scope of world theater history and its development, from various Classical traditions through the Middle Ages, to the Renaissance and the early Seventeenth Century. We conduct this investigation through a combination of plays and their contemporary aesthetic treatises (where available), and a variety of secondary scholarship, investigating not only the ways that dramatic form and practice change from place to place, century to century, but how reception, scholarship, and criticism of dramatic literature and performance change as well. Across all of these readings this course attends to the question of sources—linguistic, cultural, formal, religious, and dramatic—that have given rise to the world’s great theatrical legacies, and which contribute toward global awareness and understanding of performance.
“The amount of information covered in this class is incredibly daunting and you have proven time and again your vast knowledge and ability to enlighten the content. I am really looking forward to next semester of this course.”
”I had a great time in this class. I love how you incorporate so many different types of theater in the syllabus. I was really thrilled to find out how diverse it was.”
Sources of World Drama II
Berliner Ensemble, Berlin (2016)
In the early Nineteenth Century, German writer and intellectual Johann Wolfgang von Goethe made the provocative claim that literature bound by nationality was an outmoded concept. “National literature” he declared, “does not mean much at present. It is time for the era of world literature and everybody must endeavor to accelerate this epoch.” This course begins Goethe himself, and the German Romanticism his art articulates, and traces the acceleration of world literature through two hundred years of dramatic composition and performance to ask: Is world literature the same as world theatre? Which works have canonically been included under this designation, and which are left out? What are the forms, aesthetics, themes, and objectives taken up by modern playwrights of this new global era? Does claiming a move toward world theatre inherently privilege western forms? These, and many other questions, provide the groundwork for a critical engagement with the wealth of dramatic literature generated during the last two centuries.
“This class has fundamentally shifted my understanding of theater and its history. You as a professor have opened my eyes to new opportunities, ways of thinking, and forms of art. “
”I couldn’t have asked for a better professor to guide us through this daunting amount of theater history—I feel like my knowledge and perception of theater studies has been shaped for the better.”
Romeo in the Land of Rama: Performing Shakespeare in India
Dīnārkarājakumāra-Hemalekham, a Sanskrit version of Hamlet, translated by Sukhamoy Mukherjee, 1971.
This class investigates the many and varied ways that Shakespeare’s plays have been staged in India since they were first introduced to the subcontinent in the late eighteenth century. Each week we consider one of Shakespeare’s plays alongside a case study of that work in performance, moving chronologically from the colonial theaters of the mid-Nineteenth century to the popular Hindi cinemas of the twenty first. This work is designed to both survey Shakespeare’s canon and introduce students to the field of Indian theater history, with attention to directors such as Utpal Dutt, Habib Tanvir and Vishal Bhardwaj, as well as a diverse array of Indian performance genres, including Kathakali, Nautanki and Jatra.
“This class gave me so many new perspectives on theater and globalization, and I am so so glad that I decided to take it. I felt that our discussions were taken further and held to a higher standard than I am used to, to my immense benefit.”
”I have consistently been grateful for the syllabus you gave us and your ability to lead/mediate conversation in a way I haven’t before experienced. You approached every element of feedback with so much care. I felt so seen by/in conversation with you throughout the course.”
Theaters of Gods and Heroes: Staging the Epics of Greece and India
Battlefield, by Peter Brook at NCPA in Mumbai (2016)
In the poetics, Aristotle famously defines tragedy and epic poetry as separate aesthetic entities, each possessing its own merit, though fundamentally incompatible. Primary among these incompatibilities are the issues of length and breadth, the epic encompassing far more time, space, and characters than can satisfactorily be conveyed through the medium of theater. And yet epic texts of many cultures have been a constant source of inspiration and raw material for dramatists and theater artists, from the playwrights of antiquity to the present day. So how incompatible are these forms, actually? This course attends to some of the many ways that the liad, the Odyssey, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana have been adapted into works of dramatic literature and refashioned for the stage. Each week students will read selections of the epic poem (in translation) alongside dramatic interpretations as well as short secondary readings in adaptation and performance theory. Taken together, these materials will offer a platform for debate on the dramaturgical process through which stories of great magnitude can and have been presented theatrically.
“This is one of my favorite courses I have taken in my four years here. Rarely have I seen often ‘inaccessible’ subject matter presented in such a professional and comprehensible manner. PLEASE continue teaching this course wherever you go.”
”I have so enjoyed exploring and discovering the ways we tell stories and continuing to question our roles as storytellers.”