Theatre studies

Instructions: choose 1 question from each category, and write a short response essay of 1-2 pages for EACH question (category) . You do not need full citations for texts that we have read together – you MUST include page number citations for those passages that you are citing and/or quoting. You do not need a cover page, works cited list, bibliography, or anything like that.
Your essays may occasionally touch on the same play, but your responses need to analyze at least 5 plays from the syllabus in depth (list of plays below). This means more than a mention; really go into these plays. The goal here is to demonstrate that you have kept up with the readings and course lectures and that you understand the larger themes and forms that connect the plays.

Category 1: Formal and genre conventions and movements across plays. Examine one form or style from the list below as it occurs in 2-3 plays we’ve read this semester. What are the central components of the form? How do the plays exemplify the form? How do they break away from it? Is the form still compelling to us as audiences and/or theatre-makers? Why or why not?
1A. Realism
1B. Commedia dell’arte techniques and characters
1C. Epic theatre – “Brechtian” staging methods
1D. Aristotelian formal techniques

Category 2: Thematic concerns. Examine one theme that occurs across several of the plays that we have read – focus on how this theme or concern is manifest in 2-3 plays on the course syllabus. Draw upon the play texts to show how the plays are fulfilling this particular theme, purpose, or goal.
2A. Politics – how are the plays political? What are they saying about the status quo and how it must change? How are they doing so through formal elements? How are they doing so through their content?

2B. Social context: in what ways are the plays responding to the historical and social conditions of their creation? How are they “speaking to their moment?” Note that this is not the same thing as being political, although the two can occur together. Social context can include, for example, spiritual concerns relative to the audience or performers. How is the social different from the political, and how do these plays manifest this distinction?

2C. Aesthetics: in what ways are the plays making bold aesthetic statements? How are they seeking to carve new aesthetic paths through their innovative use of theatre? What sorts of aesthetic interventions do you see happening in these plays?
Category 3: creative thought experiments and analytical foci. Choose one question from this list and respond to it in detail.
3A. Designing a season: Pitch a season of three plays for production by the McGill Department of English in Moyse Hall theatre. Consider the technical and staging possibilities and limitations of Moyse Hall (as you may see in your visit to Moyse) in your selection of plays. You may imagine limitless financial and personnel resources at your disposal. Box office is not a concern, so there is no need to “please” everyone. Program an artistically interesting, technically possible (though possibly challenging) season that highlights the interrelations (and/or interesting divergences) among the three plays (in terms of theme, structure, form, relation to audience, use of stage space, and the like).

3B. Adding a unit to the syllabus: in a course like Intro to Theatre Studies, there is a lot that we cannot cover. What would you like to add to the syllabus, where would it fit, and how would it relate to the other units? Introduce a new unit and new play, and link it to two other sections through thematic, formal, and historical connections.

3C. Although theatre is a “seeing-place” (from the Greek: theatron), what is withheld from view can play as crucial a role in the drama as what is shown on stage. For instance, plays and performances will sometimes reference characters and/or events the audience never sees. Find at least three plays/performances in which what is not presented or enacted onstage is consequential to the drama (the plot, characters, theme, situation, climax, resolution, etc.). Discuss how seeing and hiding operate in 3 or more plays from the syllabus.

3D. Theatre is sometimes seen as interdisciplinary (i.e., necessarily involving music, dance, visual art, and other forms), and sometimes viewed as separate from other art forms, with its own formal codes of production and reception. In what ways do 2-3 of the plays on the syllabus position the artform of theatre relative to other forms? Which plays incorporate music, for example, and why? Or, what is the role of dance, and even photography and film, vis-à-vis theatre? Why might some theatre artists seek to distinguish theatre from other artforms, while others show theatre to be a welcoming place for many different artforms to converge? Discuss mentions of or engagements with different art forms in 2-3 plays from the syllabus.

LIST OF PLAYS FROM COURSE SYLLABUS
1. Susan Glaspell, Trifles (1916): pp765-774, Norton
2. Oedipus Rex (430-425 BCE): pp93-134, Norton
3. Zeami, Atsumori (1400): pp272-282, Norton
4. Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (1600-01)
5. Tartuffe (1664)
6. Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House (1879)
7. Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard (1904)
8. Sophie Treadwell, Machinal (1928)
9. The Good Woman of Setzuan (1938-40)
10. Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (
11. Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman
12. Jackie Sibblies Drury, Fairview (2019)

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