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(Submission #92)
Course Description: Please include a course description. If the course will include variable topics or be taught in various forms, please provide as many descriptions of specific sections as possible.
This course will help students understand the process by which a theatrical text is transformed into live performance.
It is understood that each instructor of this course will realize this goal in her or his own way. What follows is a model that can be modified.
The course will develop the kinds of tools for analyzing texts that are essential for directors, designers and actors. It will accomplish this by, among other things, combining the approaches of such theorists of the theatre as Aristotle, Stanislavsky and Brecht with approaches to textual analysis taught in departments of language and literature.
Students will use their new analytic tools to identify motifs—based on recurrent images, phrases, ideas, events, character types--that give a work its coherence and allow directors to develop a production concept. Students will go beyond the basics of plot, character and theme to discover those aspects of a play that are not immediately apparent, yet are essential to understanding the work. They will test their analytic tools on a wide range of dramatic literature drawn from many times and cultures, and discover both the utility and limitations of the tools—learning something about experimental methods through studying the arts.
The course will attempt to counter both anti-literary and anti-theatrical prejudices. The first treats a dramatic text as the mere plaything of visionary directors; the second regards performance as a doomed attempt to render the poetic soul of a great drama in frail actorly flesh.
Area of Knowledge and Inquiry: Appreciating and Participating in the Arts (AP) Context of Experience: Not Applicable Extended Requirement: Not Applicable
Credits: 3 Prerequisites: none Existing Course: Existing Existing Course Number: Drama 101 Course Anticipated to be offered: Every Semester Other (if specified): Number of Sections: 1-2 Number of Seats: 30
[Justification, Materials, Assessment, Administration (DOC)] [Syllabus/Syllabi (DOC)]
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