Anytime you see a post here that's from "playscriptinterp" it's probably from me, Amy Steiger. I am the professor for the course.
I'm going to start the blog by posting the description of the class from the syllabus:
Playscripts have a dual status in the world, since they can be examined both as pieces of literature and as blueprints for performance on a stage in front of an audience. While playwriting refers to how a play is crafted by a playwright to achieve a particular meaning or reaction, analysis is the opposite process: breaking a script down into its component parts to discover not only what it means, but also how it works. In many cases, for theatre artists, the process of analysis happens so we can put the play back together on the stage with a specific interpretation in mind. In this class, our primary goal will be to examine and rehearse various ways to approach play texts in order to interpret their meanings and imagine possibilities for staging them; but we will also touch on various theories used by scholars and critics when they analyze literature and other elements of culture for their social significance and meaning.
Because audiences, artists and scholars generally place plays into categories based on specific rules of shaping form and content to have a specific effect on an audience, we will learn some of those rules, and also examine how historical and cultural forces inform them. As we read the twelve plays on the syllabus this semester, we will ask questions about them from a number of different angles. We will look at each play’s content – what is the play about? What do you notice/see/hear/feel when you read it? What does it seem to mean? We will consider its form – how did the playwright put the play together to achieve that meaning? What is the shape of the play as a whole, and of each individual part? And we will research and discuss the play’s context – when and where was it written? Finally, we will imagine some possibilities for interpreting the play on stage, taking into account the people, events and circumstances of our own time and place. Why might it be important or compelling to stage this play in front of an audience today, right now? How might its meaning be different than when it was first produced?
We begin with Aristotle’s Poetics because, although it is certainly not the only text on playwriting and dramatic theory, it is the one most often studied as the foundation of European and American drama. We will analyze plays over the course of the semester using Aristotle’s rules, and will also discuss how each play sets up its own dramaturgical conventions that depart from the guidelines set out in the Poetics. We will also read other theories of how to understand plays and playwriting, some of which (like Brecht’s work, for example) directly challenge the concepts implied by Aristotle’s theories. Through comparing plays in different periods, locations, styles and genres (both original works and adaptations of previous scripts), we will look at how writing a play can itself be an act of interpretation, analysis and criticism of what has come before.
Selecting plays for a syllabus like this is a really tricky matter for me, because there are so many possible choices and I'm always leaving out something equally as important as the plays I have included. I have actually put more canonical plays on this list than I would normally choose, and I'm not entirely sure about that decision, but we'll see how it goes. (It's not lost on me, for example, that only two of the twelve plays on the list are written by women! Also, there is only one Japanese play, but nothing from any other Asian country or written by an Asian American playwright. And although I've included Alberto Sandoval Sanchez's chapter "A Puerto Rican Reading of the America of West Side Story," the lack of Latina/Latino plays is a glaring omission. There are lots more glaring omissions. This bothers me, but it's a huge world, the history of playwriting is long, and the semester is short. So I had to make some choices about which I am uneasy. Hmm ...) My hope is that while we use these plays to discuss the rules of playwriting and interpretation, we'll also examine critically the fact that these texts are frequently on lists of plays educated people read-why these plays? What is missing, here? And in what ways do these plays expand or limit ideas of what makes a compelling piece of theatre?
I'll leave off the critical articles that are included, for now. But here is the reading list for the class:
The Trojan Women by Euripedes
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
West Side Story by Laurents, Bernstein and Sondheim
The Rover by Aphra Behn
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe
Aoi no Uye by Zeami
Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett
Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht
The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman and The Tectonic Theatre Project
Please feel free to ask questions or comment on what I've written here, and I look forward to some lively discussions this semester.
