🔵 🔴 🟡 Course description

🇬🇧 [The course is taught and examined in English] 🇬🇧

It is an advanced English Language course that combines the study of texts of specific theatrical content with the acquisition of research skills in an academic environment. The course aims to develop students' language skills (writing, speaking, listening) and analytical skills (reading and writing) through the study of twentieth-century American theatrical texts, from Eugene O'Neill to performance. The course will include artistic movements such as Expressionism, Symbolism, Realism, Theater of the Absurd, Modernism, and Post-Modernism, and will conclude with examples of works influenced by African-American traditions in the theatrical act, such as dance, ritual, and protest. The central unifying element will be the category of 'race' both as represented in the texts of the first half of the century by classical, white writers, and in African-American writers, from the Renaissance to modern performance. Oral presentations and brief responses/reviews, as well as an extensive written assignment will assess students' ability to research, synthesize, and present assignments according to proper academic conventions.

Students will learn to:

• critically analyze theatrical texts in the American theater of the 20th century.

• understand key issues in the history of modern American drama.

• evaluate a theatrical text/performance in terms of content and style.

• analyze the historical, cultural, social background of African-American theater and performance as a protest art.

• research and write academic essays in English effectively.

• create academic presentations in English orally.

🔵 🔴 🟡 Theory (3 hours)

1. Introduction – History – Contemporary American Theatre

2. Eugene O'Neill : All God's Chillun got Wings

3. Tennessee Williams : Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

4. Arthur Miller : The Crucible

5. Edward Albee : The Zoo Story

6. Sam Shepard : True West

7. Written Progress

8. Afro-American Performance – Traditions/Protest/Performance

9. Lauren Hansbury: A Raisin in the Sun

10. Augustus Wilson : Fences

11. Suzanne Laurie-Parks : Topdog/Underdog

12. Projects - Presentations

13. Summing Up

Language of assessment: English 🇬🇧

🔵 🔴 🟡 Evaluation method:

• Text Review: 25%

• Creative Project: 25%

• Final Work : 50%

• Face-to-face
• Use of ICT in teaching
• Use of ICT when communicating with students.

• Using eClass

TBA

🔵 🔴 🟡 Course Textbooks [Eudoxus]

• Patsalidis Savvas (2010) Theatre, society, nation (1960-2009). University Studio Press.
• Patsalidis Savvas (2009) Theatre, society, nation (1620-1960). University Studio Press.

Extra Bibliography

• Bigsby, Christopher (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller (1997) 

• Black, Stephen A. Eugene O'Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy (2002)

• Burke, Sally. American Feminist Playwrights (1996)

• Carlson, Marvin. Performance: A Critical Introduction (1996)

• Fischer-Lichte, Erika. The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics (2008) 

• Fischer-Lichte, Erika; Arjomand, Minou. The Routledge Introduction to Theatre and Performance Studies (2014)

• Gross, Robert F., ed. Tennessee Williams: A Casebook (2002)

• Guillory, Elizabeth Brown. Their Place on the Stage: Black Women Playwrights in America (1990)

• Hay, Samuel A. African American Theatre (1994)

• Krasner, David. American Drama 1945 – 2000: An Introduction (2006)

• Palmer, David, ed. Visions of Tragedy in Modern American Drama, (2018)

• Shewey, Don. Sam Shepard (1997) 

• Shiach, Don. American Drama 1900–1990, (2000)

• Watt, Stephen, and Gary A. Richardson. American Drama: Colonial to Contemporary, (1994

• Weales, Gerald Clifford. American Drama since World War II (1962)

• http://tuftsobserver.org/the-power-of-performance-art-as-political-activism/