Unit name | Theatre and Performance |
---|---|
Unit code | MODL23021 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | I/5 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Dr. Davies |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | School of Modern Languages |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit uses the heading of ‘interplay’ – between text, stage and audience, and across periods and borders – to examine some of the key developments in European drama. It introduces some of the central influences on theatre across Europe: Greek drama, Shakespeare, and Calderón. It considers early-modern and twentieth-century responses to classical drama, and the appeal of Shakespeare to movements such as the German Sturm und Drang; it examines Naturalism and the development of political theatre in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course is divided into two parts: a series of survey lectures accompanied by prescribed reading and viewings and accompanied by peer-assessed assignments on Blackboard, and a cluster of small-group seminars enabling participants to focus on one topic in depth.
Unit aims:
The unit will develop:
Normally one lecture hour and one seminar hour per week across one teaching block (22 contact hours), often with student presentations. In units with a smaller number of students the lecture hour may be replaced by a second seminar or a workshop. Units involving film may require students to view films outside the timetabled contact hours.
one 2000 word essay and a 2 hour exam (50%/50%)
Aristotle, Poetics, in Classical Literary Criticism, ed. by D.A. Russell and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: OUP, 2008)
S.W. Dawson, Drama and the Dramatic, The Critical Idiom, 11 (London: Methuen, 1970)
Manfred Pfister, The Theory and Analysis of Drama, trans. by John Hallday (Cambridge: CUP, 1988)
Erika Fischer-Lichte, History of European Drama and Theatre, trans. by Jo Riley (London: Routledge, 2002)
Set texts are expected to vary from year to year and will be publicised at the beginning of the session, prior to the unit running in TB2.