Want more drama in your life?
Admit it, you like to watch. And you need more excitement in your life! You’ll see every play that we read — each and every one a winner! — either live in a New York theater or online though the university website. Because playwrights really want you to see their plays! You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll connect! We’ll be looking at “classic” plays by Shakespeare, Euripides, Ibsen, Lorca, Hansberry, and Sondheim as they’ve been interpreted by some of our leading contemporary theater practitioners of contemporary audiences. Theaters are places where meaning is produced and we’ll explore how the engendered, racialized, and class-inflected bodies of the present use the stories of the past to think about the problems we confront now in ways that keep us engaged and entertained. No prior knowledge of theater expected, but you’ll emerge at the other end of this course as sophisticated critics of the theatrical event and of what’s at stake whenever you see a performance of any kind!
This course can serve as a gateway to the English major but it’s intended for anyone who likes spending time in a theater.
Taught by Michael Cadden, former Chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts and past recipient of the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching
