Theories of Theatre

Course Description:

This course will take a comparative approach to some major “theories of the theatre” that have emerged during periods of intense dramatic activity in cultures ranging widely in time and space: ancient Greece and India, classical Japan, early modern and modern Europe, the modern Americas, and the postcolonial societies of contemporary Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Drama, theatre, and performance are among the earliest forms of representation theorized in both Western and non-Western cultural traditions, and the parameters of theory are defined with remarkable consistency by the distinctive qualities of theatre as a mimetic, performative, and public art. The principles of mimesis and verisimilitude engage metaphysical, aesthetic, and formal issues, while the aspect of live performance engages the practical details of presentation and reception. Our discussion will take this duality into account, connecting theatre theory with general principles of poetics as well as the material, sociopolitical, and institutional contexts of performance in a given time and place. The readings will be organized into sequential units, including “Foundational Poetics,” “Classicism and Neoclassicism,” “Realism and its Redactions,” “Political Theatre,” “The Avant-Garde,” and “Postcolonial Revisions.”

Tentative Reading List:

Plato, from The Republic (circa 350 BC)
Aristotle, from Poetics (circa 335 BC)
Bharata, from the Natyashastra (circa fourth century BC)
Zeami Motokiyo, from “Teachings on Style and the Flower” (1402) and “A Mirror Held
to the Flower” (1424)
Sir Philip Sidney, from Apology for Poetry (1598)
John Dryden, from Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668)
Aphra Behn, Preface to The Dutch Lover (1673)
Richard Steele, Preface to The Conscious Lovers (1722)
George Lillo, Dedication to The London Merchant (1731)
Samuel Johnson, from “Preface to Shakespeare” (1765)
Oliver Goldsmith, “A Comparison Between Sentimental and Laughing Comedy” (1773)
Richard Wagner, from “Art and Revolution” (1849) and Opera and Drama (1851)
Friedrich Nietzsche, from The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
Emile Zola, from Naturalism in the Theatre (1878)
August Strindberg, Preface to Miss Julie (1888)
Bernard Shaw, from The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891)
Rabindranath Tagore, “The Theatre” (1903)
Georg Lukacs, “The Sociology of Modern Drama” (1909)
Bertolt Brecht, “The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre” (1932) and “Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction” (1935)
Walter Benjamin, from “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1938)
Antonin Artaud, from The Theatre and Its Double (1938)
Manifesto of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (1943)
Arthur Miller, “Tragedy and the Common Man” (1949)
Martin Esslin, from The Theatre of the Absurd (1961)
Jerzy Grotowski, from Towards a Poor Theatre (1968)
Wole Soyinka, “Towards a True Theatre” (1962) and “The Fourth Stage” (1973)
Derek Walcott, “What the Twilight Says: An Overture” (1970)
Badal Sircar, from The Third Theatre (1973)
Augusto Boal, from The Theatre of the Oppressed (1974)
Amiri Baraka, “The Revolutionary Theatre” (1979)