JCU: Spring 2014: Modern European Drama: Professor Connelly
Schedule
Week 1: Introduction: What’s so Modern about Modern?
Why here, why now? Theatre’s 19th Century Context
Why these plays? Other selections: Victorian Burlesques, Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Brecht’s Life of Galileo (exercise)
Week 2: Strindberg’s Miss Julie
Presentation #1: The Meiningen Ensemble (1874-1890)
Realism and Naturalism
Strindberg, Class and Power
Week 3: Strindberg’s Miss Julie
DVD: Miss Julie (1999), dir. Mike Figgis
DVD + Discussion
Week 4: Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler
Presentation #2: The Dionysian and the Apollonian: Ibsen and Nietzsche
Hedda vs Eilert
Determinism. Is she strong, is she weak? Suffocating fathers
Week 5: Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler
DVD. Hedda Gabler (1980), Yorkshire Television
PAPER 1 DUE IN CLASS
DVD + Discussion
Week 6: Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya
Presentation #3, The Moscow Arts Theatre, Stanislavski and Chekhov
Indolence, Hopelessness, Self-Indulgence
Week 7: Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya
DVD: Uncle Vanya (1962), dir. Stuart Burge
DVD + Discussion
Week 8: Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Presentation #4, Verfremdungseffekt in Brechtian Theatre
What is Epic Theatre?
Theatrical Allegory. Fascism. Brecht’s Characterisations
Week 9 Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
DVD: The Three Penny Opera + The Life of Galileo
PAPER 2 DUE IN CLASS
DVD + Discussion
Week 10: Beckett’s Endgame
Presentation #5, The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs
Beckett, Absurdism, Minimalism
Lecture: Beckett and Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence
Week 11: Beckett’s Endgame
DVD: Endgame (2001), dir. Conor McPherson (84 min.)
DVD + Discussion
Week 12: Pinter’s The Homecoming
Language as a Weapon of Mass Destruction
Presentation # 6: The Pinteresque, the beat, the pause, the silence
Week 13: Pinter’s The Homecoming
DVD: The Homecoming (1973), dir. Peter Hall
DVD + Discussion
Week 14: Kane’s Blasted and 4:48 Psychosis
Presentation #7: ‘In-yer-face theatre’
Blasted. The Atrocity Exhibition + Edward Bond, Saved
4:48 Psychosis.
FINAL PAPER DUE IN CLASS
From you:
Papers 1 and 2 = 20% per paper. 10 pages each on a choice of topics set by me.
Final Paper = 30%. 15 page research paper on a topic of your choice, in consultation with me.
Presentation = 10%. Do not cut and paste Wikipedia into a PowerPoint. Do not read your presentation to us word for word. I will not reward you for boring us. Instead, delight us and instruct us. Delve. Do not rely only on the internet. Go to the library. Pictures are good. A lack of love is not good.
Attendance and Input = 20%. This is crucial to your success in the course. You should come to the first class of each week having read the relevant play in its entirety. I will also assign secondary readings as necessary. Likewise, you should also have completed these.
I will expect each of you to bring to class three discussion questions per text. These will shape our learning. I would also like you to e-mail me your questions before the 1st class of any new text.
I expect you to come to every class and I will take a register to check on your attendance. If you start to miss classes, I will suggest that you drop the course and / or will hand you a failing grade for the course.
This course will present you with an intensely analytical learning experience with which you will become fully involved in class. If you are faint of heart or workshy, you will be better off elsewhere.
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