Professor Holmberg
Brandeis University Fall, 2017
Preliminary Syllabus, Subject to Change
American Drama Since 1945
This course examines major plays representing styles from social realism to avant-garde performance, including the theater of images and video in live performance. Attention paid to social and historical contexts, to the plays in production, and to the musical. Playwrights include O’Neill, Miller, Williams, Inge, Albee, Hansberry, Baraka, Mamet, Shepard, Rabe, Piñero, Fornes, Wasserstein, Durang, Wilson, Vogel, and Woody Allen. Students will explore plays from many different points of view, including liteary analysis and the visual rhetoric of performance.
The Evolution of American Drama
Slide Lecture: From Hegemony to Diversity
From Realism to Postmodernism, from Broadway to Off Broadway and Beyond.
Tragedy and the Common Man
Arthur Miller, All My Sons; Jo Mielziner: The Designer and the Stage (slide lecture)
Unhappy Puritans
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire; Streetcar in Production (slide lecture); The Aura of the Actor: the Studio and the Method.
The Good/Bad Girl Gets Married
William Inge, Come Back, Little Sheba; Marilyn Monroe: Exploding a Sex Symbol (recommended: Bus Stop video)
Scenes from a Marriage
Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
What Was It I Wanted to Buy?
The Son of Monte Cristo
Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night
Active Resistance or Militant Revolt?
Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun; Baraka, Dutchman (H)
The Counter Culture and The Triumph of the Avant-Garde
Slide lecture: The Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the Performance Group, and Robert Wilson’s Theater of Images—Visual Thinking
The Wooster Group—Video in Live Performance
Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation” (H)
Business as Usual
Genderlects: Do Women and Men Speak Different Languages?
David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross
Postmodern Subjectivity
Shepard, True West
Hispanic Theater
Piñero, Short Eyes
Feminist Theory/Feminist Theater
Fornes, Molly’s Dream (H); Wasserstein, The Heidi Chronicles; Vogel, How I Learned to Drive
Sexual Chaos
Uncommitted Love: Rabe, Hurlyburly
Sexual Farce: Woody Allen, Central Park West (H)
From Gay to Queer: Crowley, The Boys in the Band; Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp” (H)
The American Musical
America Celebrates Itself in Song and Dance
Requirements
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Class Attendance and Participation 45%
Final Research Paper 55%
It may be possible to do a class project in lieu of the research paper.
THA 66 deals with the evolution of American drama from 1947.
Some of the plays may include topics that may cause distress, including suicide, domestic abuse, and rape. If you do not have time to read the complete play before class, please read a synopsis so that you will be in a position to decide if a particular scene may upset you or cause you distress. If you think something will upset you, you are more than welcome to step outside while we view or discuss that scene.
If you are a student with a documented disability on record and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me immediately.
The section on theater in the United States national article in The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre, volume two (Routledge, 1996), is a good introduction to this course. In addition to editing the U.S. national article, I also wrote the sections on playwrights (Artistic Profile), theater space and architecture, and theater criticism. You might also want to consult the sections on Hispanic theater (Chicano, Cuban, and Puerto Rican), Afro-American theater, set design, and music theater.
Papers are due at the beginning of the class. Late papers will be down graded one letter grade for each week or each fraction of a week. Electronic submissions are not accepted. Papers must be double spaced and printed on only one side of each sheet. Number your pages. Written documentation of an emergency from a doctor will exonerate the student from the late penalty.