Courses

As Periclean Athens was rebuilding after ten years of war, the city threw a festival honoring the god of metallurgy, Hephaistos. His feet twisted in opposite directions, the “god of the dragging foot” would have cut a zigzagging path across the stage, in sacred dramas celebrating his ingenuity and adaptive intelligence. In contrast to the bodily ideal that Aristotle takes as a foundational metaphor for proper speech, writing, and dramatic construction, Hephaistos moves laterally rather than linearly, challenges received ideas, and responds inventively to chance and change. His sudden rise to popularity in 420 BCE is the starting point for our investigation of ways in which extraordinary bodies have always been central to theatre. The course’s premise is that being embodied is never a private affair. We will explore how public acts of theatre-making can challenge and expand notions of what our bodies are and what they can do: our abilities, boundaries, rights, and relationships. Moving forward to modern figures such as Antonin Artaud, we will study plays that contest the metaphorical, moral, and medical meanings given to disability, and use the stage to body forth different models of individual and communal health. We will end with the present work of companies run by artists with disabilities, including Judith Thompson’s RARE Theatre Company; Stephan Wolfert’s DE-CRUIT, and Deaf West Theatre.

Throughout, we will ask: How do these plays work to construct or critique ideas of “normalcy”? How do they make visible forms of systemic oppression, and what methods and strategies do they offer for moving toward a more inclusive society? What kinds of empathic understanding of different bodily experiences are made possible by the elements of theatre —stories, sights, sensations—and what are their limitations?