Courses

Can making theater be a means of repair? Contemporary dramatists and performance artists have looked out at a planet burdened by multiplying existential threats—ecological catastrophe, militarism, violence against racialized and minoritized groups, and other forms of systemic harm and precarity—and enacted responses to these crises within the theater’s walls. Some artists have staged rites of renewal, hoping to fortify audiences with the resolve necessary to survive a hostile society; others use the stage to rehearse revolutions and overturn the existing order of things; still others turn to comedy in order to interrupt and destabilize oppressive discourses. Responding to crises of this scale requires theater to rethink its own forms and mechanisms. How might established dramatic genres and theatrical conventions give way to new, reparative repertoires of relation?

In this course, we explore how theater has represented, and sought to rectify, existential threat since 1945. We take a particular interest in the embodied processes through which theater comes into being, including rehearsals, collaborations, and other improvised engagements and consensual acts. How is repair attempted through these processes, and to what extent can it be attained? We also consider what forms of reparation may be owed by theatrical institutions to the artists, audiences, and communities that support them. We approach these topics by examining a wide range of performance works from artists across the English-speaking world—from Wole Soyinka to Anna Deavere Smith, and from Jane Taylor to Taylor Mac—and by engaging with the theoretical links that connect catastrophe, crisis, critique, and discernment, asking how these related processes unfold in the theater. Our conversations will continually attend to aspects of live performance, including dramaturgy, design, movement, and direction. Participants in the class will hone their ability to analyze theatrical form and to evaluate the cultural, historical, and political contexts of performance.