GLS/HUM/THE 295A: THE PLAY OF IDEAS

(Ellen Mease) 4 credits, prerequisite: none. A multidisciplinary course based on the best text-based or literary plays in performance in the fall 2010 season. The British theatre scene is always rich with plays that seize on the leading ideas in political and cultural life, philosophy, science, and/or intellectual history. The Greek tragedians, Shakespeare, German Romantics like Schiller, writers of revolt (Ibsen, Shaw, and Brecht), modern classics like Beckett, Pinter, Stoppard (Arcadia, Travesties, Coast of Utopia, Rock 'n Roll), Frayn (Copenhagen and Democracy) and other current British, Irish and European playwrights engage their audiences with "smart plays." Through close reading, discussion, analysis of performance and of the political, social and cultural worlds of the play and playwright, this course will study the ways in which drama can be used as a critical tool for thinking and analysis, challenging the orthodox, subverting the complacent. The course may include class interviews and discussions with guest actors, directors and playwrights.