Winter 2000

This information effective for Winter 2000.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Theater Arts

[THEA-060B-01] [THEA-160-01]

Theatre Arts 60B: Development of Western Theatre Arts, 1581-1895

Professor Mark Franko
Classroom: Barn Theatre
TAs: Nancy Kelly and Jay Martin

Winter 2000
Time TBA
Office: PA18

This course is a survey of performance genres, styles of movement and acting, forms and locations of display, and concepts of theatre from the late Renaissance through the late nineteenth century. Our materials encompass what is generally called the early-modern period, with some overlap with Modernism, which is sometimes thought to have begun around 1860. Materials include theatre, dance, and opera. Students can expect preliminary exposure to some of the major theoretical ideas, literary texts, and libretti.

Students will attend class and discussion sections. Bring reading for the day with you to lectures and sections. There will be quizzes based on the lectures and class readings on a regular basis. There will be one critical paper based on a required performance (January 29th). This paper (2 pages) should be handed in to your TA at your first discussion section meeting the following week. There will also be a midterm exam and a final exam.

Required texts:
Shakespeare, Hamlet,
Shakesperare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Molière, The Misanthrope
Racine, Phaedra
Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer
Goethe, Faust, Parts One and Two
Ibsen, Peer Gynt
Strindberg, The Father
Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

Class Reader (at UCSC Copy Center)

Course Outline

*week one:*
Jan. 5:	Classic Japanese Theatre Forms: 16th century [videos: Kabuki and Bunraku]
Jan. 7:	French Court Ballet: 16th & 17th century Le Ballet Comique de la Reine
*week two:*
Jan. 12:	The English Renaissance Stage Shakespeare, A Midsummer Nights Dream [video: Reinhardt's Dream: excerpts]
Jan. 14:	Shakespeare, Hamlet [video: Olivier's Hamlet: excerpts]
*week three:*
Jan. 19:	Seventeenth-century French Comedy Molière, The Misanthrope
Jan. 21:	Seventeenth-century French Tragedy Racine, Phaedra
*week four:*
Jan. 26:	Ballet d'Action: Eighteenth-century Reform Noverre, "Two Letters on Dancing" [video: Don Juan]
Jan. 28:	Eighteenth-century Mirthful Comedy Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer
Jan 29:	Mainstage Performance: Tony Church, "Give Them a Bit of Mystery." REQUIRED ATTENDANCE. 8:00pm (free)
*week five:*
Feb. 2:	The Development of Opera Mozart, The Magic Flute (video)
Feb. 4:	Kleist, "On the Marionette Theater"
*week six:*
Feb. 9:	Wagner: Gesamtkunstwerk Wagner, Tristan and Isolde
Feb. 11:	*Midterm Exam*
*week seven:*
Feb. 16:	Goethe's Faust Goethe, Faust, Part I
Feb. 18:	Goethe, Faust, Part II
*week eight:*
Feb. 23:	Nineteenth-century Classical Ballet Petipa/Ivanov, Swan Lake
Feb. 25:	Late Nineteenth-century Naturalism Ibsen, Peer Gynt
*week nine:*
Mar. 2	Pre-Modern Dance Duncan, "The Dance of the Future" [video: Fuller, Duncan]
Mar. 4:	Poetic Realism Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard [guest: Kathy Foley]
*week ten:*
Mar. 9:	Symbolism Maeterlink, TBA
Mar. 11	Fin-de-siècle Decadence Wilde/Strauss, Salomé
	*FINAL EXAM PLACE AND TIME TBA*

[top of page]

Theater Arts 160: Dramatic Theories

We will focus on theories of drama by looking at the actor as a complex of emotional, physical, and psychic components in different historical and aesthetic moments. This course is designed principally around the major theatrical innovations of the twentieth-century, and its purpose is both historical and theoretical. Each student will present a ten-minute "exposé" on a subject of his or her choice, which should be drawn from the syllabus or, in exceptional instances, from adjacent materials. Other course requirements are active participation in a lecture/seminar framework, and one final paper (5-7 pages).

Days/Time/Location TBA

Books on order:

Antonin Artaud, The Theater and its Double
Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht
Euripedes, The Bacchae
Wole Soyinka, The Bacchae of Euripedes. A Communion Rite
Class Reader (available for purchase at Copy Center)

Course Outline

*week one:*
Jan 7	Introduction
Jan 9	Diderot, The Paradox of Acting
*week two:*
Jan 14	Kleist, "On the Marionette Theater" [clips of Isadora Duncan, Max Reinhardt, A Midsummer Nights Dream]
Jan 16	Schlemmer, "Man and Art Figure" [Schlemmer, "Bauhaus dances"]
*week three:*
Jan 21	Artaud, "The Theater and the Plague," "Metaphysics and the Mise en Scène," in The Theater and its Double (15-47)
Jan 23	Artaud, "The Alchemical Theater," and "On the Balinese Theater," and "Oriental and Occidental Theater," in The Theater and it Double (48-73)
*week four:*
Jan 28	Artaud, "No More Masterpieces," "The Theater and Cruelty," "The Theater of Cruelty: First Manifesto," in The Theater and its Double (73-100)
Jan 30	Brecht, Baden Lehrstück Benjamin, "What is Epic Theatre?" and "Studies for a Theory of Epic Theatre" (in Understanding Brecht, 1-25)
*week five:*
Feb. 4	Brecht, "Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting," "A Short Organum for the Theater"
Feb. 6	Grotowski, "Towards a Poor Theatre," "The Theatre's New Testament," and "He Wasn't Entirely Himself" [Ryszard Cieslak, the "plastiques" & the "corporels"]
*week six:*
Feb. 11	Euripedes, The Bacchae Soyinka, The Bacchae of Euripedes
Feb. 13	Schechner, "Restoration of Behavior" in Between Theater and Anthropology (35-65).
*week seven:*
Feb 18	Schechner, "Restoration of Behavior"
Feb 20	[The Performance Group, Dionysus in '69]
*week eight:*
Feb. 25	exchange day
Feb. 27	Schechner, "In Warm Blood: the Bacchae" "The Politics of Ecstasy," Auslander, "From the Politics of Ecstasy to the Ecstasy of Communication"
*week nine:*
Mar. 4	[A Primer for Pina]
Mar. 6	[Bausch, BlueBeard]
*week ten:*
Mar. 11	Blau, The Audience (excerpt)
Mar. 13	Conclusions *final papers due today*

Bibliography

Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and its Double. New York: Grove Press, 1958.

Auslander, Philip. Presence and Resistance. Postmodernism and Cultural Politics in Contemporary American Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Benjamin, Walter. Understanding Brecht. London: Verso, 1983.

Blau, Herbert. The Audience. (or last chapter of Theatre at the Vanishing Point?)

Brecht, Bertolt. "Baden Lehrstück," in Tulane Drama Review 4/4 (May 1960): 118-133.

---. Brecht on Theatre. The Development of an Aesthetic. Ed. and trans. John Willett. New York: Hill & Wang, 1964.

Diderot, Denis. The Paradox of Acting. New York: Hill & Wang, 1957.

Euripedes. The Bacchae of Euripedes. Trans. C. K. Williams. New York: Noonday, 1990.

Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. Denmark: Odin Thearets Forlag, 1968.

Kleist, Heinrich von. "On the Marionette Theater," in German Romantic Criticism. Ed. Leslie Willson. New York: Continuum, 1982: 175-218.

Kleberg, Lars. Theatre as Action. Soviet Russian Avant-Garde Aesthetics. Trans.Charles Rougle. London: Macmillan, 1993. PN2193E86K591993

Rudnitsky, Konstantin. Meyerhold. The Director. Trans. George Petrov. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1981. PN2728M4R813

The Performance Group. Dionysus in 69. New York: Farar, Straus & Giroux, 1970.

Schechner, Richard. "In Warm Blood: The Bacchae (1967)" and "The Politics of Ecstasy (1968)." Public Domain. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969: 93-107; 209-228.

---. "Restoration of Behavior," in Between Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985: 35-116.

Schlemmer, Oskar. "Man and Art Figure." The Theater of the Bauhaus.

Soyinka, Wole. The Bacchae of Euripedes. A Communion Rite. London: Methuen, 1973.

[top of page]