This seminar offers a comprehensive examination of the history of theater from early oral cultures to the present. Exploring dramatic literature and theatrical traditions from across the globe, we will sharpen particular focus on the ways various societies have harnessed the power of theater to express, represent, and interrogate the diversity and complexity of the human condition and experience. In addition to surveying and analyzing dramaturgical innovations and formal transformations, we will situate theatrical texts and practices within their socio-historical contexts and contemplate what they perhaps reveal about the communities out of which they emerged. We will also consider how theater has been mobilized across time to inspire fresh imaginings of a more just world.
- Teacher: Isaiah Wooden