Highlighted course codes below link to a more detailed instructor course description (these are subject to change), More course descriptions are forthcoming.
FIRST YEAR: DRE121H5F | DRE122H5S SECOND YEAR: DRE200H5F | DRE222H5S THIRD YEAR: DRE347H5F | DRE352H5S FOURTH YEAR: DRE422H5S | DRE463H5F
Course Title: Traditions of Theatre and Drama
Course Code: DRE121H5F
Instructor: Jacob Gallagher-Ross
This course is an introduction to key moments from theatrical history, surveying the period from antiquity to (roughly) the eighteenth century. While it operates as a stand-alone course, it also serves as the precursor to DRE 122, which covers the period from (roughly) the eighteenth century to the present. We'll read a selection of important plays ranging from ancient Greek tragedies to nineteenth century melodramas. We'll study the performers who brought those plays to life, the theatres they performed in, and the audiences who went to see them. And we'll talk about the afterlives of these old plays, many of which are regularly performed today.
The theatre has always been a place to think—about politics, about religion, about social life, about cultural inheritances or projected futures, about the theatre itself. We’ll weigh the arguments of theatre’s most passionate advocates and its fiercest enemies; discuss its complex exchanges with other art forms; and consider its avid incorporation of new technologies, from the invention of writing to the arrival of electric light.
Selected Major Readings: TBA
First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Aeschylus, Agamemnon; Euripides, Bacchae; Arisophanes, Lysistrata.
Method of Instruction: Lecture, class discussion, tutorials
Method of Evaluation: Final Exam, short papers, creative project, class and tutorial participation.
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Course Title: Modern and Contemporary Theatre and Drama
Course Code: DRE122H5S
Instructor: Jacob Gallagher-Ross
Picking up where DRE121 left off, this course is an introduction to selected plays, aesthetic theories, and performance techniques from the nineteenth century to (roughly) the present. We’ll watch theatre artists contend with the dominant philosophical ideas, aesthetic values, and political realities of their time, as they attempt to create artworks capable of responding to—or even creating—a modern world. While doing so, they transformed the molecular structure of theatre, pulling apart traditional ways of understanding narrative, illusion, and character—destroying the old, to make way for the new.
Selected Major Readings: A range of modern and contemporary plays, manifestos, and contextual materials.
First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Ibsen, A Doll's House, TBA
Method of Instruction: Lecture, class discussion, discussion-based tutorials.
Method of Evaluation: Final exam, short papers, creative project, class and tutorial participation.
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Course Title: Canadian Theatre History
Course Code: DRE200H5F
Instructor: Nancy Copeland
This course will give an introduction to the history and historiography of theatre in Canada, mainly in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course will focus substantially, though not exclusively, on Toronto. Toronto has been a theatre hub since the nineteenth-century, important historical sites are still extant and accessible, and significant companies are still active. We will investigate significant events, institutions, companies, and individuals; we will also critically examine the materials and methods used to construct Canadian theatre histories. Important themes will be changing definitions of “Canadian” theatre and of “theatre” itself. Readings will consist of primary documents and critical articles, supplemented by selected, historically-significant plays.
Selected Major Readings: Many readings will be made available through Quercus Plays: TBA.
First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: A. Filewod, "Named in Passing: Deregimenting Canadian Theatre History"; R. Knowles, "Just the High Points? A Canadian Theatre Chronology"; R. Massey, "Theatregoing, Christmas 1913".
Method of Instruction: Lecture/ discussion.
Method of Evaluation: Short responses; final essay; test; participation; final exam during examination period.
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Course Title: The Performance Text
Course Code: DRE222H5S
Instructor: Jacob Gallagher-Ross
In this class, we’ll investigate the relationship between dramatic texts and theatrical performance. Every play is both a literary work and a blueprint for potential productions. They can be read closely like other texts; but reading plays also demands special skills. We’re not just reading what’s there, but for what could be there: the performance possibilities that might be realized onstage. No production can ever capture every shade of a play's meaning, or every potential interpretation—but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to see as much as we can. This class will be an exercise in noticing the telling details that lead to original readings—whether in a paper or a production—and in testing those readings with performance. We’ll therefore approach dramaturgical analysis and performance on parallel tracks. As scholars, we'll read, interpret, and write critically about a range of modern and contemporary plays. As performers, we'll stage theatrical investigations that bring those critical readings to life.
Selected Major Readings: Plays by Buchner, Ibsen, Brecht, Beckett, Churchill, Birch.
First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Fuchs, "EF's Visit to a Small Planet"; Buchner, Woyzeck; Ibsen, Hedda Gabler.
Method of Instruction: Lecture, class discussion, workshop sessions
Method of Evaluation: Performance projects, three short essays, participation.
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Course Title: Studies in Theatre and Drama Studies: Performance and Popular Culture
Course Code: DRE347H5F
Instructor: Stephen Johnson
This course will examine performance practice in popular culture, drawing examples from the traditions of such 'illegitimate' Western European forms as the dime museum, circus, vaudeville, burlesque, the blackface minstrel show, and dramatic forms such as melodrama and horror/grand guignol. The course will examine popular performance in both its historical setting, and its contemporary legacies and revivals (so, for example: burlesque, neo-burlesque, and nerdlesque; le grand guignol theatre and contemporary horror). Issues of race, gender, class, and physical and cultural diversity will be foregrounded in all discussion. All students will be involved in primary-research explorations of one or more of these forms, and an exploration of individual cultural traditions and interests will be welcomed. On-line and web-based reading and research are a part of this course. A research project run by the instructor will be used by way of example, with a focus on the broad spectrum of popular performance across cultures in Canada. Guest scholar/artists will be invited to some classes for class interviews.
Selected Major Readings: All readings will be provided in excerpt or by link on a dedicated course website. All will comply with appropriate copyright and permissions for fair use in an educational environment.
First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Not applicable.
Method of Instruction: In-class lecture-discussion and interviews, on-line reading/research.
Method of Evaluation: Written submissions based on class readings; mid-term test; final out-of-class essay; participation.
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Course Title: Stage to Screen
Course Code: DRE352H5S
Instructor: Laine Zisman Newman
Media culture has a remarkable influence on our daily lives, perceptions, and behaviours. It influences what we perceive as “normal” and how we interact with others; the language we use, the way we dress, and our choice of education, employment, and familial structures are all influenced by visual culture and media. While film and television are increasingly the dominant form of media – consumed in our homes, on our phones, and on laptops, undoubtedly visual culture exists in others format as well. This course will explore live and screen performance, particularly examining the relationship that exists between the two in the form of adaptations. Our readings will include scholarly articles, plays, screenplays, and fan fiction, as well as assigned viewings of movies, TV series, and clips online.
Using critical media theories and performance studies, alongside queer and intersectional feminist theories, we will analyze adaptations and representations. This course will be both practical and theoretical. Our assignments will offer opportunities to critically question and engage diverse mediums and most importantly: you will be asked to ask questions. Asking a good question shows the ability to not only repeat and understand information, but to contribute your own original insights to our fields of study.
Selected Major Readings: Many of our theoretical readings will be posted on blackboard, students will be responsible for watching films (via Netflix, Kanopy, or iTunes), and must purchase select plays. Our readings will include works by Stuart Hall, bell hooks, Peggy Phelan, and Sara Ahmed alongside viewings such as Spike Lee's Chi-Raq, 10 Things I Hate About You, RENT, Rupaul’s drag race, and Incendies.
Method of Instruction: Alongside lectures, the course will heavily rely on participation and discussion. You will be asked to critically engage material in class through group activities and are expected to come prepared to discuss and analyze the assigned readings and viewings. .
Method of Evaluation: There will be a variety of assignments, including discussion facilitation, group presentations, essays, and media production. Active participation (which goes beyond attendance) will be a significant component of the course.
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Course Title: Senior Seminar II: Performing Autobiography
Course Code: DRE422H5S
Instructor: Nancy Copeland
This course will explore the theory and practice of autobiographical performance. Autobiographical performance includes both plays and other forms of performance based in the personal experiences of their makers. Readings will include autobiographical performance theory as well as examples of autobiographical performance with an emphasis on Canadian examples. Examples may include work from the current Toronto season. There will be an option of drafting an autobiographical performance in place of a final essay.
Required Readings: Selections form Deirdre Heddon, Autobiography and Performance.(Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); selected autobiographical performance texts TBA
First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Heddon; TBA
Method of Instruction: Class discussion.
Method of Evaluation: Participation; in-class presentation; short written assignments; final essay or practical project.
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Course Title: Senior Seminar: Digital Dramaturgies
Course Code: DRE463H5F
Instructor: Jacob Gallagher
In recent years, digital technologies of reproduction and communication have multiplied exponentially, bringing with them new modes of storytelling, new forms of personal expression, and, indeed, new ways of feeling. The Internet and smartphones allow instantaneous chat across global networks; media communities like YouTube have created venues for amateur performances to reach mass audiences; social media platforms host vicious political debates and provide virtual infrastructure for progressive activists; and the enforced brevity of Facebook status updates, Twitter posts, and text messages have created compressed, allusive idioms out of everyday speech. These and other rapid technological and cultural changes have transformed theatre, the oldest of “old media.”
This seminar will explore these changes, examining theatre’s place in a world conditioned by new media and the place of these new media in the theatre. From avatar performances in Second Life, to Twitter plays, to dramatic texts “written” by algorithms, to computer chatbots restaging debates between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky, to YouTube karaoke, to flash mobs, to transmedia performances, to the boundless archives enabled by digital recording—we'll consider the manifold ways that technology can perform. We’ll ask what is considered “live” theatre in a digital age, and how new media share the stage with more traditional forms of performance.
Required Readings: TBA
First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: TBA
Method of Instruction: Seminar discussion, student presentations, creative projects.
Method of Evaluation: Short and long paper, creative project, student presentations, seminar participation.
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