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This module explores a diverse range of plays and illustrates the shifting historical and performance contexts that govern theatrical expectations and dramaturgical practice. The course will begin by examining Wole Soyinka’s late twentieth-century interpretation of Euripides The Bacchae (c. 400BCE) and consider the extent to which the traditional and imperatives of drama can be reignited within an alternative cultural framework. The course will continue by examining, in historical sequence, a variety of plays each of which make use of different formal conventions and make different assumptions about the nature of the world, the nature of drama, and the nature of audiences. By the end of the course, it is expected that students will be able to analyse critically many of the dramatic and theatrical devices that have been “naturalised” by long usage and appreciate that constant innovation is the only constant in the world of live performance.
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STUDIES IN LITERARY FORM 3: DRAMA
