Sarah McCarroll, MFA, PhD

THEA 4330: Theatre History I - Origins to 1700

 

Catalogue Description and Objectives: This course surveys the development of theatre history and dramatic literature in Classical Greece and Rome, Medieval Europe, Classical China, Japan, and India, Renaissance Italy, Elizabethan and Jacobean England, the Spanish Golden Age, 17th century France, and Restoration England. Theatre is examined as both an artistic and humanistic discipline. Significant plays, playwrights, actors, actresses, producers, managers, designers, and other theatre artists, along with production methods, theatre architecture, and dramatic theory are placed in their historical, political, artistic, social, philosophical, and religious contexts.

 

Objectives for students include:

• Understanding theatre as a cultural product of social, political, and philosophical trends and changes,

• Understanding the cultural and historical traditions of theatre throughout the world,

• Demonstrating a knowledge of the theatrical conventions of each period, significant individual innovators, and their contributions to the theatrical arts,

• Demonstration of a chronological sense of the development of theatre,

• Acquiring a familiarity with a selected sample of dramatic literature from the period covered by the course, and demonstrating the ability identify within those texts the theatrical conventions of a given period, and

• Developing the ability to make connections between theatre of the past and our current theatrical practice.