Toggle sidebar
Dr. Paula R. Backscheider
9082 Haley Center
pkrb@auburn.edu
(334) 844-9091
Description:
Three universities in the United States now offer a Ph.D. in performance theory and history, a branch of applied criticism that has made major contributions to literary history, gender studies, and theater practice. Because of the introduction of actresses and the rise of what we now call the social problem play, eighteenth-century drama has special importance. Concerned with the dynamic among playwright, theatre company, and audience, performance studies takes up such questions as how initial performances and later, especially notable performances shape interpretation into our own time. This is true in spite of the fact that major parts can be played in diametrically opposed ways. For instance, Polly in The Beggar's Opera can be the single, shining, romantic figure in a predatory world or the cleverest, most worldly wise and manipulative character. Because so many of these parts seem to be for women, the parts and plays participate in major debates in the larger culture, about, for example, what the nature, capacity, and rights of women are. Another such play is Aphra Behn's The Rover, and both plays will be studies.
Performance studies offers an alternative or supplementary history of appropriate gender behavior, even as it models alternative identities, relationships, and emerging social opinions. The fops, sluts, flirts, cross-dressed people, posturing pirates--some women, and androgynous or exaggeratedly sexed characters that people plays demonstrate such things as the shift to the culture's need for diplomats rather than warriors. Plays to be read for these issues are John Dryden's All for Love, John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife, and the Vanbrugh-Cibber Provoked Husband.
Another major question is how some pieces of high art pass into mass, popular culture and generate numerous, popular imitations. Retrospectively, some of these literary works are recognized as beginning a major shift in literary form and social values. Richard Steele's Conscious Lovers is an example, as it offered a way to move beyond the "hard," cynical comedies of the Restoration and also signaled a shift from reason to "sensibility" as the most admired human characteristic. All of these questions raise the issue of the significance and influence of the theatre in the time when it was the prestige genre, and we will read Samuel Foote's The Dramatist, and Richard Sheridan's The Critic. These plays also raise questions about how much control authors ever have over interpretation.
This seminar will give students the opportunity to practice some of the major methodologies used by performance theory and history specialists in the close study of these and a few other plays.
Syllabus:
Jan. 9: | Introduction. What is performance studies and why does it matter. |
Jan. 23: | The play as text. Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv'd |
Jan. 30: | The play as text and the woman question, 1. |
Feb. 6: | Rudolf Arnheim, "Centers as Hubs" in The Power of the Center, 109-32. |
Feb. 13: | Reports on players and parts. |
Feb. 20: | Who owns a play. The Rover and Venice Preserv'd |
Feb. 27: | The woman question, 2, the masculinity question, 1, and domestic crisis. |
Mar. 6: | The shape of Restoration comedy, gender, and masculinity. |
Mar. 13: | Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage |
Mar. 20: | Reports on a performance history finding. |
SPRING BREAK |
|
April 3: | Domestic crises, masculinity question, 2. |
April 10: |
Aesthetic crisis, 1. |
April 17: | Aesthetic crisis, 2. |
April 24: | Douglas, sentimentality, and theatrical crisis. |
May 1: | Student research reports. Papers due 36 hours after presentation. |
Continuation of presentations on a day to be decided.