Current course offerings

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Course description

Compulsory Third Year Course (Capstone). As its name suggests, this course examines theatre's engagement with themes of violence and conflict, and theatre's subsequent potential to affect its audiences viscerally and ethically. Moving backwards and forwards through time, we trace our way though some of the most extreme plays in the canon, touching on Greek theatre, Renaissance theatre, the nineteenth-century gothic, sensational melodramas, and contemporary iterations of violence on stage, to investigate how certain tropes and approaches have reoccurred or changed over time. Students will read accompanying critical theory and will have the opportunity to develop their own individual research projects. This course aims to deepen students' understanding of the development of some of the more provocative elements of Western theatre history, while consolidating their research skills.

Archived offerings