The Big American Play: Pulitzer Prize Winners in Performance

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

A class for actors, writers, and scholars, The Big American Play will dig into theatre's role in the American conversation on race, class, and gender. Students will analyze scripts, research cultural contexts, rehearse scenes, and perform up to four public readings of selected plays. All students will participate in each approach at least once, then will have the option to focus on either acting or dramaturgy. Students will also curate a season of plays for the current American moment, choosing their ideal performance context for each event and articulating the vision that drives their choices. Pulitzer prize-winning plays include musicals, comedies, dramas, and cutting edge experiments by diverse American playwrights like Suzan Lori Parks, Michael R Jackson Paul Vogel, Lynn Nottage,, August Wilson, Annie Baker, Sam Shepard, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Neil Simon, and Zona Gale.