The Dictators' Burlesque Ball: Devising Performance as Social Action

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Based on focused research, creative work, and collaborative process, the trajectory of class work is the production of a new dramatic/theatre text within the framework of political burlesque, culminating in a public performance. The students will devise a performance of a BURLESQUE BALL where the invited guests, the most infamous dictators who have made the list, shall gather as the invited guests. In sinister jest and debate, they toast and boast, trying to outdo each other: who among them is the most effective in scheme and style, the most evil as dictator and warlord, has the better method as authoritarian strongman and fascist, warlord and ganglord, sinister clown and trickster, strongman and murderer, charismatic liar, adulterer and thief --- all that applies, to be elected by the audience, and crowned, "Emperor of the Ball." The students will delve into the analysis of documentary theatre texts and performance. They will engage with archival research into global narratives of comparative authoritarianism, global parallel histories of power, politics of torture, and impunity. They will recuperate personal narratives of dictators and fascists and process the movement from memory to national history --- or from history to forgetting and historical revisionism. The students will enrich their texts and evocations of their attitudes towards their subject, through inter-cultural contexts, historical objects, sounds, and the five senses), with the aim of providing multiple paths toward creating a vibrant and visceral new devised theatre piece. The course will also be interdisciplinary with intertextual elaborations through theatre, film, music, dance and movement, visual and performance art, international studies in political ruptures and transformations, global studies in obstructions to peace, humane development, and dignity of peoples. This course will be ideal for any student who desires to explore playwriting and performance, theatre and film, as tools to devise and stage compelling national and global issues, explore the creation of original theatre works that document historical events, contemporary community-based issues and social justice concerns.