Popular Performance

(4 Credits)

A reevaluation of a wide variety of European and American forms that, beginning in the 16th century, were separated from ?high culture? theatre. These include fairground performance, commedia dell?arte, carnival, puppet and mask theatre, mummers? plays, circus, pantomime, minstrel shows, and vaudeville. Exploration of what popular performance does differently than ?high culture? theatre, how it does so, and to whom it addresses itself. A study of characteristic forms and techniques of popular performance, the connection between Western and non-Western forms, and the central role of popular performance in 20th-century theatre.