Social Identity and Dramatic Character in Historical Practice

3 units

This course examines the roles that dramatic characters play within the worlds of the play and performance culture they inhabit. In some cases, we can speak of metaphorical masks presented to the world; in others, the theater may use actual masks. We begin with classical antiquity, examining the differentiation of physical masks and characters in both tragedy and comedy (we will note that the word person comes from the Latin word persona, the word for mask in ancient Roman comedy). We then consider the complex system of types in classical Indian and later Kathakali dance-drama: types that each had specific emotions associated with them. Chinese musical theater of the fourteenth century, with strong ties to a rapidly growing urban environment, had its own distinct types. Following this unit we consider the masked characters of Italian Renaissance comedy (the commedia dell'arte) and its uncanny parallels to the nearby Karogöz, Turkish shadow puppet theater. We next move to the theater of Shakespeare, considering the boy actor and gender fluidity in Twelfth Night. Then we consider the realist playwright Ibsen, in view of the social roles performed by the play's characters. In Cloud Nine, Carol Churchill gives us insights into the performance of gender in modern life. A unit on modern and contemporary African drama examines the performance (or erasure) of political identity in crisis, as we read Athol Fugard's Sizwe Bansi is Dead and also the play Woza Albert! (Mtwa, Ngema, Simon). The course concludes with two African-American plays, August Wilson's Fences and Lynn Nottage's Sweat. This course fulfills the Studies in Historical Practice requirement for Drama majors and minors.