From Temples to Tik Tok: Celebrity and Stardom in Historical Practice

3 units

Today, we eagerly await red carpet and film appearances by emerging stars like Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet, clamor to see Idina Menzel, Audra Macdonald, and Anthony Rapp in the theater, and pronounce ourselves Swifties or members of the Beyhive. We continue to admire living legends like Meryl Streep and classical stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Julie Andrews. But our interest in these stars extends beyond the performances they stage to the images they create with their fashion choices, hobbies, political views, and romantic lives. Centuries ago, despite the absence of flashbulbs, hashtags, and YouTube, actors such as Will Kemp, Nell Gwyn, Sarah Siddons, and Sarah Bernhardt inspired the same devotion in their own publics, who not only flocked to the theaters to see their favorite stars onstage but were also fascinated by any detail that offered a window into their private lives offstage. This course examines the historical relationship between celebrity and performance. Over the course of the semester, we will center theater’s role in the formation and portrayal of celebrity by reading dramas originating from an array of cultures and time periods. We will study plays that were designed to propel relatively unknown performers into a new celebrity status alongside star vehicles specifically tailored to engage and highlight the public profiles of their actors. We will also look at how these theatrical works dramatize the conditions and processes by which celebrity is constructed. As we trace the progression of celebrity from its historical connections with religious figures and monarchs to its more modern associations with performers and monarchs, we will keep in mind the impact of new media and increasing globalization on the creation and solidification of an individual’s fame and public image. Our studies will also draw on contemporary performance theory to parallel the actor’s generation of a theatrical role with the celebrity’s generation of an individual brand and persona. Ultimately this course will demonstrate that the production of celebrity is itself a theatrical act.