Welcome to Play and Script Analysis
This course is designed for passionate, creative majors and minors in Theatre. It is also required for all majors and minors in Theatre. Throughout the semester, you will be asked to prioritize questions of how or why over what. Rather than ‘what happens in Act III’ or ‘what does Aristotle say on page 6,’ you will learn to approach your practice, research, and coursework using the language of criticism, theory, and practice.
Why Take This Class?
Play and Script Analysis provides an ‘inside-out’ approach for the reading of plays, such that each participant develops methods of analysis, interpretation, and creative thinking individuated to their academic and/or practical needs.
Why does the department require this class?
You may have noticed that your professors like to use terms that end with ‘-ism’ or ‘-ology’ (examples you might recall from Introduction to Theatre: postmodernism, globalization, interculturalism). Maybe you had to memorize or reproduce these terms in an essay. This semester, we work from this basis (the what) so you’ll learn not just to define terms having to do with theatre, drama, and performance, but to finesse your own processes of artistic practice, analysis, and research.
Why do I want you to take this class?
Every assignment in this course is designed to help you develop your own approach to a final project: this may be a research paper, an original piece of dramatic writing, a dramaturgical sourcebook. You tell me what you’re interested in creating, and I’ll do my best to help you get there.
