Introduction to Drama and Theatre

This course explores changing cultural and historical conceptions of drama and theatre from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. By giving equal importance to plays and manifestoes from the Global South, this course will challenge Eurocentric approaches to modern drama and theatre. We will engage with the work of Dharamvir Bharti, Georg Büchner, Athol Fugard, Henrik Ibsen, Adrienne Kennedy, Anton Chekhov, Wole Soyinka, Bertolt Brecht, Girish Karnad, August Wilson, Samuel Beckett, Griselda Gambaro, Jerzy Grotowski, Gao Xingjian, Caryl Churchill, and Manjula Padmanabhan through various sources (dramatic texts, videos and photographs, manifestoes, posters, audience and critical response, etc.) to investigate the relationship between theatre and the modern world.