DRAM40030

Learning Outcomes:

 Engaged with sophisticated theoretical frameworks as they relate to a range of texts, cultures and performances
 Explored and critiqued processes of representation
 Tested key ideas in the history of theatre, media, culture and performance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
 Discriminate between various modes of contemporary cultural and performance practices
 Traced lines of influence and difference across artforms.

Indicative Module Content:

The below content is indicative only.

Schedule adjustment for the first day and on occasion when we have guests

14:00- 14:30- Module Convenor Chat (EJ)

Seminar 1 14:30- 15:5O Documentary and Verbatim Theatres: Politics and Ethics (PH)
Plays: 1. Una McKevitt, The Big Deal & 2. Richard Norton-Taylor, Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry (available via Drama Online).
Reading: Martin, Carol. “Bodies of Evidence.” TDR, vol. 50, no. 3, Sept. 2006, pp.8–15.
Optional: David Hare, “Mere fact, mere fiction.” The Guardian, London: 17 April 2010.
Heddon, Deirdre. “Introduction”. Autobiography and Performance. Palgrave
Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2008.

Seminar 2 16:10- 17:40 Heteroglossia, Interruption, Jargon (EB)

Reading/viewing: sections of plays by Caryl Churchill, and screen media tbc

Week Two: 29 Jan

Seminar 1: 14:00- 15:30 TBC (SALOME PAUL)


Seminar 2: 16:00- 17:30 Remakes, Reboots, and the Risk of the Original Script (JT)
1. The Shark is Broken by Ian Shaw and Jospeh Nixon, Dramatists Play Service, 2024. (I will shortly have a hard copy I can make pdf of it.)
2. David Fear, "Inside 'The Shark is Broken,' the Play about the Making of Jaws," Rolling Stone, August 12, 2023.
3. Excerpt from: Amanda Klein and R. Barton Palmer, Cycles, Sequels, Spin-Offs, Remakes, and Reboots: Multiplicities in Film and Television, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016.


Week Three: 5 Feb

Session 1: 14:00- 15:00 Guest Speaker Emmet Kirwan – (Dublin Old School and Accents) (EJ introduced)
Links: ACCENTS : https://youtu.be/bzWyZBBscug
Dublin Oldschool (Play) : https://youtu.be/BcP6tuZamD0

Seminar 2: 16:00- 17:30: Neo-liberalism and the Dilemmas of Theatre (EJ)
Required Text: Linda, Penelope Skinner (Drama on Line)
Further Readings: Anything by Michael Sandel, David Harvey, etc

Week Four: 12 Feb

Seminar 1: 14:00- 15:30 Memory and testimony: Claudia by Spanish theatre company La Conquesta del Pol Sud with Claudia Poblete Hlaczik (EP)

Reading: This verbatim / documentary play considers the aftermath of the Argentinian dictatorship and the disappearances of thousands of citizens, through the story of Claudia Poblete Hlaczik. The production features autoperformance, video testimony and meta-theatrical strategies to consider how we tell the stories of our lives in the context of national trauma. The text is unpublished and a video of a subtitled performance will be shared.

Reading: Emilie Pine, 'The Commissioned Witness' in The Memory Marketplace


Guest Speaker/Researcher 15:45- 17:00 Deirdre Kinahan- Introduced (EJ CONFIRMED)


Week Five: 19 Feb

Seminar 1: 14:00- 15:30 Voice/Recording: Lip-Synch and Earphone Technique (EB)

Reading/viewing: selected work by Alecky Blythe and others tbc

Seminar 2:16:00- 17:30 Guest Speaker/Researcher: Commemorating and Staging the Anglo-Irish Treaty Archive through Current Politics: ANU's Staging the Treaty and Fishamble's The Treaty (SC)


Week Six: 26 Feb

Seminar 1 14:00- 15:30 Testimony/ Documentary/Film Breaking the Silence, and there's the film First They Killed My Father, based on Loung Ung's same-titled memoir (SP)

Readings:

Seminar 2 16:00- 17:00 Guest Speaker: Francis Shurmaan: Ways of Reding Faith Healer by Brian Friel (FS)


Week Seven: 5 March


Session 1: 14:00 -15:00 Guest Speaker/Researcher : Dr Bisi Adigun on Theatre and Interculturalism with a focus on the work of Arambe and the adaptation of The Playboy of the Western World for the Abbey Theatre. (BA)

Seminar 2 16:00- 17:30 Art, Autobiography, and Technologies of the Self (PH)
Play : Arsenault, Nina. The Silicone Diaries Arsenault, Nina. "A Manifest of Living Self-Portraiture" Canadian Theatre Review, vol. 150, 2012., pp. 64-69.
Read: Stone, Sandy. “The Empire Strikes Back: A Postranssexual Manifesto.” The Transgender Studies Reader, eds. Susan Stryker, et.al. Routledge, London, 2006.


Week Eight: 26 March

Seminar 1: 14:00- 15:30 The Suppliant Women by Aeschylus in a version by David Greig (script on DramaOnline). (EP)
This class will consider restaging ancient Greek drama in a modern context, and the role of performance in claiming and being granted human rights.
Critical reading: Philip Zapkin, 'Reading two Greek Refugee Plays in the Season of the Syrian Refugee Crisis'


Seminar 2: 16:00-17:00 Guest Speaker/Researcher: "Bernard Shaw's his Evolving Views on Irish Independence."(JP)

Week Nine: 2 April
Seminar 1: 14:00- 15:00 Guest Seminar: Representations of Divorce and Whiteness in 2 films, Kramer V Kramer and Marriage Story (RF).


Session 2: 15:30-17:00 Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri by Martin McDonagh: Quests for Justice in McDonagh’s Film work(EJ)
Reading: Extracts from Justice in the Plays and Films of Martin McDonagh (Eamonn Jordan)

Week Ten: 9 Apr 14:00-15:30 The Only Woman in the Room: Representing Gendered Realities (JT)

Required Readings: Read or Listen to Photograph 51. a. Audio Production of: Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler -https://www-dramaonlinelibrary-com.ucd.idm.oclc.org/audio?docid=do-9781580818537&tocid=do-9781580818537_6154459568001.
PDF of script also provided with link below.
b. Jill Dolan, “The Discourse of Feminisms: The spectator and representation,” in The Routledge Reader in Gender and Performance, edited by Lizbeth Goodman, et al., Taylor & Francis Group, 1998. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucd/detail.action?docID=169236. Pgs 288-294.
Optional Reading: Robin Lloyd, “Rosalind Franklin and DNA: How wronged was she?,” Scientific American, 3 Nov. 2010, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/rosalind-franklin-and-dna-how-wronged-was-she/> (accessed 28 Nov. 2016).


Session 2: 16:00-17:00 Guest Speaker/Researcher: Critical Nostalgia and AIDS activism Phoebe O’Leary

And

Seminar 2 17:00-17:3O Module Overview and Assessment Advice (EJ)

Student Effort Hours:

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:

The module is seminar based and sometimes practice in orientation. Essays, Precis, reviews and performance analysis are part of the repertoire of assessment.
Students much have engaged with the prescribed readings prior to class.
The use of AI is not allowed.

Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.

Module Requisites and Incompatibles

Not applicable to this module.
 

Assessment Strategy

 

Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 

Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, on an activity or draft prior to summative assessment
• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Students are given individual feedback on Precis drafts. Feedback on essays is available once the assessment window closes.

CRITICAL READINGS

Auslander, Philip, From acting to performance: essays in modernism and postmodernism (London : Routledge, 1997)

*Boal, Augusto, Theatre of the Oppressed, translated Charles A. & Maria-Odilia Leal McBride (London: Pluto Press, 1979)
------ The rainbow of desire: the Boal method of theatre and therapy (London: Routledge, 1995)

Peter M, Boenisch, ‘coMEDIA electronica: Performing Intermediality in Contemporary Theatre’

Bogart, Anne, A Director Prepares: seven essays on art and theatre (London: Routledge, 2001)

Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau, The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2005)

*Brook, Peter, Evoking (and forgetting) Shakespeare, London: Nick Hern, 2002)
------ A theatrical casebook compiled by David Williams (London: Methuen, 1988)

Butler, Judith, Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of "sex" (London; New York: Routledge, 1993)

*Diamond, Elin, Unmaking mimesis: essays on feminism and theatre (London: Routledge, 1997)

Dolan, Jill, Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater (Michigan, University of Michigan Press, 2005).
*Finney, Gail, Women in modern drama: Freud, feminism and European theater at the turn of the century (New York: Cornell U.P., 1991)

Fischer-Lichte, Erika, The Show and the Gaze (Iowa City: U. of Iowa Press, 1997)

*Fuchs, Elinor, The Death of Character (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1996).

*Grotowski, Jerzy, Towards a Poor Theatre edited by Eugenio Barba, (London: Eyre Methuen, 1976)

Hutcheon, Linda, ‘Feminism and Postmodernism’

*Kobialka, Michal, A Journey Through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos 1944-1990: Tadeusz Kantor (Berkeley: University of California, 1993)

*Lehmann, Hans-Thies, Postdramatic Theatre, translated and with an introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby (London: Routledge, 2006)

*Lo, Jacqueline & Helen Gilbert, ‘Toward a Topography of Cross-Cultural Theatre Praxis’, TDR: The Drama Review, Volume 46, Number 3 (T 175), Fall 2002, pp. 31-53

*Loomba, Ania, Colonialism/ Postcolonialism, (London and New York: Routledge, 1998)

*Leotard, Jean François, The Postmodern Condition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984)

*Miklaszewski, Krzysztof, Encounters with Tadeusz Kantor (London: Routledge, 2005)

Mitter, Shomit, Systems of Rehearsal: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Grotowski and Brook
(London: Routledge, 1992)

Pavis, Patrice, editor, The Intercultural performance reader (London: Routledge, 1996)

------- Theatre at the crossroads of culture/ translated by Loren Kruger (London: Routledge, 1992)

*Phelan, Peggy, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993)

Plesniarowicz, Krzysztof, The dead memory machine: Tadeusz Kantor's Theatre of Death, translated by William Brand (Aberystwyth: Black Mountain Press, 2004)

A Postmodern Reader, ed. by Joseph Natoli and Linda Hutcheon,

Skinner, Penelope, Linda, (London: Faber and Faber, 2015)

Solomon, Elisa, Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender (London: Routledge, 1997)

*Willliams, David, Peter Brook and the Mahabharata: critical perspectives (London: Routledge, 1991)

Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.