230254 American Drama: Dream and Apocalypse (S) (SoSe 2019)

The course covers major plays from twentieth and twenty first-century American drama. American theatre has repeatedly addressed the dynamics and tensions involved in a society and culture based on principles of the American Dream. The course looks at classic American plays like Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Leroi Jones’ Dutchman and Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuf among others. The course will include in-class readings, presentations, in-class writing, discussion, and group work. The objective of the course is to introduce students to major themes of American drama, to study American drama as text and performance (we will also look at film and video versions of plays and scenes) and to understand text and performance in context.