231008 The Conscious Stage: Political Theater in the United States (S) (WiSe 2018/2019)

Theater in the United States has predominantly been a commercial enterprise, forming part of an ever growing entertainment industry. Yet, since the twentieth century different forms and traditions of political theater developed in the United States out of as well as against the theatrical mainstream. Inspired by, and in turn themselves informing, aesthetic innovations and political counter-movements, a growing number of plays have successfully interrogated the dominant American social, political, economic, and/or cultural discourses and their inherent ideologies. Self-consciously alternative theater companies were founded to provide the public space for these kinds of experiments and viewpoints that were not or only little represented on the mainstream stage.
The course will analyze examples from the different strains of U.S.-American political theater, such as the the aesthetically experimental and politically interventionist endeavors of the Federal Theater project during the Great Depression via politically committed endeavors of the post-World War II years as well as diverse traditions of the “theater of identity”—primarily people of color, women, and LGBT populations— from the 1960s-80s, to contemporary plays and productions about 9/11 or the American presidency.

Learning Goals and Methodology:
On the thematic level, the seminar aims at supporting you in comprehending key terminology, con-cepts, and forms of (U.S. American) political theater and drama. It also seeks to enable you to gain or deepen knowledge of U.S. American history, literature, and culture through the lens of this genre. On the methodologi¬cal level, you shall develop and exercise skills in independently obtaining and assessing infor¬mation, in critically reading and analyzing literary and scholarly texts, in communi-cating facts and ideas to others in oral and written forms, as well as in applying the obtained themat-ic know¬ledge to the analysis of other texts and contexts.