With the onset of the Great War of 1914-19, the human race entered an historical period characterized by the very real possibility—and, therefore, insistent imagination—of disaster on an apocalyptic scale. Not only nations but entire peoples, and even the species itself, began to see themselves under threat from total warfare, genocide, nuclear holocaust, global warming, pandemics, and more. Part of what makes these disasters so frightening is that they are caused not by fate, gods, or an unchanging nature but by human beings themselves. This course will consider theatrical attempts to reckon with this newly fragile world, to give shape and meaning to a modernity characterized by human-caused total disaster. Because catastrophe is by definition the transformation of what is real, normal, and everyday into something impossible to imagine, much of this course will be devoted to experiments beyond dramatic realism, primarily from twentieth and twenty-first century European and U.S. drama. Playwrights may include Caryl Churchill, Samuel Beckett, Thornton Wilder, Karel Capek, María Irene Fornes, José Rivera, Wallace Shawn, Sarah Kane, Anne Washburn, and Taylor Mac.

Questions we will ask include: How do these artists understand the role of theatre in the face of such dire threats, and what role can it play in our own attempts to live with these threats? What techniques does catastrophe demand from designers, actors, directors, writers, and even publishers of playtexts? What sorts of political claims do these plays make, and how do they make them? Who or what do these plays blame? What does the source of the catastrophe being represented (bomb, climate change, war) determine about theatrical form, theme, and plot? How has the age of disaster forced theatremakers to reconsider their understandings of the future, history, war, the body politic, human nature, the role of the intellectual in the public sphere, science, art, and other topics?

Course Requirements:

All readings will be in English (roughly two plays per week plus occasional secondary material). No prior experience with theatre and performance is necessary. Engaged and open-hearted discussion is required, along with a preparedness to read texts that confront painful subject matter. Assignments will include discussion questions posted before class, two interpretive essays based on the course texts, and a longer final project that may be creative.