Ateneo - UPO

Performative analysis of contemporay British plays, from the 1960s to the present.

Timberlake Wertenbaker, Plays 2 (Faber & Faber)

Howard Barker, Plays 8 (Bloomsbury)

Samuele Grassi, Looking Through Gender: Post-1980 British and Irish Drama (Cambridge Scholars Pub. 2011)

debbie tucker green, Truth and Reconciliation (Nick Hern Books 2011)

• Get to know the main dramaturgical trends in post-war British theatre.
• Learn to decode the multimodal languages of contemporary theatre, including non-verbal ones. Apply these tools towards a performative reading of theatrical texts: the passage from text to stage.

None.

Lectures; practical exercises of textual and performative analysis.

Written test (in English for English Literature students; in Italian for others) of performance analysis applied to one of the texts read in class and to one chosen by the student from a list of additional texts; two "memoirs" (min. 4 pages) on theatre performances indicated by the teacher.

The module will present texts that illustrate the main trends in contemporary English theater from Pinter to today, with particular attention to the experimentation of dramatic writing. The texts presented in class will be accompanied by guidelines for a performative reading of the texts, analyzing space, time, characters, dramatic development, sound, gesture and movement, props, scenography, as well as their interactions hinted at by the text.
The module requires the viewing of two performances agreed upon with the teacher.

- Ability to analyse dramatic texts in their performative and pragmatic, textual and extra-textual dimensions.
- Ability to carry out a performative analysis of texts in English and Italian.
- Ability to translate short dramatic excerpts, combining linguistic and performative competences.
- Sensibility to the multimodality of the theatrical event both as a spectator and as a writer of spectator’s reports.