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Modern Drama >> Content Detail



Study Materials



Readings

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After a table summarizing the works covered in each lecture session, this page presents complete lists of required texts, outside plays, films, and additional readings.


SES #TOPICSFILMS
1Introduction and Overview
2Shaw's Pygmalion and the Drama of LanguagePygmalion
3Pygmalion from Page to ScreenMy Fair Lady
4Pygmalion, My Fair Lady, and the Musical Drama
5Pirandello's Henry IV and Psychological Relativity
6Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children
7Brechtian Politics and Dramaturgy, continued
8Beckett, Happy DaysBetrayal
9Beckett, Pinter, and Domestic Absurdism
10Williams, A Streetcar Named DesireA Streetcar Named Desire
11Streetcar, Poetic Realism, and the Method
12Hwang, M. ButterflyM. Butterfly
13Wilson, The Piano Lesson
14Williams, Hwang, Wilson: American Dreams
15Soyinka, Kongi's Harvest
16Smith, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 Twilight: Los Angeles
17Twilight Reflections, and Kushner, Angels in America, Part 1
18Kushner, Angels in America, Parts 1 and 2
19Angels Reflections
20Frayn, Copenhagen, Streetcar
21Stoppard, Hapgood
22Stoppard
23Churchill, A Number
24Conclusions



Required Texts


Amazon logo Shaw, George Bernard. George Bernard Shaw's Plays. Edited by Sandie Byrne. New York, NY: Norton, 2002. ISBN: 0393977536.

Amazon logo Pirandello, Luigi. Pirandello's Henry IV. Translated by Tom Stoppard. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2005. ISBN: 0802141943.

Amazon logo Brecht, Bertolt. Mother Courage and her Children. New York, NY: Grove/Atlantic, 1987. ISBN: 0802130828.

Amazon logo Beckett, Samuel. Happy Days. New York, NY: Grove/Atlantic, 1987. ISBN: 0802130763.

Amazon logo Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. New York, NY: New Directions, 1980. ISBN: 081120765X.

Amazon logo Hwang, David Henry. M. Butterfly. New York, NY: Plume, 1993. ISBN: 0452272599.

Amazon logo Soyinka, Wole. Collected Plays 2. New York, NY: Oxford, 1975. ISBN: 0192811649.

Amazon logo Wilson, August. The Piano Lesson. New York, NY: Plume, 1990. ISBN: 0452265347.

Amazon logo Smith, Anna Deveare. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. New York, NY: Anchor, 1994. ISBN: 0385473761.

Amazon logo Kushner, Tony. Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches. New York, NY: Theatre Communications Group, 1993. ISBN: 1559360615.

Amazon logo ———. Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika. New York, NY: Theatre Communications Group, 1993. ISBN: 1559360739.

Amazon logo Stoppard, Tom. Plays 5. New York, NY: Faber & Faber, 2000. ISBN: 0571197515.

Amazon logo Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen. New York, NY: Anchor, 2000. ISBN: 0385720793.

Amazon logo Churchill, Caryl. A Number. New York, NY: Theatre Communications Group, 2003. ISBN: 1559362251.



Outside Play List


Shaw, George Bernard. Heartbreak House. Man and Superman.

Synge, John Millington. The Playboy of the Western World.

O'Casey, Sean. The Plough and the Stars.

O'Neill, Eugene. Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Frisch, Max. Biedermann and the Firebugs.

Garcia Lorca, Federico. The House of Bernarda Alba.

Coward, Noel. Private Lives.

Brecht, Bertolt. Galileo.

Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. After the Fall.

Williams, Tennessee. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The Rose Tattoo.

Ionesco, Eugene. Rhinoceros. The Lesson.

Pinter, Harold. The Homecoming.

Orton, Joe. Entertaining Mr. Sloane.

Albee, Edward. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Soyinka, Wole. Death and the King's Horseman.

Fugard, Athol, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona. The Island.

Fornes, Maria Irene. Fefu and her Friends.

Dorfman, Ariel. Death and the Maiden.

Puig, Manuel. The Kiss of the Spider Woman.

Shange, Ntozake. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.

Wilson, August. Fences. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

Mamet, David. Glengarry Glen Ross.

Shepherd, Sam. True West.

Friel, Brian. Translations.

Barker, Howard. Scenes from an Execution.

Churchill, Caryl. Blue Heart.

Sondheim. Sweeney Todd. Sunday in the Park with George.

Vogel, Paula. How I Learned to Drive.

Parks, Suzan-Lori. Top Dog/Underdog.

Kushner, Tony. Homebody/Kabul.



Films


Asquith, Anthony and Leslie Howard. Pygmalion. 1938.

Cukor, George. My Fair Lady. 1964.

Jones, David Hugh. Betrayal. 1983.

Kazan, Elia. A Streetcar Named Desire. 1951.

Cronenberg, David. M. Butterfly. 1993.

Levin, Marc. Twilight: Los Angeles. 2000.

Nichols, Mike. Angels in America. 2003. (Optional viewing.)



Additional Readings


Amazon logo Wothern, William B. "Approaching the Epic Theatre" and "Casebook on Brecht." Modern Drama: Plays, Criticism, Theory. San Diego, CA: Harcourt, 1995, pp. 736-737 and 392-420. ISBN: 015501191X.

Marx, Karl. "Alienation and Social Classes," "Theses on Feuerbach," and "Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation." The Marx-Engels Reader. Edited by Robert C. Tucker. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1972, pp. 104-109 and 316-318.

Amazon logo Brecht, Bertolt. "Short Description of a New Technique of Acting Which Produces an Alienation Effect." In The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader. Edited by Michael Huxley and Noel Witts. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996. ISBN: 0415116287.

Miller, Arthur. "On Broadway: Notes on the Past and Future of American Theater." Harper's Magazine, March 1999.

The Piano Lesson: A Charles Family Tree (PDF)

Lahr, John. "Been Here and Gone: How August Wilson Brought a Century of Black American Culture to the Stage." The New Yorker, April 16, 2001, 50-65.


 








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