Student Interview

Interview, in groups of three, one of your classmates and prepare to report
the following information to the rest of the class:

• Name

• (Possible) major / area of concentration

• Favorite play

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Course Goals

-    To understand the elements, social importance, and
literary merit of drama from
the Classical period to appx. the 20th century

-    To investigate performance theory and apply
this knowledge to written drama

-    To learn to write about drama from multiple
perspectives (sociological, historical, feminist, etc.)

-    To prepare students for 300-level courses about drama

We’ll be reading the following plays which cover almost

every major era of Western theater:

-    Sophocles, Oedipus
-    Euripides, Medea
-    Shakespeare's Hamlet
-    Aphra Behn's Rover
-    Elizabeth Inchbald, The Massacre
-    Ibsen, A Doll House
-    Brecht, Mother Courage

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Review of L. 2

Intro. to Greek Theater
-    Important to civic, religious life of Athens (polis)
-    Women may have been part of the audience (normally at home in the oikos)
-    Only small number of plays still extant

Aristotelian Oppositions

-    Good / bad
-    High / low culture
-    Noble / vulgar
-    Pity / fear
-    Absolute truth / imitation (mimesis)

Aristotle’s Ideal Play

-    The 3 Unities: time, place, and plot (beg., middle, and end)
-    Unified plot
-    Plot over character development
-    “Poetic” (rhythmic, iambic)
-    Well ordered, balanced visual representation

See also: Summary Questions

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Student Questions


1.    Who is the chorus? What are they doing?
2.    Why does Oedipus need the messenger
 to tell him he killed Laius?

3.    Explain the question of fate and why Oedipus never had a chance.
4.    Would Jocasta have stayed with Oedipus if he had
not discovered his situation?

5.    What role does irony play in the tragedy?
6.    What morals is the play teaching the audience?
What’s the underlying theme?

7.    What Classical, heroic flaw is demonstrated?
Is Oedipus a tragic hero?

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Student Questions on Medea

1.    Where does the prophecy of the
outcome of the drama occur?
2.    If Medea had truly loved her children, would she have
used them in her revenge the way she did?
3.    If the children were not killed, would the play
be as emotionally resonant?
4.    Is Euripides the first feminist?
5.    Can Medea be considered a tragic heroine?
6.    How does Medea reflect how women are viewed
in Classical Athens?
7. Why is the notion of having kids so important (Aegeus)?

>> Why did Medea come in third? What does Oedipus' first-place win tell us about Greek audiences?

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Free write for 5 to 10 minutes on the idea of the theater.  

1. “All the world ’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players. / They have their exits and their entrances; / And one man in his time plays many parts, / His acts being seven ages.” Shakespeare, As You Like It (II.vii)

2. “The world ’s a theatre, the earth a stage / Which God and Nature do with actors fill.” Thomas Heywood (1574?–1641), Apology for Actors (1612).

3. “The theatre is the involuntary reflex of the ideas of the crowd.” Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923), French actor. The Art of the Theatre, ch. 3 (1924).

4. “The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the medium has a kindred movement to that of real life, though an artificial setting and form.” George Santayana (1863–1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. Skepticism and the Animal Mind, p. 102.

1.    Does Ophelia ever get buried? Why is the clown a gravedigger?
2.    Why is the play called the Mousetrap (instead of the rat trap)?
3.    Does H really love O? And if so, why does he tell her
to go to a nunnery? Does the way he treat her reflect upon the
way his mother treated his father?
4.    What’s the turning point in the play? When is it that H
could save lives?
5.    Does H become a madman at the end of the play, or is it an act?
6.    What’s the moral message of the play?
7.    Why does only H see the ghost in 3.4?

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Theater of Cruelty (Artaud):

-    no masterpieces
-    interaction with audience
-    visceral experience
-    religious / magic experience
-    harsh sounds and noise
-    gestures that communicate
-    light “interposed in its turn” (639)
-    means to induce trances
-    lyrical action

Similarities to Brecht:

-    no more 4th wall
-    vs. passive spectatorship
-    vs. European-style “theater museum”/theater as high art
-    vs. theater as illusion

Brecht, Epic Theater:

-    alienation effect
-    episodic
-    not plot-driven
-    didactic
-    screens

Free write (10 minutes): What makes a drama a "masterpiece"?

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Student Questions on Mother Courage

1.    What’s the significance of Swiss Cheese’s box?
2.    Why do the characters use slang (nowt)?
3.    Why is she named Mother Courage?
4.    What’s the significance of the children having different
Fathers?

5.    What morals and socio-political questions does the play
address? How does the play relate to Communism?

6.    Does Brecht mean us to take M.C.’s actions literally, or are they
symbolic of what mothers in war go through?

7.    What’s the significance of the songs sung between the scenes
and are they a form of relief or a way to make the play more
Passionate?

8.    Is this work a masterpiece?
9.    What does Brecht try to correct with his version of realism in the
Theater?



Free Write (10 minutes): How does Mother Courage compare to lead characters in other plays we have read (or that you have seen)?








20 Questions: Discover who you are by asking yes or no questions. Once you discover your identity, be prepared to explain the symbolic significance of your persona.

-    Mother Courage
-    Kattrin
-    Eilif
-    Swiss Cheese
-    Cook
-    Chaplain
-    Yvette Pottier
-    A Voice (reads scene descriptions)
-    Peasant
-    Peasant’s wife
-    General

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