2013-2014 Drama Course Descriptions

Course Title: Traditions of Theatre & Drama

Course Code: DRE121H5F

Instructor: Timothy Youker

Course Description: This introductory course surveys plays and performance techniques from the Ancient Greeks to the end of the 17th Century, including Western and selected non-Western dramatic works. We will study the work of Sophocles, Seneca, Zeami, Juana Inez de la Cruz, and Aphra Behn, among others, with a focus on situating their works in their historical contexts. We will consider these texts as products of their own times—works shaped by specific historical moments, belief systems, and theatrical economies—while also trying to understand what they offer to contemporary readers and performers. Assignments will emphasize close reading, critical thinking, and rudimentary theatre research skills, which the course’s tutorial sections will help students’ to hone. Students will also experiment with the texts and performance methods covered in class through staged readings of selected play excerpts.

Required Reading: Many required readings are collected in The Norton Anthology of Drama Volume One: Antiquity through the Eighteenth Century (2009), which will be available at the UTM campus bookstore and is a required textbook for the class. Other readings will be distributed electronically via Blackboard or as handouts in class.

First Three Texts to be Studied: Sophocles, Oedipus the King; Euripides, Hippolytus; Seneca, Thyestes

Method of Instruction: A combination of lectures by the instructor, presentations of staged readings or historical research by groups of students, and occasional instructor-led close-reading exercises during the lecture portion of the class; tutorial sections will combine small-group discussions with exercises emphasizing reading, writing, and research skills.

Method of Evaluation:
 - Close reading assignment (10%)
 - Staged Reading/Presentation (10%)
 - Midterm Exam (10%)
 - Final Paper (25%)
 - Final Exam (30%)

Back to 2013-2014 Time Table


Course Title: Modern and Contemporary Theatre and Drama

Course Code: DRE122H5S

Instructor: Timothy Youker

Course Description: This introductory course surveys plays and performance techniques from the late 18th Century to the beginning of the 21st Century. Topics will include Romanticism, Melodrama, Realism, Expressionism, and Feminist and Post-Colonial Theatre. Playwrights including Schiller, Ibsen, Brecht, Treadwell, Soyinka, and Kane will be studied with an emphasis on their original production and reception. Key topics will include how modern divisions among “serious,” “popular,” and “fringe” theatre have developed and been contested. Assignments will emphasize close reading, critical thinking, and rudimentary theatre research skills, which the course’s tutorial sections will help students to hone. Students will also experiment with the texts and performance methods covered in class through staged readings of selected play excerpts.

Required Reading: Many required readings are collected in The Norton Anthology of Drama Volume Two: The Nineteenth Century to the Present (2009), which will be available at the UTM campus bookstore and is a required textbook for the class. Students will also be required to obtain a copy of Friedrich Schiller’s The Robbers, which will be available at the UTM bookstore. Other readings will be distributed electronically via Blackboard or as handouts in class.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Friedrich Schiller, The Robbers; Boucicault, The Poor of New York; Ibsen, Hedda Gabler

Method of Instruction: A combination of lectures by the instructor, presentations of staged readings or historical research by groups of students, and occasional instructor-led close-reading exercises during the lecture portion of the class; tutorial sections will combine small-group discussions with exercises emphasizing reading, writing, and research skills.

Method of Evaluation:
- Close reading assignment (10%)
- Staged Reading/Presentation (10%)
- Midterm Exam (10%)
- Final Paper (25%)
- Final Exam (30%)

Back to 2013-2014 Time Table


Course Title: Canadian Theatre History

Course Code: DRE200H5F

Instructor: Grace Smith

Course Description: This survey course will give students an overview of Canadian theatre history (including significant events, companies, individuals, and dramatic works) while also broadening their research and critical thinking skills and offering them a chance to engage with a variety historical writings and materials. Beginning with timelines and the concept of theatrical 'firsts', such as the performance practices of First Nations peoples or the first colonial performances, and students will be asked to evaluate and contest established Canadian theatre narratives. We will then explore the development of Canadian theatre practices and trends throughout the 19th century, including popular imported theatrical forms and the first Canadian playwrights. The majority of this course will focus on 20th century Canadian theatre, as we move through inter-war theatrical experiments, the slow creation of a professional theatre community, the introduction of government arts funding, and the increase in Canadian playwrights coming out of the new emphasis on Canadian-written work during the 1960s and 70s. Ongoing themes and performance styles/techniques discussed include but are not limited to: political/agit-prop, collective creation, documentary theatre, feminist theatre, aboriginal theatre, queer theatre, intercultural theatre, and nationalist performance.

As this course navigates significant historical landmarks, we will explore the ways in which history is researched and written, and what role the researcher plays in the creation of historical eras, groupings and movements. Students will learn how to conduct independent historical research, as well as methods for evaluating historical sources. We will: compare and contrast different sources and perspectives on significant historical events and figures; explore the act of building a national 'canon' of plays; and question what is included (and excluded) from various sources, timelines, and anthologies.

Required Reading: The Instructor will put together a course pack; various readings online and posted to Blackboard will supplement this course pack. Readings will consist of: significant Canadian plays, scholarly articles, internet resources (such as blogs and company websites), and primary sources/historical documents (when available). Students will be expected to independently seek out additional resources for a number of class assignments.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Däwes, Birgit. “Performing Memory, Transforming Time: History and Indigenous North American Drama.” Indigenous North American Drama: A Multivocal History.

Lescarbot, Marc. “The Theatre of Neptune in New France.”Spectacle of Empire. Ed. Jerry Wasserman.

The Radical Dramaturgy Unit of Optative Theatrical Laboratories. “Sinking Neptune.” Theatre Histories. Ed. Alan Filewod.

Method of Instruction: Instructor lectures, combined with class discussion and student presentation

Method of Evaluation: Assignments will include a performative group presentation, a short primary source analysis project, a final essay or creative project, and a final exam. Students will also be evaluated on their level of class participation and engagement.

Back to 2013-2014 Time Table


Course Title: Shakespeare (performance focus)

Course Code: DRE221Y5Y

Instructor: Holger Syme

Course Description: We will study eleven of Shakespeare’s plays, from all phases of his career as a professional playwright and from all the major genres he worked in: comedy, history, tragedy, and “romance.” The course will contextualize these plays historically and culturally, exploring early modern notions of, for instance, governance, religion, and gender and sexuality. We will pay particular attention to Shakespeare’s works as plays written for and within a specific set of theatrical conventions. The ways in which these texts have been received and transmitted over time (in print, on stage, on the screen) will also be a major theme of our discussions. This section of the course features a weekly two-hour tutorial focused on performance practice; it is designed for Theatre and Drama Studies specialists.

Students in this section MUST enroll in Tutorial 0101 (Wed 2-4)

Required Reading: Titus Andronicus, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Merchant of Venice, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, King Lear, The Tempest.

Text: Preferably a recent edition of the collected works (Norton, Riverside, Longman) or recent single-text editions (Oxford, New Cambridge, Arden, New Folger); you MUST use an annotated text. References in lecture will be to the Norton Shakespeare, 2nd edition.

First Three Texts: Titus Andronicus, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Merchant of Venice.

Method of Instruction: Lecture, performance-focused tutorial

Method of Evaluation: Tutorial participation and performance (30%), regular announced quizzes (15%), close reading exercise (15%), 2 5-7 page essays (40%)

Back to 2013-2014 Time Table


Course Title: The Performance Text

Course Code: DRE222H5S

Instructor: Timothy Youker

Course Description: This course is designed to give students who already have a basic knowledge of theatre history a more sophisticated understanding of how text, speech, gesture, spectatorship, and critique interact with each other in the making, experiencing, and recording of theatre and performance. Specific topics will include: the idea of “dramatic literature,” how it emerged and differentiated itself from oral culture, and how the relationship between “page” and “stage” has been conceptualized in the past; how modern acting theory and production dramaturgy offer practical “interfaces” between artists and texts; and practical examples that help us understand such key terms as drama, theatre, character, text, and (re)enactment by testing the limits of those concepts. We will read theoretical essays, short plays, and excerpts from longer dramatic texts as well as watch performance recordings. Students will also engage in exploratory scene work and writing exercises, and we will collectively engage in extended practical study of at least one full-length text at the end of the semester.

Required Readings: A course pack assembled by the instructor, plus other readings and A/V materials made available online. At least one full-length play, which will be made available at the UTM campus bookstore, will be used late in the semester for extended practical study. Students should also expect to engage in some amount of work with research databases in preparing presentations.

First Texts to Be Studied: TBA; materials for the first weeks will be available in the course pack or distributed via Blackboard or in handouts.

Method of Instruction: Lectures, in-class discussions, small-group scene studies and presentations, writing exercises, live spectatorship experiences (including attendance and discussion of at least one Theatre Erindale production), and extended dramaturgical study of at least one play.

Method of Evaluation: Students will be graded based on:
- Attendance and participation
- An exam on historical material and critical terms
- Weekly reflective writing posted online
- Short writing exercises, including a performance review
- Group scene-study or dramaturgical presentation
- An end-of-term essay

Back to 2013-2014 Time Table


Course Title: Studies in Theatre and Drama: Performing Arts Management

Course Code: DRE344H5F

Instructor: Pil Hansen

Course Description: Artistic visions depend on tailored management strategies for success. Indeed, a vision becomes realizable the moment it is paired with an artistic plan of action, a financial plan and fundraising strategy that is fully responsive to changing circumstances, meaningful audience relationships and outreach initiatives, an anchor in the arts community/industry, and a strong understanding of how one's work and choices contribute to the continued development of the art form and its value in society. All of these aspects are deeply interconnected. Awareness of the interconnections is a powerful tool to increase the impact of creative work.

This course will introduce students to models of arts funding for theatre and dance, approaches to strategic and artistic development, examples of audience outreach and marketing, and discussions of the relationship between these elements and politics of culture. The course will be taught in topic specific modules. Within each module, we begin with analytical discussions of models, progress to case examples of practice, and arrive at the students' supervised production of plans, pitches, and management documents.

DRE344 is a first step towards starting up a new theatre/dance company or facilitating the success of an established company while supporting and strengthening the performing arts.

Required Readings: (NA)

First three texts to be studied: TBA

Method of Instruction: mini lectures, industry guest lectures, discussion, case studies, workshops, and student pitch and response sessions.

Method of Evaluation: reading notes, portfolio of management documents, student pitch, and participation. An essay option is available as an alternative to the portfolio and pitch.

Back to 2013-2014 Time Table


Course Title: Theory of Drama

Course Code: DRE356H5F

Instructor: Martin Revermann

Course Description: Why theory? It is true that for many purposes theatre-practitioners (and theatre-goers) can be perfectly happy, and successful, without ever having thought at all about the theatrical event from a broader theoretical perspective. Adopting such a perspective, however, is an enriching experience (as, I hope, this course will demonstrate). It forces people to think harder about what happens in theatrical communication, and how it happens. Put bluntly, it is an eye-opener, creating awareness of what makes the theatrical event ever so fascinating and unique.

The approach adopted in this course will be a systematic rather than historical one. Questions to be addressed will include:
 - what precisely makes theatre different from other modes of social interaction, especially those that intuitively strike us as highly “staged” and “theatrical” (fashion shows, for instance, or conventions of political parties)?
 - what is peculiar about theatre/drama as a literary genre (as opposed to epic and lyric poetry or novels, for instance)?
 - how does theatre differ from other (performative) arts?
 - how do actors and audiences communicate during the theatrical event, and how can this process be described at an abstract level (i.e. so that it will be useful for analysing theatre across times and cultures)?

Particular attention will be given to “Theatre Semiotics”, the (in my view) most powerful theoretical approach to drama. Sociological and psychological approaches will complement the picture. As a reality check, we will regularly (re)visit plays/performances (esp. by Beckett) to see whether the theoretical approach actually helps our coming to grips with theatre, or whether it is all “smoke and mirrors”.

Back to 2013-2014 Time Table


Course Title: The Audience and the Theatre

Course Code: DRE358H5S

Instructor: Martin Revermann

Course Description: Any actor feels the presence of the audience. They are always there (often in the dark), watching, evaluating, engaged or disengaged, granting or denying collaboration. Being “co-producers” of the theatrical event, their responses are crucial for the success or failure of a production. There is no theatre without an audience (real or imagined), and vice versa. Actors and audiences, however, are not on an equal footing in that their relationship is informed by a fundamental asymmetry of power: regardless of whether actors love or despise their audiences, they need them. The history of actor-audience interaction is, in other words, also a history of manipulation, across times and cultures. Actors, directors and playwrights cannot take the audience’s collaboration for granted: they have to “work them”.

But who are, or were, "they"? This question will be of central concern, both on a theoretical and a historical level. A significant amount of time will be spent on reflecting what makes theatre audiences different from other audiences, and what precisely happens at various stages of the playgoing experience. Ways of analysing the psychology and sociology of theatre audiences will be discussed. In addition, the focus will be on a series of historical case studies from a variety of theatre traditions. The course will conclude with reflections on which factors may or may not re-shape playgoing in the 21st century.

Back to 2013-2014 Time Table


Course Title: Playwriting

Course Code: DRE362H5S

Instructor: Bruce Barton

Course Description: This course is intended to introduce students to a broad range of issues and methods related to the process of playwriting. Through a series of historical/theoretical readings and a variety of practical exercises, students will be encouraged to explore the unique properties of the theatrical environment, with a particular focus on the advanced technologies available in the CCT performance space. Topics for investigation will include general issues (such as structure, language, characterization, metaphor and symbolism, etc.) as well as issues specific to the theatrical context (such as theatrical time and space, movement, engagement with an audience, relationship to other theatrical elements, etc.), and others unique to the CCT space (advanced technologies including projection, video, internet, etc.). Students will also be introduced to physically based and collective strategies of theatrical devising as expanded forms of playmaking. Students will be encouraged to seek out the most productive methods of composing (physically, structurally, intellectually, and imaginatively) for their own practice. The benefit of community—amongst writers, and between writers and other theatre practitioners— will be emphasized through a ‘workshop’ class structure and course assignment design.

Note: Enrolment in the 2011 section of this course requires the submission of a creative writing portfolio by October 15, 2012. Contact the instructor for details (bruce.barton@utoronto.ca).

Required Reading: Selected readings will be posted to Blackboard (copyright permitting) or placed On Reserve at the UTM library.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
• Ayckbourn, Alan. The Crafty Art of Playmaking . Palgrave MacMillan, 2002.
• Spenser, Stuart. The Playwright’s Guidebook . Faber and Faber, 2002.
• Wright, Michael. Playwriting in Process: Thinking and Writing Theatrically . 2nd ed. Newburyport, MA: Focus Pub./R. Pullins Co., 2009.

Method of Instruction: Lecture, discussion, and practical in-class exercises.

Method of Evaluation: Participation and in-class exercises; on-line dramaturgy; weekly out-of-class exercises; final project and class presentation.

Back to 2013-2014 Time Table


Course Title: Senior Seminar: Theatrical Devising

Course Code: DRE420H5S

Instructor: Bruce Barton

Course Description: This course involves the theoretical and practical exploration of theatrical devising as a mode of performance generation and production. We will consider its historical, conceptual, and theoretical roots in a broad range of collaborative performance generation, as well as a selection of contemporary practices and practitioners from Canada and internationally. Students will also have the opportunity to explore practical techniques of training, material generation, and performance through the creation of individual and group projects.

Required Reading: Weekly readings will be posted to Blackboard (copyright permitting) or placed On Reserve at the UTM library.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
• Barton, Bruce. “Devising the Creative Body.” In Collective Creation, Collaboration and Devising. Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English Volume 15. Series General Editor: Ric Knowles. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2008. vii – xxvii.
• Govan, Emma, Helen Nicholson, and Katie Normington. Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.
• Oddey, Alison. Devising Theatre: A Practical and Theoretical Handbook. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.


Method of Instruction: Lecture, structured discussion, group work, workshop exercises.

Method of Evaluation: Participation, online postings, presentations, group work, research documents (essays OR researched and documented performance generation)

Back to 2013-2014 Time Table


Course Title: Theatre, Documents, and “Reality” Media

Course Code: DRE422H5F

Instructor: Timothy Youker

Course Description: This seminar will trace the development of modern documentary, verbatim, and “reality” theatre from the 1920s to the present, along with a handful of pre-20th-century antecedents, addressing how the “old” medium of theatre can absorb and respond to “new” media and other technologies that claim superior access to truth, reality, or the immediate present. Readings will include plays by Ben Jonson, Georg Büchner, Peter Weiss, Anna Deavere Smith, Cherríe Moraga, and the Builders Association, as well as selected theory texts and manifestos. Students will also gather materials for their own documentary projects, which they will have the option of performing at the end of the course, and learn about the ethical and legal issues involved in creating research-based art.

Required Readings: Course readings will include 10-12 plays. Most of these will be available at the UTM bookstore, while the rest will be made available on Blackboard.

First Three Plays Studied: Anonymous, the Chester Pageant of Abraham, Melchisedec, and Isaac (Blackboard); Ben Jonson, News from the New World Discovered in the Moon; Georg Büchner, Danton’s Death

Method of Instruction: Class discussion, lectures, supervised individual research

Method of Evaluation:
1) Class participation
2) Discussion facilitation questions (1 per week)
3) Seminar presentation (1)
4) Final paper OR final performance project