THDA 110 - Introduction to Theatre Studies

This course is an initiation for the drama student to learn about the worlds of theatre and performance: an initiation that focuses on the critical tools necessary to begin exploring and identifying practices of thinking, reading, and researching the theater, performance, and the worlds that the critical arts address. The project is to carefully consider the questions: What is theatre? How does it work? Where has it been located? What are the claims of its genres? What might theatre accomplish? The course interrogates the aesthetic and cultural operations of theatre and the dramatic arts in order to identify vocabularies for interpreting the EVENT of the theatre. At its core, the course addresses the question: what does it require to read and interpret the arts of the theatre, theatrical contexts, and its performances? Using scripts, recorded events, criticism, and theory, the course addresses the rich relationship between the HISTORY and the THEORY of theatre and performance practices. Offered yearly. (4 Credits)