Gabrielle Randle-Bent

This course is a deep investigation into the possibility of dramaturgy as intrepid and curious storytelling and the role of the dramaturg in building worlds with playwrights, inhabiting worlds with productions, and cultivating worlds with audiences and institutions. We will think across discipline about the methodologies that make dramaturgy a heuristic knowledge practice. We will think critically about existing genealogies, best practices, and innovations in the theatre industry. Most importantly, we will engage in our own civic-minded dramaturgical practice and how engaged, thoughtful storytelling might have impacts beyond the walls of the classroom and the theatre.

Instinctively we know what a classic is and does in our culture. From Coca Cola to Air Jordans, a classic is a material artifact that resonates across time, class, race, creed and nationality. A classic has staying power, whether it evolves, remains fresh, or re-invents itself in new contexts. In drama, a classic is a more fraught concept. The tradition of a classic canon has been rightly and thoroughly critiqued as racist, misogynist, and exclusionary. In spite of this, the idea of a classic still abides and holds sway in the cultural imaginary. Taught by Associate Artistic Director Gabrielle Randle-Bent, this course takes as its point of departure that Court Theatre is “The Center for Classic Theatre.” We begin with the question: What are the practical, critical, and dramaturgical implications for an institution committing to the production of classic work? We will read literary and dramatic criticism to better understand the idea of classic text, we will study the structure of modern regional theatre to interrogate the economic necessity for the production of classic work on contemporary stages, and finally we will read canonical, a-canonical, and new works of theatre to begin to articulate a dramaturgy of Classic Theatre on our own terms.