American theater, like theaters worldwide, is currently witnessing an epic crisis. Broadway shut down on March 12 and has not re-opened ever since. It is a cause of grieving for the thousands of people affected by it: the actresses and actors, playwrights, directors, costume designers, technicians, etc. And yet, every crisis presents a chance, or, as Winston Churchill supposedly said: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” For it is worth noting that the American theater has remade itself during disaster before:
The Depression led to a flourishing of socially conscious drama that produced a golden age of playwriting, Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty is just a case in point. In the aftermath of World War II, the regional theater movement arose to make the art form more responsive to local audiences and less fixated on profit. As a response to the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and the waves of social movements, theaters increasingly started dealing with issues like racism, social justice, politics, identity in the 1960s and 1970s. Covid19 is not the first pandemic to hit the theatrical world: the AIDS pandemic took its toll in the 1980s. Artists and activists made use of the power of theater to activate people as citizens and engaged human beings. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the post-9/11 climate inspired countless books, films, and, of course, pieces of theater such as Neil LaBute’s The Mercy Seat or Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced. Likewise, in the six months since theaters went dark, we have already seen that theater can arise from the ashes of the world’s (and its own) failures.
In this course, which will be taught remotely via Zoom, we will engage with theater as a forum for political activism and civic engagement. We will concentrate on the 20th and early 21st century and explore how dramatic works engage with the world in a meaningful, objective way. This course is heavily indebted to the idea that when tragedy strikes, we turn to art to help us reflect, explore, understand, and progress.
The Depression led to a flourishing of socially conscious drama that produced a golden age of playwriting, Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty is just a case in point. In the aftermath of World War II, the regional theater movement arose to make the art form more responsive to local audiences and less fixated on profit. As a response to the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and the waves of social movements, theaters increasingly started dealing with issues like racism, social justice, politics, identity in the 1960s and 1970s. Covid19 is not the first pandemic to hit the theatrical world: the AIDS pandemic took its toll in the 1980s. Artists and activists made use of the power of theater to activate people as citizens and engaged human beings. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the post-9/11 climate inspired countless books, films, and, of course, pieces of theater such as Neil LaBute’s The Mercy Seat or Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced. Likewise, in the six months since theaters went dark, we have already seen that theater can arise from the ashes of the world’s (and its own) failures.
In this course, which will be taught remotely via Zoom, we will engage with theater as a forum for political activism and civic engagement. We will concentrate on the 20th and early 21st century and explore how dramatic works engage with the world in a meaningful, objective way. This course is heavily indebted to the idea that when tragedy strikes, we turn to art to help us reflect, explore, understand, and progress.
- Dozent: Sabrina Hüttner