"Doing Things With Words"
Take any set of words in any play you’ve encountered. Someone is saying something to someone whilst others watch. An actor speaks to an actor; a character to another character; if we are dealing with a dramatic script rather than an improvised piece, an author is speaking to an audience. All three lines of address meet in the lines an actor speaks. What does this doubled or tripled address involve and allow?
What is acting? Is it different from “playing”? When did we start to use the term “acting” rather than playing and what versions of theater are involved in that changed usage Why is theater so transforming and transformative? We will examine the peculiarly dynamic and transformative power of theater and ask what it has to do with the moral and ethical implications and consequences of speech as action.
We’ll be thinking about these questions and the others they suggest and sponsor—through some of the most reflexive and thoughtful plays of the Western canon. These plays will help us think about what theater is and develop the conceptual and practical tools for reading it.
Our principal primary texts will be: Mankind, Oedipus, The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, King Lear, Six Characters in Search of an Author, and Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape and Endgame. Secondary Texts will include Aristotle, Diderot, Stanislavsky, Robert Weiman, Bert States and Stanley Cavell.
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