Dramaturgy, Text and Performance (DRAM90019)

This subject focuses on high level close reading and analysis of existing plays and scenarios drawn from a range of pre-dramatic, dramatic, postdramatic and other performance contexts, including Greek, Shakespearean, nineteenth and twentieth century realist and anti-realist movements, non-narrative forms, and contemporary developments such as the postdramatic.

Drawing on international and Australian examples, the subject will focus on such aspects as dramatic structure, story, plot, dialogue, monologue, character, conflict, dramatic action, facts and imagination, language and subtext, space and time.

Theories of dramaturgy from Aristotle through Lessing to Brecht, Lehmann and the ‘new dramaturgies’ of the postdramatic, as well as other forms of ‘script’ (e.g. choreographic, film script and treatment, digital media, live art, ritual) will be examined.