Drama and Performance Analysis

In the course, we study the most important Ibsen plays, of the realistic period (1877-1899), from the point of view of dramaturgy. On the side, we will discuss contemporary stagings of his plays. We study the plays in a chronological order and the bibliography used comprises mainly of books and articles published recently in English.

Examination in depth of the work of a major dramatist and close reading of some of his plays. In the academic year 2012-13, the course focused on the work of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) and, more specifically, on four ‘mature’ plays (Seagull, Uncle Vania, Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard) and two early ones (Platonov and Ivanov).

The course discusses the major comedies of Moliere, from the perspective of dramaturgy. At the same time, we deal with contemporary stagings of the plays, as well as with translation issues, related to the rendering of Moliere in modern Greek. The plays are studied in chronological order, according the time of composition and presentation on the French stage of the 17t century. The bibliography used is mostly English and French (with a few articles and/or books in Greek.

The course focuses on German and German speaking theatre and studies some important writers (Horvath, Dürrenmatt, Weiss, Handke, Strauss etc.) who form, each one in his own style and way, the theatre landscape of German speaking post war scene. At the same time we study the social-historical context and its role in the formation of the circumstances that favor the development of a political theatre par excellence.

An overview of Irish theatre from the late 19th century to today. The theatrical activity on the island during the period of English colonial rule. The demand for national independence and the Irish theatrical movement. The contribution of the Abbey Theatre. Civil strife and management of the independence movement. The contemporary Irish stage.

The course continues and cultivates further the topics that were developed during the two core courses on ancient drama, through detailed analysis of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. The main target of the course is to reveal the variety of the methodologies used in the interpretation of ancient drama as well as that of the resulting interpretations. At the same time, the course aims at investigating the dynamics that shape the relationship between text and performance, through the presentation and discussion of videotaped performances of ancient drama.

Through a close reading of the Oedipus Tyrannus, students become acquainted with the variety of interpretations that have been put forward with regard to the specific play. They acquire an understanding of the scholarly reception of critical issues of tragic drama and theatre. They contextualize ancient drama and its performances within the history of European drama and theatre.

The course focuses on questions regarding the reception of ancient drama in Europe and Greece in the 19th century. Theories, dramaturgy and performances that marked the interpretation and the understanding of ancient drama will be examined. Firstly, emphasis will be given on German perceptions that overturn the rigorous frame of the French neoclassicism, while aesthetic theory stops promoting canons on dramatic expression and is integrated in philosophy. Different aspects of reception will be analyzed in the fields of dramaturgy and performance, seeking to highlight the nexus of aesthetic quests, historical context and social concerns, in the course of which the interpretation of ancient drama was developed. The Greek case will be examined separately, although evidence that define the synchronization with Europe will be sought after. Factors that determine the distinctiveness of the Greek reception of ancient drama are to be examined not only in dramaturgy and performance but also in philological editions and especially in education

The first part of the course Trends in Stage-Direction aims at the familiarization of the students with the main directing developments and the major directors of European and American theater from the First World War up to the 1970s. Specifically, this course will discuss the art of stage-direction in Soviet Union, the revival of the classics (especially Shakespeare) in the 20th century, Jacques Copeau and his legacy, the Theater of Cruelty of Artaud, and the Epic Theatre of Piscator and Brecht, the formation of the Method in the U.S. theatre, the revolutionary movements of the 1960s and the developments of Modern Greek stage direction.

The second part of the course Trends in Stage-Direction aims at the familiarization of the students with the main directing developments and the major directors of European and American theater from the First World War up to the 1970s. Specifically, this course will discuss the art of stage-direction in Soviet Union, the revival of the classics (especially Shakespeare) in the 20th century, Jacques Copeau and his legacy, the Theater of Cruelty of Artaud, and the Epic Theatre of Piscator and Brecht, the formation of the Method in the U.S. theatre, the revolutionary movements of the 1960s and the developments of Modern Greek stage direction.

The course offers an exploration of the modern Greek comedy- from the pre-revolutionary period (the publication of the Korakistika by Iakovos Rizos Neroulos in 1813 is considered as a milestone) to the World War I. Special attention is given to the historical framework of some of the most representative pieces (by A. Soutsos, M. Hourmouzis, A.R. Rangavis, A. Vlachos, D. Koromilas, etc.), to the oscillation of the authors between the ancient Greek (Aristophanes) and the European models (Molière, Goldoni, Labiche) and to the importance of comedy to the foundation and development of the theatrical art in Greece.

The purpose of the course is an interdisciplinary approach to the field of animation combining literary theory, group psychology and theatrical techniques. Our first aim is to acquaint students with a number of representative fairy tales in order to explore their different genres, narrative techniques and functions. Then we go on to study the ways and methods that connect this narrative material with group animation. The course concludes with exercises, techniques and proposals of projects in which theoretical knowledge will be applied.

The course is aiming at initiating the participants in the theory and practice of theatre translation. Theoretical articles are presented and discussed in every class session, both on individual writers and genres. The students are asked to choose the playwright (Shakespeare, Molière, Ibsen, Beckett etc), and the genre (tragedy, comedy, drama, contemporary play etc) they will focus on. Throughout the semester, the participants present theoretical articles, dealing with specific translational issues; at the same time, existing translations in Modern Greek are analysed comparatively, as a preparatory stage to the translation the students submit as their term paper. The course requires mandatory presence and participation, as well as systematic work throughout the semester. Given the specific parameters of the class, the good knowledge of a foreign language, or good knowledge of ancient Greek are absolute prerequisites.

The course examines the major dramatic works of Luigi Pirandello. It focuses mainly on the theme, contents and the structural elements of plays in an attempt to comprehend the Pirandello’s aesthetic (philosophical-theoretical framework that characterizes his work) and his metatheatrical poetic. At the same time, several issues related to emblematic directional approaches of his works will be explored.

In this course, we analyze theater texts from antiquity to the 20th century, with an emphasis on specific myths (Amphitryo, Hippolytus and Phaedra, Iphigeneia etc) and their reception by select dramatic poets and playwrights. The collaborating faculty provide additional material and bibliography for their respective course segment.

The development of the art of the actor in the 20th century; from the “system” of Stanislavsky to the postdramatic theater forms. Acting theories. Stage performance practices. The above course is supported by audiovisual materials.

The course focuses on the advent of modernism in European theatre and more specifically the avant-garde and the dada movement. Through a wide range of historical sources and artistic material such as playtexts, poems, manifestoes, paintings and visual objects, the students are required to reconstruct but primarily to understand the developments in theatre and performance practice, dada and the avant-garde initiated. During the weekly meetings topics such as the formations of dadaism, the relation to futurism and expressionism, the concept of performance that the avant-garde constructed, the variations of dadaist performance in Zurich, Berlin, Paris, New York, dada’s influence on post-war theatre will be explored while texts among others by Huelsenbeck, Duchamp, Tzara, Mehring, Vitrac, Stein, Artaud will be discussed.

The course is a module taught by four different teachers aiming primarily at familiarising students with the construction of gender in different historical periods and theatre traditions and through different critical approaches. Issues related to dramatic writing, performance, theatre history and gender roles are raised in an attempt to explore the cultural formations and politics of gender identity.

The course examines the blooming of secondary genres and the emphasis on spectacle, western stage experienced during the long 19th century. During the weekly meetings several minor genres from melodrama to vaudeville and from pantomime to music-hall will be discussed in an attempt to comprehend the development of theatrical activity in cities such as Paris, London and New York in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the consolidation of bourgeois culture.

Historical approach of the reasons that led to the creation, and the circumstances under which the opera phenomenon has been developed. Preliminary understanding of a different artistic code, that of the lyric theatre.

Workshop of playwriting with compulsory participation. Exercises of style and plot (structure) based on chosen texts, working towards a one-act or multi-act play throughout the semester.

Theatre criticism and theatre reviewing as opinion writing for the mass media. Typology, structure, style and language of the critical text. From attending a play to commenting on the performance codes: analysis, interpretation and value judgment. The critic, the artist, the audience (spectator & reader). Theoretical issues: functions of theatre criticism, criteria, objectivity vs. subjectivity, changes and new perspectives.

This module aims to examine the background of Weimar classicism, its historical and cultural context (French Revolution, German Enlightment), as well as its philosophical and aesthetic principles. At the same time, we will perform in-depth analysis of the most important works of Goethe and Schiller from this period: Don Carlos, Iphigenia in Tauris, Egmont, Torquato Tasso, Mary Stuart, The Maid of Orleans, William Tell.

This module aims to investigate the image of the Jew in a series of theatrical works ranging from the 16th century to the present day, in their contemporary historical, social and political contexts. Armed with the methodological tools of Comparative Literature and a close reading of the texts on verbal and thematic levels, we will examine a series of popular constructions of the image of the Other as well as aspects of anti-Semitism from antiquity to the present day.

This module aims to survey Viennese modernism in literature and theatre, to examine the historical-political context of the period, and to analyse programmatic texts of the genre, from Schnitzler’s Liebelei to Zweig’s Schachnovelle. At the turn of the 20th century and in the years following, Vienna, then-capital of the multicultural Hapsburg empire, was the site of a cultural miracle: several of the most important artists and scientists to leave their mark on the 20th century were born, lived, and worked here, including Mahler and Schoenberg in music, Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka in painting, Freud and Adler in psychology, Wittgenstein and Popper in philosophy, Hobsbawm in history and Gombrich in art history. Literature was no exception: the “Young Vienna” society, which formed circa 1900 around the writers Hermann Bahr, Arthur Schnitzler and Hugo von Hofmannthal introduced modernism to Austrian letters, balancing experimentalism on the one hand with tradition on the other, and exerting decisive influence on the younger generation of Austro-Hungarian writers (Musil, Broch, Zweig).

The relationship of literature to the fine arts has been an object of inquiry of both the practitioners and the theoreticians of literature and the visual arts since the time of Horace (and his recommendation: ‘Ut pictura poesis’), up to the blossoming of the historical avant-gardes of the early 20th century. The aim of this course is to explore the elective affinities of literature and painting concentrating on the ways in which each one of them represented the natural world. The exploration begins with an analysis of Lessing’s seminal essay Laokoon (1766) on the relationship of the two arts. It subsequently focuses on the analysis of several key-mark attempts to approximate the two arts, in instances that take us from the renaissance world of Breughel and Shakespeare and up to the experiments of ‘visual poetry’ and the calligrammes of the early 20th century. We shall also discuss prose narratives that represent the artist as painter and prose narratives which, albeit fictional, depict real paintings in the course of their plots (elaborating on examples drawn from the English, the French and the Greek traditions) and we shall consider the allegorical significance of such techniques.

The aim of the present overview course is to introduce students to the basic principles of the main theories of the text (literary theories) of the 20th century. What is ‘New Criticism’, how does ‘Structuralism’ treat literary and dramatic texts? How can psychoanalysis and marxism contribute to the study of the text? And what about New Historicism, Post-colonial Studies, Gender Studies and Cultural Studies? The course develops in two parts: during the first part of each meeting the instructor displays in summary fashion the main theoretical principles of each theory, along with a brief reference to the main authors and the main treatises that contributed to the formation of each theory. In the second part of each meeting, the students and the instructor together read a short, pre-selected text considered to be representative of each theory through the method of ‘close reading’ and try to unpack (rather: recognize, following the introduction of the instructor) its underpinning theoretical premises.

The seminar course on ‘Theories of the text/theories of performance in the late 20th century’ revolves around the close reading of seminal texts of theatre theory of the late 20th century, as pitted against the literary theories and literary theoretical paradigms from which they might be drawing their ancestry (Marxism, structuralism, semiotics, reception theory, etc.). The aim of the course is to think around the continuities or discontinuities of contemporary theatre theory vis-à-vis earlier established literary theoretical models, and to assess the status of the notion of ‘text’ in contemporary meta-theatrical theory. Theorists discussed include: Szondi (1999), Serpieri (1978), Lichte (1983), Lehmann (1999), et al. Textbook of this course: M. Carlson, Theories of the Theatre (1993), final part.

After a brief introduction to the historical realities of Shakespeare’s time, the course examines the themes and the rhetorics of the Sonnets themselves, aiming at the same time at an extrapolation from their very fabric of major discursive concerns of the era of their production, such as the understanding of gender as social construct, or the rise of the concept of self. The course ends with a brief review of Shakespeare’s legacy across Europe, from the later part of the 17th century and down to our day.

This course explores the various forms that the ‘I’, first person narratives, the ‘ego-‘ narratives, may be taking in the literary production of Greece of the last two centuries (19th – 20th c.). Examining texts as diverse as Solomos’s ‘The Cretan’, Vizyenos’s eth(n)ographical short stories, or Valtinos’s semi-theatrical monologues, this course aims to explore the materials of the ‘Self’ that are foregrounded and/or suppressed in each particular era, adherent to both the literary conventions of the genre in which each of these narratives is cast, as well as to an understanding of what constitutes a psychologically and socially acceptable version of the ‘Self’ in each case. The repertory of texts examined in this course aims to address the students in the modules of acting and of stage directing, as well as to the students of the theatre-theory module.

This course treats the written text as musical score, by focusing on the aural dimensions of the poem (be it traditional or modern) by reading the particulars of its metrics, syntax, syncopation and punctuation, as inbuilt guides to its oral performance. After a brief introduction to the history of reading out aloud in various historical circumstances (as favorite pastime in the roman villa; as a means of moral instruction in the medieval monastery; as instrument of nationalist celebration in 18th-19th c. Europe), the course envelops around paradigmatic recorded recitations of famous modern Greek poems, analyzed by the students in collaboration with the lecturer, and followed by improvised oral renderings of this same material by the student themselves. A cross between a literary-critical and a stage-related course, ‘Recitation as Interpretation’ aims to initiate students with non-philological backgrounds to the basic tenets of practical criticism, through the user-friendly practice of reading out poems aloud.

This course focuses on those poems of the Alexandrian modernist C.P. Cavafy that are somehow related to the world of the stage. In its first part, the course examines the Cavafian poems that ‘re-write’ a dramatic myth, drawn either from the repertory of Greek tragedy or from the world of Shakespeare. In its second part, the course dwells on Cavafy’s later understanding of the innate theatricality of everyday life in poems that do not bear any distinctive dramatic origin, showing how this transition harbors wider repercussions for his poetics as a whole; it affects Cavafy’s changing relation to his source-texts, and his increasing use of rhetorical modes drawn from the world of the theatre, such as the dramatic monologue, in his later work.