ENGL217-18S1 (C) Semester One 2018

Special Topic: Theatre: Direction, Design and Dramaturgy

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 19 February 2018
End Date: Sunday, 24 June 2018
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Friday, 2 March 2018
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Friday, 18 May 2018

Description

This course offers in-depth study of the roles of directors and designers in developing a play-script into a production. It also covers the dramaturg’s role in working with a playwright to produce a complete script ready for a director and designers. At the same time, students will gain the analytic, theoretical and conceptual understandings and skills necessary for the competent director, designer and dramaturg; the same knowledge is useful for reviewers and serious theatre patrons.

The roles of director, designer or dramaturg in the 21st century often bleed into one another, which requires the theatre practitioner to have a broad and flexible skill set. This course builds upon ENGL104 with in-depth study of the roles of directors and designers in developing a play-script into a production.  It also covers the dramaturg’s role in working with a playwright to develop a script, as well as with directors and actors in a workshop or rehearsals in the lead up to a premiere production.  Students will gain the analytical, theoretical and conceptual understandings and skills necessary for the competent director, designer and dramaturg; the same knowledge is useful for reviewers and serious theatre patrons.

Please note: while the completion of ENGL104 is recommended, it is not mandatory, and we welcome all students with a practical and theoretical interest in theatre and production. Please contact the course co-ordinator if you have any queries.

Topics will include:
• an introduction to ways meaning can be generated in performance, from the importance of mining literary, social and cultural context(s) to understanding the artistic, physical and spatiotemporal nature of theatre
• ways of reading, understanding and critically analysing a script
• strategies for exploring and extracting meanings from scripts and applying them in practical contexts
• the roles, relationships and functions of the director, theatre critic and dramaturg, including in the New Zealand context
• forms and methods of theatre criticism

Students will engage with scripts, including classic works and recent and canonical New Zealand works, alongside theoretical and practical readings.

This course can be used towards an English major or minor. BA students who major in English would normally take at least two 100-level 15 point ENGL courses (which must include at least one of the following: ENGL117, ENGL102 or ENGL103), at least three 200-level 15 point ENGL courses, and at least two 300-level 30 point ENGL courses. Please see the BA regulations  or a student advisor for more information.

Learning Outcomes

  • By the end of this course, students will have developed:
  • a specialised knowledge of theatre forms, genres, histories, traditions and movements
  • an ability to relate scripts and other theatre texts to their social, historical and cultural contexts
  • an ability to present responses to reading, study and research in the form of an academic essay, as well as in the form of a creative project, using appropriate stylistic and formal techniques
  • an ability to understand and deploy critical concepts and methodologies relating to theatre, direction, dramaturgy and design
  • a highly-developed capacity for critical thinking and detailed analysis of meaning and form in literary and other cultural phenomena
  • intellectual self-confidence
    • University Graduate Attributes

      This course will provide students with an opportunity to develop the Graduate Attributes specified below:

      Critically competent in a core academic discipline of their award

      Students know and can critically evaluate and, where applicable, apply this knowledge to topics/issues within their majoring subject.

Prerequisites

15 points of ENGL at 100 level with a B pass, or
30 points of ENGL at 100 level, or
any 45 points from the Arts Schedule

Course Coordinator / Lecturer

Erin Harrington

Lecturer

Christina Stachurski

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage  Description
Formal script analysis 20% 1000 words
Dramaturgical research project 25% 1300-1500 words
Design and direction project/portfolio 35% 1600-1800 words
Theatre criticism 20% 1000 words

Textbooks / Resources

The core plays studied are:

• Brendon Bennetts and Dan Bain, 'Stag Weekend' (NZ)
• Sarah Ruhl, ‘In the Next Room (Or, the Vibrator Play’)
• Caryl Churchill, 'Top Girls'
• Jean Betts, 'Ophelia Thinks Harder' (NZ)
• William Shakespeare, 'Titus Andronicus'

Theoretical extracts and some plays will be provided on Learn. The remaining plays will be available to purchase or borrow from the library.

The following theoretical texts will be used in class, and are highly recommended:

• Mark Fisher, ‘How to Write About Theatre: A Manual for Critics, Students and Bloggers’ (Bloomsbury, 2015) – also available as an ebook via the library
• Scott R Irelan, Julie Felise Dubiner and Anne Fletcher, ‘The Process of Dramaturgy: A Handbook’ (Focus Publishing, 2010)
• Jon Whitmore, ‘Directing Postmodern Theater’ (The University of Michigan Press, 1994)

Course links

Library portal

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $746.00

International fee $3,038.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Humanities .

All ENGL217 Occurrences

  • ENGL217-18S1 (C) Semester One 2018