Please Note: This course is one of two parts, however, neither part requires the other as a prerequisite. Students may enroll in both courses or select just one without missing materials needed to enjoy the course’s content.
This course explores world renowned drama of the early and mid-twentieth century by recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature: George Bernard Shaw (1925), Luigi Pirandello (1934), Eugene O’Neill (1936), T.S. Eliot (1948), and Samuel Beckett (1969). Students will read one play a week prior to each class: Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Mourning Becomes Electra, Murder in the Cathedral, and Waiting for Godot. Lectures will include overviews of the playwrights’ careers, close readings of the plays, their socio-political contexts, and theatre aesthetics. In-class screenings and actor dramatizations will complement the readings.
