Theatre 319 - SHAMANS,SHAPESHIFTERS,MAGIC IF

To act, to perform is to speculate with your body. Theatre is a transformative experience that takes performer and audience on an extensive journey in the playground of the imagination beyond the mundane world. Theatre asks us to be other than ourselves. We can for a time inhabit someone else's skin, be shaped by another gender or ethnicity, become part of a past epoch or an alternative time and space similar to our own time but that has yet to come. As we enter this 'imagined' world we investigate the normative principles of our current world. This course will investigate the counterfactual, speculative, subjunctive impulse in overtly speculative drama and film with a particular focus on race and gender. We will examine an international range of plays by such authors as Caryl Churchill, Tess Onwueme, Dael Olandersmith, Derek Walcott, Bertolt Brecht, Lorraine Hanberry, Craig Lucas, and Doug Wright, as well as films such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, X-Men, Contact, and Brother From Another Planet. Enrollment limited to 18.