Theater 494BI - The Art of Adaptation

THEATER 130 PLEASE NOTE: Students who have taken TH120, please email Bethany Sherwood - bsherwood@theater.umass.edu - to be enrolled.

TH130 pre-req can be waived with instructor permission.

Many great plays, musicals, movies, and TV series are adaptations: rewrites and reimaginings of earlier stories. Originality comes not from the story itself but from the creativity and artfulness with which it is retold. This course looks at this widespread phenomenon by pairing a series of contemporary plays with their source stories. How is the source transformed and to what purpose? Why are we drawn to retell stories? What happens when the ?ghosts? of earlier stories haunt works of today? Why is there creative power in this act of transformation?

As an Integrated Experience (IE) course, this class mixes lecture and discussion with hands-on exercises and projects to provide a culminating experience. Students will have an opportunity to work on scenes from these plays as dramaturgs, actors, directors, or designers. There will also be playwriting exercises. The class fulfills the Gen Ed IE requirement and is also an upper-level Dramaturgy elective for Theater majors and minors.

Class costs will be under $25 per student, to cover the cost of a few required books to purchase.