Staging America in the 20th Century

This seminar will consider how playwrights over the last century have imagined America as a place, a way of life, and a set of beliefs and practices.  This is contested territory. Acknowledging from the outset that there is no one vision of America and no “true” vision of it, we will explore how playwrights with different personal histories, cultural identities, and belief systems represent America, focus on what they see as key moments in American history, and assess how Americans have lived out, critiqued, or abandoned the core democratic principles on which the nation was supposedly founded. A key focus of the class will be how race figures—or is elided--in how playwrights stage America, though class, sexuality, gender, and country of origin will also be central to our discussions.  Throughlines for the course include attention to dramatizations of the country’s founding moments, the reality and legacies of American slavery, class in a “classless” society, and immigration as a fact of American life. Attention to the “theme” of America will be coupled with a focus on the theatrical techniques through which various playwrights materialize their visions on the stage.  Consequently, we will explore such issues as the effects of presenting a story of America’s founding fathers as a rap musical, examine Suzan-Lori Parks’ technique of “rep & rev” (repetition and revision) as a strategy of disruption, and critically explore practices of race blind, race conscious, and race mimetic casting and their role in how America is staged and imagined.