RESTORATION & 18TH-CENTURY DRAMA, PERFOR

Performance practices, historical commentaries, and creative theories that focus, but not  exclusively, on 1660 to 1790. These include re-imagined revivals, cross-cultural adaptations, transnational perspectives, and inventive investigations from the seventeenth century to the  twenty-first century. In our seminar, we will investigate how people often think of themselves  and others in terms of group identifications, which typically rely upon unexamined stereotypes.  We will explore how dramatists create characters who not only play predictable roles but also  play with these roles, often adapting them as well as adopting them. This enables dramatists to  use inherited conventions to explore the realms of individual agency and social change. Playwrights may include William Wycherley, George Etheredge, Aphra Behn, Thomas  Southerne, William Congreve, George Farquhar, Susannah Centlivre, John Gay, Oliver  Goldsmith, Richard Sheridan, Bertolt Brecht, Timberlake Wertenbaker, April De Angelis, Biyi  Bandele, and Tanika Gupta.