Modernist Drama in Contemporary Theatre (DRA2092)

30 credits

This module explores how innovative and provocative drama from the international modernist movement (circa the late nineteenth to the mid twentieth century) is reimagined and restaged in contemporary theatre. In returning to these plays, dramatists and theatre-makers can make them newly relevant by adapting them and using them as inspiration for the creation of new work. In doing so they help us to understand these plays in a new light, expanding upon their artistic potential and allowing us to reconsider our relationship to the past and to re-evaluate the present.

In this module you will read a variety of modernist plays by diverse playwrights from around the world. You will historicise and theorise these plays and analyse contemporary re-workings, using play-texts and recordings of theatre productions available online. As part of the module you will collaborate with others to develop a hypothetical re-working of a modernist play.

If you are interested in learning about modern theatre history, in reading and analysing plays, and in imagining how plays can be transformed and re-presented, then this module will have much to offer you.