Subject Area: Theatre and Performance Studies
This course can also be studied in the following specialisation: English

Great Plays introduces you to key skills required for reading canonical playtexts written for live performance. In particular it seeks to develop the ability to navigate the relationship between two sorts of 'play' - a script and a performance. To this end it combines exercises in literary analysis of written text, with consideration of theatre sign systems and historical performance conventions. Through its presentation of diverse playtexts from antiquity to the present day that are highly regarded within Western academic and theatre circles, the course also provides you with opportunities for analyzing and intervening in processes of canonization. Through a lecture series and seminars that incorporates rehearsed readings and documentation of stagings, you will become familiar with a broad-ranging collection of texts. You will also gain skills in investigating the relationship of these texts to the various contexts in which they were conceived and staged as well as to our contemporary world. This course is part of the Theatre and Performance Studies stream, and can also be studied as an elective in the English Stream.