2020-21 Academic Catalog

What is theater for? Enormous and diverse audiences flocked to tragedy and comedy in Athens, drawn to the spectacle, music, and collective emotional experience. But drama also pushed the city to consider fundamental questions about power, conflicting values, competing obligations to family and community. Athenians believed that theater was beneficial to their democracy. Can these ancient plays help us, now, think about our own communal questions? This course will focus on plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes as they were first performed, and investigate how modern productions engage pressing current questions around race, immigration, and social justice.