2020-21 Academic Catalog

Many twentieth century playwrights focused their plays on the existentialist belief that we are absurd beings in a universe empty of meaning. Those writers responded in part to questions raised by the World Wars, the Great Depression, genocides and the Cold War. But those ideas are examined from antiquity onward and from many cultures in response to catastrophic events from earlier times to the threats posed by pandemics, war and environmental challenges in the current century. This course compares existential plays across time and cultures. It includes works by Beckett, Mishima, Sophocles, Soyinka, Wallace, Williams, Xingjian, and others.