Modern Drama I

Course content

This course makes a survey of the development of modern drama and studies major trends and theatrical movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as realism, naturalism, symbolism, expressionism, surrealism, and the absurd through close reading of representative selection of plays by Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, Pirandello, Brecht, O’Neill, Ionesco, Pinter, Stoppard and others. In this course, students will examine changes in the social and political role of drama, identify the influences that formed modern drama, read and evaluate samples of plays written in different periods and countries from the perspectives of content and dramatic form, apply critical thinking skills to analyse the connections among them and study how each play responds to the historical and cultural context in which it was written.