Well, it’s probably been about 15 years since I seriously dug into a book on theory. Shocking! I know. Back in the 90s theorists were really hard on us; elaborate and stilted language, the preoccupation with the “wired” world and viewing theatre as a quaint and marginalised practice. The results were disappointing to me and more often than not, placed our work in a framework borrowed from literary criticism.
A decade and a bit later I might have mellowed with age. Maybe the writing has just gotten better. Or it might be that after the close of a century, it is easier to see the outlines of the dominant theories. But I have finally found some reading or my students that is “practitioner friendly” and approachable. It seems that theory and theatre practice can be mutually irrelevant to each other, but there isn’t anything in either that suggests this must be so. I think we engage in theory every time we approach a production concept, or analyse a scene.
I am revamping my theatre history course so we have time to survey six modes of criticism: Semiotics, Phenomenology, Post-Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Feminist, Queer and Gender Theory, and Reader-Reception Theory.
Ambitious, I know. I don’t plan on beating it to death. I am going to be succint and rigourous with six projects that will allow us to develop a new theoretical tool for each play we read. I think it’s important to see how the analysis becomes a platform for production. I am hoping that this practical approach will draw out the dramaturg/director in each of the students.
I’ll see how it goes, some of my students might write some of the results down here.
