Interpretation Seminar 1

Display Schedule

Code	Completion	Credits	Range	Language Instruction	Semester
202EIC1	credit	2	2 hours (45 min) of instruction per week, 32 to 42 hours of self-study	English	winter

Subject guarantor

Michaela RAISOVÁ

Name of lecturer(s)

Ondřej POLÁK, Michaela RAISOVÁ

Department

The subject provides Department of Authorial Creativity and Pedagogy

Students come to class with a previously read text which is, based on the first observations, read again and re-interpreted, in at least key scenes. Primary texts are accompanied by reading secondary texts or other material of visual character (online). Students prepare short presentations.

Contemporary Irish Drama and In-yer-face Theatre

Friday: 9:00-10:30 Room: R407

Through In-yer-face theatre and contemporary Irish drama, the seminar seeks to engage the students in close and interpretative reading of dramatic texts, with particular focus on intertextuality and meta-theatricality. The seminar will touch on theatre as a topic on its own, while engaging with comparisons to various adaptations (theatre, film, comics, pop culture etc.), contemporary topics (gender, race, politics, ethics, morality) and ways of characterization. Topics will also adapt according to students and their inputs (culture, interest etc.).

Key words: Intertextuality, modern and post-modern plays, coolness drama, in-yer-face theatre, comparative reading, original works reinvented, national identity themes, gender themes, sex and violence, language, feminism, political plays, adaptations

The seminar is in English.

Learning outcomes

Instructing students to read carefully, make reading a need in life, that is, to demonstrate its sense. Considering the study focus, it is a training to read dramatic texts. Drama is not the summation of all lines and stage knowledge. To read a dramatic text is to decipher its structure. The interpretation course teaches this specific type of reading. It also shows how the structure of a dramatic text (today more often, post-dramatic) changed throughout the history of theatre.

Prerequisites and other requirements

Assessment: Attendance of at least 80%. Following the assigned reading (both primary and secondary texts!). Participating in discussion. An in-class 5-10 min. spoken presentation of a selected secondary text.

During the final session (kolokvia) in December all students are required to prepare a 15minute spoken presentation. The presentation must focus solely on plays and/or adaptations discussed in the seminar and should incorporate secondary sources to support arguments. The student may use text suggested throughout the seminar or other appropriate sources. MA students are also in addition required to hand a written essay using secondary sources. Scope of the essay is 2500 words, the deadline is in January, to be specified in the seminar.

Literature

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Mansfield Centee, CT: Martino Publishing, 2014 [1950].

Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. London: Methuen, 2001.

Aristotle. Poetics. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1997.

Kott, Jan. Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Translated by Boleslaw Taborski. London: Methuen, 1967.

De Garcia, Magreta and Wells, Stanley, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Sontag, Susan. An essay „Against Interpretation“ distributed as a printed document in the class.

Barthes, Roland. „The Death of the Author“ In Image, Music, Text. Translated by Stephan Heath. New York: Hill and Want, 1978.

Selected plays by William Shakespeare (King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Richard III., Coriolanus, Midsummer Night‘s Dream, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo a Julie, Measure for Measure, The Tempest and other, depending on the group focus).

Selected plays by Tom Stoppard, J. M. Synge, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Marina Carr, Martin McDonagh, Patrick Marber, Sarah Kane, Joe Penhall, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, David Mamet and other playwrights according to group’s interest.

Other essays and texts are distributed in the class according to the need and focus of the group.

Evaluation methods and criteria

Students gain credits after the first semester and do an exam after the second semester. Part of the exam is an oral presentation on a selected topic. Aside from active participation during the whole course, students are evaluated according to their ability to communicate their thoughts based on thorough reading.

Note

Reading (the order of the sessions and reading is subject to change):

1)Intro + J. M. Synge: Playboy of the Western World (pdf/ DAMU library)

Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (pdf) Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author (pdf)

Pilný, Ondřej. Irony and Identity in Modern Irish Drama. Praha: Litteraria Pragensia, 2006.

2)Martin McDonagh: The Lonesome West (DAMU) + Sam Shepard: True West (DAMU)

Roche, Anthony. Contemporary Irish Drama. Palgrave, 2009. (damu)

Lonergan, Patrick. The Theatre and Films of Martin McDonagh. London: Methuen, 2012.

3)Marina Carr: By the Bog of Cats + Medea

M. Procházka: Feminism and Psychoanalitical Criticism (pdf)

Euripides: Medea (damu v An Anthology of Greek drama, Roobinson, 1949, New York)

Roche, Anthony. Contemporary Irish Drama. Palgrave, 2009. (DAMU)

4)Stewart Parker + Boucicault: Heavenly Bodies (pdf)

Grene, Nicholas. The Politics of Irish Drama. Plays in Context from Boucicault to Friel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 (?)

Ondřej Pilný “Comedy of Terrors” (?)

5)Mark Ravenhill: Shopping and Fucking

Aleks Sierz: In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today (introductory chapter, pdf)

6)Sarah Kane: Phaedra´s Love + Seneca: Phaedra

(Seneca’s play in: A Treasury of the Theatre: An Anthology of Great Plays from Aeschylus to Eugene O'Neill) (DAMU library)

Saunders, Graham. Love Me or Kill me: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes (pdf)

Ken Urban: Towards a Theory of Cruel Britannia: Coolness, Cruelty, and the 'Nineties (pdf)

7)Tim Crouch: The Author + My Arm

Secondary Text: Ondřej Pilný: Imagine This: Tim Crouch, from The Grotesque in Contemporary Anglophone Drama (pdf)

8)David Ireland: Cyprus Avenue

Secondary Text: Clare Wallace, Commemoration, Ambivalent Attachments and Catharsis: David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue at the Abbey Theatre in 2016 (pdf)

9)Caryl Churchill: Escaped Alone

Secondary Text: Dan Rabellatto, Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Theatre: British Drama, Violence and Writing (pdf)

10)---------------Kolokvia/Presentations-------------------------

Schedule for winter semester 2024/2025:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

Schedule for summer semester 2024/2025: