Political Theater

This course examines political plays set in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as in various international countries across the world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Through close engagement with political plays by Aristophanes, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Brecht, Fugard, Churchill, Dorfman, Aktar, Wolfe, and others, as well as with relevant historical sources and films, students learn about the world-shaping events of the past century and a half, reflect on competing conceptions of politics and community, justice, power, imperialism, democracy, dictatorship, and other topics, and the ways playwrights have dramatized these events on stage, engaging audiences in collective reflection and aesthetic enjoyment, and often compelling to political action.