I'm in that fretful phase of class prep where, a little more than a week out from Day 1 of the spring semester, I have zero syllabi complete.
I'm teaching two sections of script analysis and a PhD seminar in contemporary performance (i.e., post-World War II). I teach script analysis every semester to undergrads and every other fall to our masters students. (PhD students will join starting fall 2025.) I inherited the course after several years as "theatre history guy"--handling the complete theatre history sequence for undergrads, which I loved. After a faculty turnover, none of my new colleagues were especially interested in script analysis, which had been taught by one of their predecessors. I took it over.
I grew to love it, focusing the course mainly on structural analysis rather than history or theme or production dramaturgy. My aim, I tell students, is to get them to be able to approach play texts as mechanics approach vehicle engines. They can set aside whether they like the car/engine. They can set aside what the car is for (Sporty show-off? Family transport? Freight?). They focus only on taking apart (analyzing) and putting back together (synthesizing) the engine. How does this play work? I give them a number of tools--questions you can ask of any script--and challenge them to account for how scripts do what they do.
Students have found the class challenging, but mostly in good ways. They come with a wide range of experience levels in producing and reading plays. Some have never read nor seen a play (including some theatre majors!). Some gobble up any script that comes their way. Most are trained to approach literature looking for "theme"--what is this work about? What statement does it make? How can I apply its lessons to my life? How does it make me think about humanity and life etc.? And of course the stronger, truer undercurrent for many theatre majors overrides all: Do I like this? Is there a part for me in it?
One of my first course-corrections for class includes clear notice that this class is not about plays that entertain you. "You're already aware of things that entertain you," I tell them. You all have multiple devices and apps and accounts that pour billions of dollars into catching and holding your attention, curating a taste for what they have on offer. But when something's wrong with my old car (2007 hybrid Camry) and I take it to the mechanic, I couldn't give a hoot about whether the mechanic likes my vehicle. I'd be worried if the mechanic went on and on about how much they enjoy Camrys, or how much hybrid vehicles from the aughts entertain them. I'd be even less impressed, I continue, if the mechanic took a look under the hood, sighed, and said, "This is boring. Your car just isn't interesting me." I'd be looking for another mechanic. Does the mechanic really enjoy my car? Do Camrys bore them? I don't care. Any decent mechanic is professional enough to put such personal reactions aside in favor of just fixing the car.
Similarly, I tell them, you as theatrical artists need to be able to shift into a professional mental gear. I try to assign plays that are fun, I stress, but entertaining you is not my goal. Students nod appreciatively.
I underscore that point with a quote from Dorothy Parker: "The cure for boredom is curiosity." Curiosity, I tell them, is an act of will. It's a muscle of attention we can develop as professionals. I may not like a particular play, but if I'm hired to design it, I'll find a way to become curious about it. This class, I say, aims to equip you with tools to focus your curiosity about play structures.
And...some students get it. This class regularly appears on graduating seniors' lists of most rewarding classes--a rarity for non-specialized core curriculum courses. Of course, it also appears on a few lists of least enjoyable courses for some students. And it is hard! I'm asking them to look at play scripts without what Elinor Fuchs calls "the immediate (and crippling) leap to character" (i.e., who the protagonist is, what journey they go on, how "real" they are). I'm also asking them to segregate WHAT a play is about in terms of both plot and theme from HOW the playwright selects, arranges, and expresses that plot/theme.
The class is also one of most intensive theatre courses in terms of reading and writing. I have them write (and often re-write) four to five analyses over the course of the semester. They read about a dozen plays along with "EF's Visit to a Small Planet." As I mentioned yesterday, the reading and writing requirements have gotten harder and harder for students. We're in an era of atrophied curiosity muscles. I try to introduce students to the notion that boredom and frustration are defense mechanisms against the harder work of change and intellectual exercise.
I've also in recent years made things harder on myself by switching to a policy of "ungrading." I'll talk through that tomorrow.
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