The Wretched of the Stage

The subtitle of this class is: Slaves, Women, Children, Servants, More Slaves, the Poor ... in Western Theater. The list could go on: homeless, prostitutes, mentally ill, laborers, disabled. Historically, the center stage of Western theater has been reserved for a certain kind of identity: mostly male, mostly upper class, heterosexual, and white European. At the same time, the wings have been teeming with a great diversity of characters. This class focuses on Western cultures' production of its own marginal identities and the role theater in regulating and reintegrating them into society. In this class, we will focus on primary sources, which is to say, on plays. A few of them are canonical, but many of them are not. This investigation of theater's margins will take us to commercial theater, experimental stages, and to the very limits of what is considered 'Western' drama.