Modern Drama
Modern Drama surveys major twentieth-century plays through the lens of performance, sociopolitical context, and aesthetic form. Readings draw from Shaw, Pirandello, Beckett, Brecht, Williams, Soyinka, Hwang, Churchill, Wilson, Frayn, Stoppard, Deveare Smith, and Kushner, spanning realism, absurdism, epic theater, and documentary drama. The course asks how staging choices and historical circumstance shape meaning, tracing theater's shifting role as multimedia culture changes how audiences encounter live performance. Materials from MIT OpenCourseWare include the syllabus, weekly reading assignments, and writing assignments built around close analysis of individual plays and their production histories. No lectures on video are provided, but the course structure gives a full semester's reading list and assignment sequence suitable for independent study of modern theater. The course is free to access under MIT's open courseware license, with no certificate offered.