SPAN 354 - Spanish-American Theater: 20th Century to the Present

FDR: HL
Credits: 3
Planned Offering: Fall 2010 and alternate years

Prerequisites: SPAN 240 and 215. This course provides a panoramic view of the theatrical traditions that have emerged in Spanish-American theater, beginning with the independent theater movement of the 1930s and concluding with the most recent trends in theatrical practices. In particular, the plays are studied as vehicles that reveal how theater practitioners engaged with their historical and cultural contexts in aesthetic terms. Therefore, the focus is also on the plays as performative texts. In order to develop this objective, students are expected to read, discuss, and analyze the dramatic texts, as well as perform scenes from the plays. This course includes works from playwrights such us Arlt, Triana, Diaz, Gambaro, Carballido, Castellanos, and Berman, among others. In addition, we study the political and aesthetic theories of theater developed by Enrique Buenaventura and Augusto Boal.Botta.