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The study of the performance event, dramatic texts, and theatre theories, provides insights into human experience and modes of critical thinking that will be useful throughout a student’s program of study and beyond. To do this effectively a student of theatre requires foundational skills in reading, researching and analysing plays, and the ability to formulate and present academic arguments about drama in its historical contexts. A broad knowledge of pre-modern playtexts from the Western classical tradition (from ancient Greece to early modern Europe), is central to the knowledges required for theatre, arts, communication, humanities and education students.

This course offers the student an historical and theoretical journey through theatrical and dramatic literature. Through a contextual study of some of the most read and performed plays from the classical tradition, covering ancient Greek, Shakespearean, and neo-classical drama, this course provides students with foundational techniques in textual analysis, academic debate, research, essay writing and scholarship in drama. It will include a focus on the ways in which these stories continue to be staged, adapted, and re-written in early twenty-first century contexts.

On successful completion of this course students should be able to:

1. apply concepts of cultural literacy to explain the way in which drama functions within specific theatrical and social contexts;
2. investigate and examine specific dramatic and theoretical texts from Western classical traditions of pre-modern theatre up until the 17th Century;
3. analyse the processes which make up the performance event in specific historical contexts;
4. apply fundamental principles of scholarly method to the writing of essays;
5. interpret and communicate ideas in writing using the essay genre and examination format.