This course considers the poetry of plays and plays that function as poetry. We interrogate the relationship of narrative to poetry and the role of structure in narrative. We examine questions that relate to the practice of revealing emotion for the edification and catharsis of audiences. We consider the process of making art as something tangible, instead of merely the “work” that is left behind. In this re-evaluation of process, we reconsider the dialectic of doing and being as well as the historical teleologies that dictate, for each of us, how and what we must do and be. Work by the following will be considered: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Ibsen, Chekov, Pirandello, Ionesco, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Scalapino and Fornes.