"This course seeks to expand and perhaps even disrupt traditional academic theatre history instruction by first examining how “theater” & “performance” come to be named and then exploring dual contexts which inform theater & performance: the historical context in which the work was created and the individual context from which it is being read/viewed. The course will center around discussions of “form,” “place,” “time,” “language/translation,” and will ask students to grapple with the notion of “theater” itself, raising questions such as: How has the context in which this work was created helped to shape the form of the work itself? How has culture informed its performance? Its reception? How has culture impacted the ways in which the performance is viewed? Evaluated? Understood? And most importantly students will be asked to examine what, if any, is the role of a theater practitioner given these multiplicity of contexts? By reading dramatic texts from various sites around the globe, students will begin to name their tastes, values, and aesthetic preferences by contextualizing their own point of view and by thinking through ideas of “identity,” “culture,” and “history.” All of this will be done so that students can begin to critically assess and place dramatic literature in context to the worlds around them. The goal of this course is to prepare students to become better readers in the fields of theater and performance. We will do so by reading a variety of texts together, play scripts, live and recorded performances, theater theorists, scholars and reviews. "