This course examines contemporary drama in a cultural studies context, exploring how drama responds to and reflects the literary, performance, historical, and political context from which they arise and to which they refer. The course takes Adorno's engagement with Beckett in Aesthetic Theory and other writings as a theoretical launching pad from which to consider contemporary drama's complex responses to key questions in cultural studies—namely, the relationships between art, culture, history, and lived experience. Also, the relationship between the artwork and social consciousness. Plays will be paired with secondary criticism and our discussions and analysis will closely track how arguments are made by literary and performance scholars. Students will then in turn practice making arguments regarding the plays. Playwrights and directors covered include: María Irene Fornés, Caryl Churchill, Suzan Lori-Parks, Eline Arbo, Ivo Van Hove, Nadia Fall, Elfriede Jelinek, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Anne Washburn, Richard Foreman. [Track C]