This course examines contemporary drama in a cultural studies context, exploring how drama responds to and reflects the formal, historical, and political context from which they arise. The course takes Adorno's engagement with Beckett in Aesthetic Theory and other writing as a theoretical launching pad from which to consider contemporary drama's complex responses to key questions in cultural studies—namely, the relationship between the artwork and lived experience and the relationship between the artwork and political consciousness. Plays will be paired with landmark texts in cultural theory and emphasis will be given to close literary analysis combined with discussion of the works as stage performance. A tentative playwright list: Elfriede Jelinek, Wole Soyinka, Toshiki Okada, Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Suzan Lori-Parks, Anne Washburn, Annie Baker. This course fulfills the Dramatic Literature requirements for Theater majors and minors.