History of Theater II: Renaissance to 20th Century

Picking up where THR 227 leaves off, this course traces how Western theater evolved from Elizabethan playhouses through Neo-Classical France, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and into the realism of Ibsen, Chekhov, and Strindberg, treating each era as a conversation between dramatic form, stage architecture, and the changing relationship with the audience. You'll work through Brockett alongside primary play texts, give period presentations, sit two midterms and a final, and write a short paper on an early modern dramatist. It's the historical and analytical backbone for later acting, directing, and dramaturgy courses, so the goal is less memorizing dates than building a working map of where modern theater came from.