FREN 382 - Modern French and Francophone Theater

In this course, we explore some of the most thought-provoking expressions of French and Francophone avant-garde theatre in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Starting with Ubu Roi, a satirical farce about a gluttonous and cruel autocrat, the staging of which heralded a new era of experimentation in the world of theatre, we will make our way through a variety of plays that draw on all the possibilities of the theatre to question identity, community, politics, spectatorship, and action, to arrive finally at a consideration of contemporary efforts to decolonize theatre. To achieve a more multidimensional understanding of how theatrical texts mobilize not only language but also bodies in spaces, we will study scripts and videos of stage productions in conjunctions with theories of performance, theatrical space, and dramaturgy. Readings include plays by Alfred Jarry, Tristan Tzara, Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Aimé Césaire, Jean Genet, Hélène Cixous, Marguerite Duras, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Léonora Miano, and Marine Bachelot Nguyen as well as theoretical works by Antonin Artaud, Bertholt Brecht, Frantz Fanon, Hans-Thies Lehmann, and Françoise Vergès, among others. Conducted in French.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Prerequisite(s): FREN 212 or equivalent
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Not offered: 2024-25
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).