Course Requirements

Grading Break Down

Attendance and Participation                 15%

Catalogue Entries                                     15%

Catalogue Presentation 5%

Annotations                                              10% 

 Response Paper                                       5%

Fictional Theatre Review  Project           50%

  • Draft of Fictional Theatre Review and Reflective Rationale 10%
  • Peer Review 5%
  • Showcase of Fictional Theatre Review 5%
  • Fictional Theatre Review 15%
  • Reflective Rationale 15%

TOTAL               100%

Participation

We will conduct a range of in-class activities and group works during the classes. Your participation in the in-class activities and group works will be the most important evaluative criterion for your participation grade. Absences, including excused absences will significantly affect your grade on participation.

Catalogue Entries

This assignment aims for you to develop your own understanding of theatre histories through material objects. You will search online for material artifacts in archives that help you to understand aspects of theatre and theatergoing from past centuries, including costume and scenic design, architectural structure, interior decoration, and audience. These artifacts can include playbills, theatrical portraits, prints, and newspapers. You will write or rewrite catalog descriptions for three objects sourced from digital collections that foregrounds your own observation and interpretation of the artifacts (5% of the grade for each entry). You should provide details of some aspects of the objects and explain the significance of those details in the context of theatre arts and theatrical culture. Additional requirements for this assignment include:

  • The length of each entry is 150-300 words. The entry should be your own writing. You cannot copy any part of the description from the website, but you are encouraged to use it as a reference.
  • Besides the description, your entry should also contain the following properties: an image of the artifact (downloaded from the website if possible), a title (the title of the artifact on the website), the creator of the artifact (if possible), copyright or licensing status (public domain/creative commons/restricted usage), rights holder (museum/library/collection), and the URL to the original record. 
  • Each of you will give a mini presentation on one of your classmates’ catalog entries (5% of the grade). These presentations are informal. You are expected to walk the class through the artifact based on the description of the entry, highlight sections of the entry that interest and intrigue you the most, share what you appreciate about the entry (close-reading of the artifact, insights into the theatrical context, structural organization of the entry, writing style etc.). The presentation can be three to five minutes.

Annotations

For all the plays that we read in this class, you should add annotations through the Hypothesis (a plugin that you can activate in your browser). These annotations might include your direct reactions to, commentaries and reflections on, and questions for the plays, as well as your responses to my prompts and to your classmates’ annotations. These annotations will help you take notes and ask questions while reading the plays. They also help to organize our class discussions. Your grade will be based on the number and the length of your original annotations and your response to other people’s annotations that you add throughout the semester. Your annotations for the reading material should be completed before the start of the class.

You can find more tips on this page: https://web.hypothes.is/annotation-tips-for-students/

For your annotations, you should focus on the following types of comments:

  • Close read lines or passages of the text, followed by a short explanation of your sense of how the lines and passages reflect general themes and concerns of the text
  • Ask questions that you have about a passage in the text, with explanation of why your questions are relevant to understanding the general topics, themes and concerns of the text
  • Provide historical/cultural contexts of the text. You can add images and links
  • Add observations on the relevance of the text to contemporary issues. In other words, do we still perceive similar phenomena in our contemporary time? Are the text’s treatment of important cultural and political issues still valid in our contemporary time?

Theatre Review

You should attend all CCNY productions and write one response paper (among three productions of 1-2 pages (300-600 words). The response should focus on the theatrical elements of the productions, such as directing, acting, scenic design, costume, lighting, sound design, and music. The responses are all due on the Sundays at midnight after the productions. 

Fictional Theatre Review Project

Your final project will be a “fictional theatre review.” This assignment asks you to imagine a theatre going/an audience experience in a theatre/a playhouse from the periods and regions covered in this class. You will describe what you see, what you think, and how you feel in the theatre, as well as your reactions to and opinions on the imaginary performance. You should carefully research and critically combine evidence, and creatively construct details. You are encouraged to build on your archival research, but also know that there will be information missing because of the ephemeral nature of performance and that the existing evidence might be partial or biased. You are also encouraged to adopt a contemporary/critical perspective on the historically situated/problematic content of the performance. There are two parts for this assignment: 

You will create a fictional theatre review that recounts an imaginary theatre-going experience. The fictional theatre review can take the form of a personal journal or a video. This fictional review should contain all the content described above. The length of the fictional review is 500-800 words.

Reflective Rationale

In addition, you will write a reflective rationale about the choices that you make in creating the imaginative theatre-going experience. The reflective rationale should contain the following content: you should clarify what contents are historically and empirically based, and what contents are imaginatively and creatively crafted and provide the reasons for the arrangements. You should include any relevant archival objects that explain how they inform your decisions and arrangements. Lastly, you should reflect on what is absent in the archives and what you wish you could have found, and by extension, what and who is missing in theatre histories and how the presence and the absence of material evidence shape the narratives of theatre history. The length of the reflective rationale is 600-900 words.

Draft and Peer Review

There is a peer-review session on 4/4. For the peer review session, you should have a draft of the fictional review and reflective rationale ready. You will turn in your draft after the peer review session.

Showcase

There are two sessions for showcases of fictional theatre review on 5/9, 5/11 (5% of the grade). For the showcase, you will present an excerpt of the fictional review along with a reflective rationale of the excerpt.