THETR 4320 - [Theatre and Society: Asian Cultures]

(crosslisted)
(also ASIAN 4435) @ (CA-AS)

4 credits.

Next offered 2012-2013. Co-meets with ASIAN 6632/THETR 6320.

H. Yan.

This course is a study of Chinese and Japanese theatres with an emphasis on the profound ruptures and variable continuities between “the traditional” and “the modern” aesthetic practices as embodied in the dramatic movements in both countries since the beginning of the 20th century. While major traditional forms of Chinese and Japanese theatres will be introduced and studied in the course, plays by modern Chinese authors such as Hu Shi, Ouyang Yuqian, Hong Shen, Cao Yu, Guo Moruo, and Lao She, modern Japanese authors such as Kishida Kunio, Kubo Sakae, Yukio Mishima, Masakazu Yamazaki, Minoru Betsuyaku, and Seiichi Yashiro will be examined with special attention paid to the transformative ways in which those artists engage their respective traditions and the cultural forces of international modernisms. The aesthetic, social, and political cross-currents between these two historically distinctive Asian dramatic cultures will be further explored in their differential relationships with, and shifting placements in, the changing force fields of globalizing modernity throughout the century. DVDs and other visual materials are used.