In this class, we’ll talk about how playwrights have written women characters from the fifth century BC to the twenty-first century, for better or worse, and think about how we can reinterpret texts in new ways. We’ll explore our ideas through both written assignments (reflective journals and critical papers) and creative undertakings (a project where you can propose an innovative staging of a text!). You’ll be invited to analyze, perform, and direct selections of our course texts (including Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and Ruhl’s Eurydice) throughout our time together in ways that challenge societal expectations and interrogate what it means to take center stage.

Texts

• Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays (1983), David Ball
• Romeo and Juliet (1623), William Shakespeare
• Lysistrata (411 BC), Aristophanes
• Eurydice (2003), Sarah Ruhl
• Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956), Eugene O’Neill
• A Doll’s House (1879), Henrik Ibsen
• Miss Julie (1889), August Strindberg
• Trifles (1916), Susan Glaspell