Decolonizing Curriculum: Teaching the Twenty-First-Century Dramatic Canon
I have been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in play-analysis, developmental dramaturgy, adaptation and new play creation for almost two decades. Trained within structural and semiotic approaches to text and performance analysis with emergence of what David Barnett calls “postdramatic the...
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University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress)
2023
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Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/md-66-2-1280 https://moderndrama.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/md-66-2-1280 |
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crunivtoronpr:10.3138/md-66-2-1280 2023-12-31T10:09:14+01:00 Decolonizing Curriculum: Teaching the Twenty-First-Century Dramatic Canon Meerzon, Yana 2023 http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/md-66-2-1280 https://moderndrama.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/md-66-2-1280 en eng University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) Modern Drama volume 66, issue 2, page 256-276 ISSN 0026-7694 1712-5286 Literature and Literary Theory journal-article 2023 crunivtoronpr https://doi.org/10.3138/md-66-2-1280 2023-12-01T08:17:50Z I have been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in play-analysis, developmental dramaturgy, adaptation and new play creation for almost two decades. Trained within structural and semiotic approaches to text and performance analysis with emergence of what David Barnett calls “postdramatic theatre texts” (2008:14) and recent calls for decolonizing curriculum, I found myself at a philosophical and theoretical crossroads. This article summarizes my teaching practice and philosophy as inflected through decolonial methods. It argues for our need to teach students to simultaneously position every dramatic text within the critical lens of structural play-analysis and their historical/cultural contextualization or dramaturgical concretization (Vodička 1975). The twenty-first century dramatic texts I teach are often located within the postdramatic European theatre and performance canon (Lehmann 2006), as well as within postcolonial and Indigenous traditions of storytelling. The three plays I chose as my case studies— Arabian Night (2003) by German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig, Bintou (2002) by Koffi Kwahulé, a Côte d’Ivoire writer living in France, and Burning Vision (2003) by Marie Clements, a Canadian Metis theatre artist—constitute the core of my syllabus for a graduate course in dramaturgy. Article in Journal/Newspaper Metis University of Toronto Press (U Toronto Press - via Crossref) Modern Drama 66 2 256 276 |
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University of Toronto Press (U Toronto Press - via Crossref) |
op_collection_id |
crunivtoronpr |
language |
English |
topic |
Literature and Literary Theory |
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Literature and Literary Theory Meerzon, Yana Decolonizing Curriculum: Teaching the Twenty-First-Century Dramatic Canon |
topic_facet |
Literature and Literary Theory |
description |
I have been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in play-analysis, developmental dramaturgy, adaptation and new play creation for almost two decades. Trained within structural and semiotic approaches to text and performance analysis with emergence of what David Barnett calls “postdramatic theatre texts” (2008:14) and recent calls for decolonizing curriculum, I found myself at a philosophical and theoretical crossroads. This article summarizes my teaching practice and philosophy as inflected through decolonial methods. It argues for our need to teach students to simultaneously position every dramatic text within the critical lens of structural play-analysis and their historical/cultural contextualization or dramaturgical concretization (Vodička 1975). The twenty-first century dramatic texts I teach are often located within the postdramatic European theatre and performance canon (Lehmann 2006), as well as within postcolonial and Indigenous traditions of storytelling. The three plays I chose as my case studies— Arabian Night (2003) by German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig, Bintou (2002) by Koffi Kwahulé, a Côte d’Ivoire writer living in France, and Burning Vision (2003) by Marie Clements, a Canadian Metis theatre artist—constitute the core of my syllabus for a graduate course in dramaturgy. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Meerzon, Yana |
author_facet |
Meerzon, Yana |
author_sort |
Meerzon, Yana |
title |
Decolonizing Curriculum: Teaching the Twenty-First-Century Dramatic Canon |
title_short |
Decolonizing Curriculum: Teaching the Twenty-First-Century Dramatic Canon |
title_full |
Decolonizing Curriculum: Teaching the Twenty-First-Century Dramatic Canon |
title_fullStr |
Decolonizing Curriculum: Teaching the Twenty-First-Century Dramatic Canon |
title_full_unstemmed |
Decolonizing Curriculum: Teaching the Twenty-First-Century Dramatic Canon |
title_sort |
decolonizing curriculum: teaching the twenty-first-century dramatic canon |
publisher |
University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/md-66-2-1280 https://moderndrama.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/md-66-2-1280 |
genre |
Metis |
genre_facet |
Metis |
op_source |
Modern Drama volume 66, issue 2, page 256-276 ISSN 0026-7694 1712-5286 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3138/md-66-2-1280 |
container_title |
Modern Drama |
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66 |
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2 |
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256 |
op_container_end_page |
276 |
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1786842277399756800 |