Ronald Wainscott
Head of Theatre History, Theory, and Literature
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The candidate for the Master of Arts degree is expected to be familiar with all areas of study in theatre and drama but, in accordance with the student's aims and prior training, may be allowed to concentrate his/her study largely in one area. Usually the thesis subject or project the candidate selects will determine the area of concentration. In that area the candidate must acquire a mastery sufficient to allow him/her to do independent thinking and to demonstrate the results in a thesis. All graduate students are expected to supplement the knowledge acquired in courses by participating in the various production activities of the department and by independent reading and study.
Click here to learn more about our current M.A./Ph.D. students and recent alumni.
Although every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, the official source of information regarding Graduate School degree requirements is the University Graduate School web page.
Spring 2013
This course is designed to answer the question, how can we as scholars think with, respond to, document and otherwise engage performance? Where are we now that performance ethnography, reviews, and casebooks seem outmoded, but blogs, crowd-sourcing and Twitter feeds seem intellectually undercooked?
We believe the question is a timely one. In this election year, authenticity, liveness, typecasting, theatricality and performativity are uniquely pressing public concerns. We will seize on the opportunities afforded by this cultural moment, including debates, rallies, scholarly presentations and theatrical productions, but in equal measure, we will take our cue from the interests of the class. Students will help select and curate the course readings, and all assignments will be designed to serve individual research interests. Our goal will be to discover, develop and discuss the best practices for the performance-based scholarship we each mean to pursue.
How do theories of ritual and the examination of ritual as a kind of theatre influence the way we view theatre? How do these complicate our understanding of theatre artists who use ritual in their performance? What kind of analytical lens does the study of ritual give to our understanding of theatre and performance within a variety of cultures and contexts?
Ritual, sometimes cited as a possible origin of theatrical performance, has often excited ideas about theatrical creation, experience, themes, and relevance from the Greeks to the American avant-garde. Rituals can also be understood as a special kind of performance or action that contains religious or spiritual significance. Rituals involve the human body, dance, music, masks, puppets, and trance in performances that reveal and reify cultures around the world. In this class we are going to examine ritual in a transnational and transtemporal context in order to better understand the significance of and relationship between ritual and theatre. We will:
Spring 2012
Fall 2011
Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be performed and this course will take an in-depth look at the plays from the perspective of the performance of which they are (an unreliable) record. We will learn about the performance conditions of the early modern period, the textual history of the plays, and scrutinize the language of the plays for signs of the performance it commands. In particular we will track the signs of staging (entrances, groups, asides), props, the body of the boy player, and the sounds the verse makes in the (imagined) Globe. Assignments will include a short video demonstrating the relationship between a creative concept for Troilus and Cressida.
Spring 2011
This course will read key theoretical texts from the twentieth century on acting and perception and in this way investigate how theatre has staged and challenged what it means to be human in the 20th century. Stanislavsky’s system of acting invents or presupposes a very different idea of the self and the group than does Ann Bogart’s Viewpoints theory. We will read theories of acting from Stanislavsky, Brecht, Grotowski, Anna Deavere Smith, and Ann Bogart against key critical 20th century critical texts on the self and the group, such as Louis Althusser’s Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, Erving Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Joseph Roach’s Cities of the Dead, Donna Haraway’s "A Manifesto for Cyborgs,” and George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s, Metaphors We Live By, among others.
Course will follow a seminar format, in which students will be expected to come in ready to engage with the material. There will be several short experimental papers/creative projects rather than a final paper, giving students many opportunities to write and have their writing read and commented on.
First of all, this course will examine the distinguished career of Edward Albee. Over a period of five decades, Albee has produced an impressive and wide range of dramatic works that has earned national and international acclaim from theatre critics, scholars and practitioners. We will read nearly all his plays, study his major productions in America and Europe, and review the main interpretations of his work offered by critics and scholars. Given my own attendance at Albee’s rehearsals, we will also study how the author translated these plays into stage performances when he directed professional productions on Broadway and elsewhere.
Secondly, we will locate our study of Albee within the larger context of recent American theatre. To do this we will examine the careers of two or three of his most important fellow playwrights - major figures like Sam Shepard, August Wilson, and Tony Kushner. Some of these playwrights have been influenced by Albee; in some cases he has helped them with artistic advice and practical production support and in other cases he has directed their plays. We will seek parallels between his work and theirs, as well as discuss the many divergences in themes, styles, authorial goals, and professional histories and agendas.
Fall 2010
All violence is a performance, generating trauma and controlling the gaze. Aristotle may haverelegated it to back stage, but it is central to Greek and Roman drama. Thelanguage drips with blood and the reveal is a brief look at devastation.
Laughter is moving and contagious. It shakes you and alters you from toe to top and it is unlikely to happen when you are alone. What is funny and why? What is the force of humor on the Greek and Roman stage? The physical experiences of trauma and laughter happen to the audience; what is onstage is defined by what happens in the spectators’ bodies.
This course will examine some of the most provocative playwrights writing in the United Kingdom and Ireland today. Together these dramatists have radically redefined the theatre they inherited and re-engaged a new and younger generation of audiences and theatre practitioners. Much of this drama (though not all) - labeled variously as In-Yer-Face Theatre or Brutalist Theatre or New Senecan Theatre - is the most exciting and innovative theatre in the English language, and it has defined its own unique theatrical aesthetic.
We will study a broad and representative spectrum of this theatre from 1990 to the present by looking at twenty different playwrights, including two or three who began their careers before the 1990s but have had a significant presence in the theatre of the last decade and a half. We will examine these authors’ characteristic preoccupations, styles, and particular contributions to the shaping of the broad contours of this theatre. We will also analyze how these playwrights critique their era’s society, politics, and culture.
Wherever possible, moreover, we will look at the role of directors, actors, and theatre organizations in the formation of this theatre. Overall, our deliberations should lead to a clear delineation of this theatre’s aesthetics, obsessions, and achievements.
Transfer credits must meet the particular requirements of the MA program and be formally recommended by the department of Theatre and Drama to the Graduate School. A candidate may transfer up to 8 hours of appropriate graduate credit from other institutions.
All MA students are expected to maintain a GPA or 3.2 or higher. To fall below this threshold will result in probation for one semester and removal from the program if not corrected within one semester. All appropriate grades are B or higher. To make a course or seminar grade that falls below a B may result in probation.
Various scholarships, fellowships, and loans may be available through the University Graduate School or the Office of Student Financial Assistance. Inquiries should be sent to: Office of Student Financial Assistance, Indiana University, Franklin Hall 208, Bloomington, Indiana 47405.
Graduate appointments with financial aid are intended to provide (1) essential services for the Department and (2) financial aid for persons of unusual academic or creative ability and promise. While the choice of an institution for graduate work should be made on a basis other than the amount of financial assistance available, we recognize the importance of this factor and explain here our graduate appointment policies.
The standard graduate appointment is a 50% Full Time Employment (FTE) position requiring 20 hours of service per week or the teaching of three to four courses per academic year. Stipends for these graduate appointments are paid on a monthly basis and will have all appropriate taxes and deductions withheld. Students holding graduate appointments are eligible for fee scholarships which pay the cost of tuition for 24 credit hours of study during the academic year and 6 credit hours in the summer, with the exception of certain non-remittable fees. Please contact the head of your area of interest for current values of appointments and fee remittance.
There are two types of graduate appointments:
Graduate Assistantships
Graduate assistants work in various areas of theatre production (acting, costuming, lights/sound, props, stagecraft, stage management) or work in the departmental offices (audience development, dramaturg).
Associate Instructorships
Associate instructors teach first year courses in acting, introduction to theatre, and script analysis. These appointments are open to PhD students who have completed 30 hours of graduate work.
Appointment of associate instructorships and graduate assistantships, as well as the awarding of fellowships, is contingent upon: maintenance of a 3.2 academic average, satisfactory performance of duties of the appointment or fellowship, and enrollment in a specified minimum number of graduate hours
Persons seeking financial aid through a graduate appointment must submit an application for admission into the University Graduate School (complete with all transcripts, letters of recommendation, and Graduate Record Examination scores). If a student has skills in program areas other than for what he/she is applying, a separate statement outlining those skills should be included.
For some graduate students there is also the possibility of summer employment at the Indiana Festival Theatre., a professional repertory theatre, run in conjunction with the Department of Theatre and Drama on the IU Campus since 2011.
Graduate students in the Department of Theatre and Drama may also apply for appointments in other departments at Indiana University. Write directly to the appropriate departments for information on these appointments.
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