Ronald Wainscott
Head of Theatre History, Theory, and Literature
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The Doctor of Philosophy in Theatre and Drama at Indiana University requires study on an advanced level of Dramatic Literature, Theatre History, Theory and Analysis of Drama and Theatre Arts. Students whose previous training has been primarily or exclusively in one area (such as Theatre Production or Dramatic Literature) are admitted to the program with the understanding that they will make up deficiencies in those areas in which they have had inadequate prior training. The emphasis in the doctoral program is on training for research, wide acquaintance with scholarly works, and accomplishment of significant results in investigation worthy of publication. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the student either has had or will gain a proficiency in at least one area of theatre production. The course of study pursued by the student should be supplemented with work in productions and with wide reading and independent study in the library.
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, official information regarding degree requirements can be found on the University Graduate School web page.
The PhD program presupposes that the student will have had sufficient preparation to provide a basis for advanced study. This will normally be provided by a standard MA program in theatre containing the following elements:
A student must accumulate a minimum of 90 semester hours beyond the BA degree for the PhD. Up to 30 semester hours of graduate work taken elsewhere may be used to meet this requirement.
A student who has not taken the Production, History, Literature and Theory courses listed above will be expected to take them concurrently with the doctoral program and as soon as possible. A student will be excused from this requirement of formal course work only if he/she can satisfy the faculty member in charge of the area in question that he/she has had the equivalent of the minimal course work. Satisfaction can be given through special examination or through reliable evidence (such as a combination of record of experience, letters from former colleagues, interviews, etc.).
A student who has not written a formal thesis for the MA must submit some evidence of research and writing skills, such as a substantial term paper.
Because virtually all positions in theatre and drama which the student will seek upon completing the PhD demand some practical theatre skills, doctoral students at Indiana University are encouraged to become proficient in at least one area of theatre production.
At least 30 of the required 90 semester hours must be in graduate courses numbered 500 or above. The total course work must be distributed between major and minor programs as described below. The student must have a minimum of six semesters of graduate study, at least two of which must be spent in consecutive residence at Indiana University.
The language requirement may be met in one of the following ways: 1) by demonstrating a reading knowledge of two foreign languages; or 2) by demonstrating a knowledge in depth of one foreign language. The option chosen must be appropriate to the student’s program and must be approved by the program committee. Special courses are offered by the language departments to aid those students who are deficient in languages. A student cannot take the qualifying examinations until he/she has completed the language requirements.
To ensure that the student has an adequate overview of the field, the Department has a reading list which all PhD students must complete. Before being admitted to the qualifying examinations, the student must pass an oral examination over each of the four parts into which the reading list is divided. Obviously, the list is selective, and it is quite likely that a student will have read many of the books and plays while completing prior BA and MA programs.
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.
Retention
All PhD 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.
The progress toward the PhD is also reviewed each semester by the Director of Graduate Studies and by the HTL faculty at least once a year. Each doctoral student is expected to successfully complete at least one Comprehensive Examination in each of the first three years, but all four exams before the beginning of the fourth year of work. The Qualifying Examination is expected to be completed and the designation of ABD before the conclusion of the fourth year of work. Failure to make appropriate progress in this examination process is also grounds for probation.
Success
For more than fourteen years (as of fall 2008) all graduate students in the IU PhD theatre program who completed their dissertations have been successful at getting faculty academic appointments in their field right away. This is an important statistic because it points up the importance of completing the dissertation and speaks well of our PhD program.
The student must successfully complete qualifying examinations before formal admission to candidacy for the PhD degree. (Examinations in the minor field are rarely required, although any department may give such an examination if it wishes to do so.) Qualifying examinations are normally taken upon the completion of formal course work and before the beginning work on the dissertation. A student will be denied further participation in the doctoral program if he/she twice fails any of the comprehensive reading list examinations or the qualifying examinations.
The candidate must demonstrate mastery of a specific topic by completing a dissertation. A final oral examination over the dissertation and appropriate related materials is also required. The dissertation must be submitted and accepted within five years following formal admission to candidacy.
Although every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, official information regarding degree requirements can be found on the University Graduate School web page.
Financial Aid
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.
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.
To supplement departmental financial aid, various scholarships, fellowships, and loans may be available through the University Graduate School or the Office of Student Financial Assistance.
Academic Appointments
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 six 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.
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.
There are two types of graduate appointments:
Graduate Assistantships
Graduate assistants work in various areas of theatre production (costuming, lights/sound, props, stagecraft, house management) or work in the departmental offices (audience development, production management, dramaturgy).Associate Instructorships
Associate instructors teach first year courses in acting, oral interpretation, and theatre appreciation. These appointments are open to MFA students and PhD students who have completed 30 hours of graduate work.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.
Additional Benefits
Student Academic Appointees and Fellowship Recipients are automatically enrolled in the student insurance plan and the cost of the student premium is paid by the university. The plan also includes dental, mental health and prescription drug benefits. Eligible students may also insure their dependents. Eligible dependents are the spouse/same-sex domestic partner (residing with the Insured student) and unmarried children under the age of 24.
Learn more about the Student Academic Appointee Health Insurance Plan
Additional benefits include a "green conscious" campus with free buses, free Adobe and Microsoft products, and a ubiquitous wireless internet.
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