Teaching (not preaching) masterworks in drama.

Abstract

Instructors of dramatic literature face significant challenges to teaching undergraduates, caught between the established canon of university curriculum and ongoing field challenges to the same. The following article describes how a dramatic literature class at a mid-sized private university stimulates critical engagement through a syllabus structured on thematic usefulness and collaborative group projects using performance as an analytical medium. Students receive the benefits of canon-based learning--a shared vocabulary and knowledge base--without promoting an unquestioning belief in "great texts."

Introduction

The problem of the canon has been an active part of field-wide conversation in Theatre Studies for almost three decades. Sue Ellen Case, in her seminal Feminism and Theatre, highlights the ways that works by women and minorities have been systematically excluded from consideration as masterworks. In the article "Disputing the Canon of American Dramatic 'Literature'," Ronald Tavel, founder of Theatre of the Ridiculous, criticizes the "academy game" of vetting plays as masterworks:

   the unspoken here is that there actually are a comfortable dozen
   American playwrights meriting university scrutiny, all of them
   great commercial successes, not to say household words, sanctioned
   by the democratic aggregate and therefore guaranteed inline,
   pre-laundered, and accessible [...] and a consensual breakdown of
   what they are about or ever will be is readily available in
   libraries. (23)

Theatre historian Juan Villegas has written: "Although traditional views imply that the selection is based on 'aesthetic values' and the 'universality' of the individual texts, today it is being pointed out that the selection is determined by socio-historical and cultural factors" (4). Addressing the way that the canon can bifurcate in circumstances where different camps promote differing criteria for consideration, Robert Markley references Restoration drama to demonstrate that the field divides works into one collection that emphasizes efficacy of production and another "deemed to have significant literary value even though they have rarely been produced since 1700" (227). These writers all voice the very rational concern that a play's merit cannot be determined solely by one small group of people any more than it can by its relative commercial success. Neither should the same elite group be allowed to monitor or mediate the interpreted meaning of such works, at least not without acknowledging the right of future readers to challenge their ideas.

The discussion has significant consequences for academics tasked with teaching dramatic literature to university students. As Mark A. Eaton suggests, borrowing from Susan VanZanten Gallagher, college syllabi are often the places where the canon is shaped (307). I teach a spring course entitled "Masterworks of Drama," a class cross-listed with our university's popular Great Texts program (GTX). The program's stated purpose is to offer "a sustained curriculum in the greatest works of human intellectual and creative achievement which will be a profound asset in any profession or graduate study" (Great Texts Program par. 3) In defining the term "great text," professor Rob Miner borrows from the band XTC in calling them "a wisdom hotline from the dead back to the living" (qtd. par. 1). Miner goes on to describe the business of a great text as imparting "wisdom about the highest things, the weightiest matters that concern human beings" (par. 2). He expresses a belief that persists in university classrooms, despite the growing ambivalence manifested in academic scholarship. "Masterwork" is a vexed, if not antiquated, term in the vocabulary of the contemporary academic conversation, and certainly raises red flags for critical thinkers, the watchdogs of hegemony and ideology, and advocates of cultural studies and diversity. The problem with teaching literature--dramatic or otherwise--as canonical is the discomfort that many of us as academics now feel regarding the idea of maintaining a body of masterworks considered to transcend time and culture in their quality and meaning. Richard Schechner effectively summarizes the question this way:

   The struggles over exclusion-inclusion, multicultural-intercultural,
   are struggles for American pasts and futures. People are asking not
   only what belongs in the canon but whether there ought to be a
   canon at all; and if so, whether literature--what can be put into
   words and held in books--is the sole or dominant or determining
   stuff of this canon. ("The Cannon" 12)

This exact concern drives my own uneasiness with the class--which I love teaching, nevertheless--and informs the methodology I use. Before I even engage with students or colleagues on the topic, I am already asking myself by what means and with which agenda the designation of "masterwork" is applied (or denied) to any play I might include on the syllabus. As Schechner suggests, the problem proves doubly complicated in the case of drama, where the debate deals not only with content but formal considerations of what constitutes a text. If a teacher such as myself finds the notion of canon uncomfortable, ill-matched with other aspects of a preferred teaching style, how am I then to "sell" them to my students as the best of what dramatic literature has to offer? Equally important, how can the class help them develop critical faculties that serve them both in reading plays and in watching them on stage?

Teaching Dramatic Literature Requires a Re-Definition of 'Text'

GTX clearly privileges the notion of text as the written word, assembled and preserved in document form. As stated above, this already problematic for a class centered on drama, for written script is one aspect of its life but rarely demonstrates its fullness. The first course reading challenges student definitions of 'text': Stanley Fish's well-known "Is There a Text in This Class?" Students--upper level undergraduates from Theatre and GTX majors/minors--tend to wonder what this bodes for their upcoming experience, especially since they already know that the syllabus assigns at least a dozen plays over the next 15 weeks. Why begin by asking them to question the existence of a "text" when clearly they are about to read a great number of them? If we take up the study of plays only as literary artifacts--great or otherwise--then we engage only in a partial study of those plays. With that in mind, students need to consider what text is, especially in the case of theatre, and to think deeply about how best to approach the material that we encounter during the semester.

In truth, while my sympathies are decidedly postmodern, the class does not aim to destabilize their assumptions about books and play scripts--though the discussion occasionally does that. Neither should it promote an unfettered relativism of meaning and interpretation. I intend them to grasp, as Fish persuasively argues, that meaning is contextually situated and multiple interpretations are possible---indeed inevitable--and ought not be reduced to simple determinations of right and wrong. I am invested in challenging them to develop a more dynamic notion of their role as readers of texts. Theatre students--actors especially--tend to view plays as words to speak, directions to follow; while they do wish to understand characters' motivations, they often fail to look deeply into either narrative cohesion or the socio-cultural implications of what they act out. Students of literature prefer to sift for theme and symbolism, often forgetting that most dramas exist to be enacted. Neither approach adequately engages with the play in question as a "form of cultural representation," to borrow Lizbeth Goodman's term from "Feminisms and Theatre: Canon Fodder and Cultural Change." I begin with Fish because asking students what constitutes a "text" also demands that they re-consider what it means to "read" a text. Can a live performance be a text? What about a film? A building? Can a body be a text? I suggest that a text is anything that can be read. Then what constitutes reading? The first class session always asks students for a working definition of 'reading.' After some thought, the students of last spring's class replied: attention, engagement, interpretation. If that is so, then the act of reading a text is more than simply observing words printed on a page. To be a reader is to develop a relationship with a text (written or otherwise embodied), to collect the information it carries, to interpret meanings, and to ask critical questions. Each play (and performance) is the product of a given time and place; my task as instructor and discussion facilitator is to ask students to critically engage with the issues at work in the plays we read, what they meant to the culture that produced them, and what they now mean to us as we read and watch them.

This requires more than the traditional New Critical methodology of many canon-oriented college courses. I want my students to do more than hunt for narrative symbolism or delve into psychological analysis of the characters (a particularly seductive 'default' for theatre students, whose largely Stanislavsky-based training manifests as a tendency to focus on character motivations to the exclusion of other considerations). While I hope that they will understand the importance of internal consistency and metaphor, they ought to do more than simply affirm accepted notions about what constitutes a "good" play. They will be better served as thinking beings, and in turn will better serve society by discovering how a play represents the worldview of its original producers, and considering what their reception and interpretation of it tells them about themselves and their own interpretive framework.

If I am so uncertain as to the value of promoting established ideas of the "good text," indeed, if I am as a teacher reluctant to support the notion of a body of works whose messages and merit transcend time, why trouble to teach the course at all? What do I, as an instructor, get from the institutional reliance on a Western canon for teaching dramatic literature? First, there is a pedagogical advantage to working with plays likely to be consistent across the discipline and over time. Many of these will already be familiar to students, and plenty of additional information can be accessed through our libraries and the Internet. I can add less familiar works, but overall, I do not have to spend much time introducing my students to the source material before we can get to the central work of analysis. They can then apply the same techniques to new work in my course and beyond. Second, the established body of material also gives students a common base of knowledge and lexicon for future coursework and discourse. They will have shared vocabulary for discussing theatre with others and will take critical thinking skills into future conversations. Third, the work of destabilizing the classics should begin with the established framework. If I wish students to debate notions of what makes a text "great" or what the story "means," then they must be able to clearly identify those established notions in the first place. We consider what makes a good play by looking at plays that have traditionally been identified as quality and then at how such determinations are made. For this reason, I consult a variety of anthologies and articles when crafting a new semester's syllabus, looking for works that students will likely encounter in repertory theatre companies, on award lists, and in future coursework.

Organizing a Syllabus Around "Thematic Usefulness"

In addition, I seek plays that directly confront a topic of cultural interest, as clearly identifiable themes prove easiest for students developing their analytical faculties. Rather than presenting the material in chronological order, I typically pair plays along thematic lines. Double Bind and The Importance of Being Earnest come together for a week on comedy and discussion of "what brings the funny"; The Dutchman pairs with Mrs. Warren's Profession to demonstrate different approaches to Realism; a section on "The Great Debate" in neoclassical France discusses how art can be the topic of heated public discourse. The groupings I have used in the last two semesters follow:

The Birth of Tragedy         The Oresteia
Comic Archetypes             Double Bind, The Importance of Being
                             Earnest
Realism                      Mrs. Warren's Profession, The Dutchman
Godly Play                   Dulcitius, Sotoba Komache
(Faith and Theatre)
In the Renaissance           Life is a Dream, The Jew of Malta
The Great Debate             The Cid, Hernani
The Obligatory Shakespeare   The Tempest
Sex & Scandal                The Rover, Spring Awakening
Rejecting Realism            Six Characters in Search of an Author,
                             Mother Courage & Her Children
Activist Plays               Zoot Suit, Topdog/Underdog
Journalist dramaturgy        Fires in the Mirror, The Laramie Project

Eaton refers to this technique as "thematic usefulness" (311). The structure has many advantages: students learn to draw connections across time and culture while addressing specificity, plays by minority authors avoid potential "ghettoizing" when discussion refuses to place them only in relation to others of the same identity-background, and we evade positivist notions that theatre has moved chronologically toward a developmental pinnacle (a golden age) from which it has since fallen after the popular rise of film and television.

Critical Thinking Through Creative Group Projects

In addition to weekly discussion of the readings, students participate in two group projects; each mirrors the conviction of Karen Cardozo that collaborative work and "the task of creating order from an undifferentiated mass of information" assist students "to hone skills increasingly acknowledged as central to living and working in the twenty-first century" (410). Both are performative, requiring that students gather information on selected plays, act small scenes from them, and discuss them with the class. In the first assignment (mid-semester), designed to emphasize analytical technique, each group conducts research on a play and synthesizes their findings into a kind of meta-performance. They receive careful instructions to privilege thorough consideration of ideas over slick production values (a temptation for young adults with scads of costumes and props at their disposal). They must create a presentation that features scenes from the play plus a dramatized discussion of relevant information. They then engage the whole class in conversation on questions posed through the performances, providing handouts that build on scholarly research and serve as a ready reference for their peers. The assignment has a great deal of interpretive freedom built in, and the resulting presentations take many different shapes. Last spring, for example, one group enacted a rehearsal of The Importance of Being Earnest that was interrupted by Oscar Wilde, who stepped in to direct the "actors" and to offer a queer reading of the play.

The second project, equivalent to a final exam, is more elaborate and engages students more fully in the process of canonization for dramatic literature. This assignment evolves every semester as I seek to increase its efficacy. First, I worked with several colleagues to stage a "Literary Court of Law" where groups sought to defend a playwright's place in the canon. Students played the roles of attorneys, witnesses (generally characters from our plays), and the playwrights themselves. They researched evidence to support their case, arguing before a panel of justices who challenged a playwright's canonical status. Reflecting on the experience after the assignment's conclusion, most students agreed that it required them to think about how qualitative determinations happen but objected to the idea that the playwrights were the focus of the assignment rather than the texts. In response, I re-designed the assignment for the next spring. Students formed delegations for a world competition to choose Earth's representative at an imaginary "Intergalactic Cultural Encounter." Each group must choose and promote one play as Humanity's artistic ambassador to a gathering of sentient beings. Research goals were the same--choose a drama that demonstrates what they believe great drama ought to accomplish (giving aesthetic and intellectual pleasure to the observer, offering a meaningful expression of some human experience) gather critical commentary on the play, use it to construct a convincing argument for the play's strengths, and be prepared to answer challenges (offered by their peers and the instructor) about its potential defects or weaknesses in their argument. Participants, especially students chosen as competition judges, had repeated occasion to reflect on their role as readers of the experience and of the performances created. This time the post-mortem discussion included a series of questions aimed at getting students to examine the limitations of the exercise (such as the inherent bias towards English in the class environment and an inherent tendency to re-affirm the canonizing process after a semester of challenging the same). Student responses indicated a deeper satisfaction with their own learning process than those of the project's predecessor, and participants demonstrated better articulated, more sustained engagement with the ideas at hand.

Conclusion

Working together, the syllabus structure and these group projects aim to increase student awareness of plays as texts that can manifest in multiple ways, and to approach potential veneration any text with care and thoughtfulness. It matters for theatre students, many of whom regard analytical effort with the deep suspicion of years of Method-based training, to look at plays in entirely new ways. Literature students, too, need to develop a sense that the written word is not the only place one can seek "wisdom about the highest things, the weightiest matters that concern human beings." Following the Masterworks class, students should feel equipped and empowered to carefully, critically read the texts produced within a given culture, deciding whether they hold benefit for them and their culture. Ultimately, this instructor does not wish to undermine the work of colleagues in the Great Texts program; they work hard, demonstrate intellectual integrity and curiosity in their own scholarship, and articulate (as their website demonstrates) a concern that their students should make positive contributions to their chosen professions. Rather, I intend that the class should reflect the concerns of Theatre Studies while respecting the interdisciplinary encounter that the university designed it to be. The end goals of both programs are the same, and reflect the real work of a university: to help individuals develop skills that will promote both their individual growth and that of their society. The process of both developing and challenging canons are means to that end, and can be productive parts of the evolving pedagogical approaches we use.

References

Cardozo, Karen M. "At the Museum of Natural Theory: The Experiential Syllabus (Or, what Happens when Students Act Like Professors)." Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 6.3 (2006): 405-33.

Case, Sue Ellen. Feminism and Theatre. Routledge, 1988.

Eaton, Mark A. "The Cultural Capital of Imaginary Versus Pedagogical Canons." Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 1.2 (2001): 305-15.

Goodman, Lizbeth. "Feminisms and Theatres: Canon Fodder and Cultural Change." Analysing Performance: A Critical Reader. Ed. Patrick Campbell. Manchester, England: Manchester UP, 1996. 19-47.

Great Texts Page. Great Texts Program, Baylor University. 11 Sept. 2006 <http://www.baylor.edu/Great_Texts/>.

Markley, Robert. "The Canon and its Critics." The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre. Ed. Deborah Payne Fisk. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2000. 226-242.

Miner, Rob. "Why Study Great Texts?" 32 pars. 11 Sept. 2006 <http://www.baylor.edu/Great_Texts/index.php?id=6531 >.

Schechner, Richard. "The Cannon." TDR: The Drama Review: A Journal of Performance Studies 35.4 (1991): 7-13.

Tavel, Ronald. "Disputing the Canon of American Dramatic 'Literature'." New Theatre Quarterly 13.49 (1997): 18-28.

Villegas, Juan. "The State of Writing Histories of Theater." Degres: Revue de Synthese Orientation Semiologique. 107-108(200 l):c1-c1 7.

Carolyn D. Roark, Baylor University, TX

Carolyn D. Roark is assistant professor of Theatre Arts at Baylor University and editor of the Baylor Journal of Theatre and Performance.