I believe I've mentioned that my friend C and I will be teaching a course together this coming semester called "Religion and Theater." After several months of intense phone conversations e met several times during my brief new York visit last month, and are now finalizing our syllabus, once again by phone and e-mail. What will we be doing in the class? Reading, discussing, acting. We'll be reading some works from the theory of religion and history of theater, but the main texts are plays. (I'll describe the religious studies and the theater studies aims some other time, if anyone's interested.) Here's the (very ambitious!) list we've ended up with. When - inevitably - we think "but shouldn't we also..." and "how can we not..." we cut ourselves off with the thought: next time!
Euripides, The Bacchae
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus
Mary Zimmerman, Metamorphoses
The Harrowing of Hell from York Mystery Cycle
Everyman
3 Noh dramas: Zeami's Birds of Sorrow and Atsumori and Kan’ami Kiyotsugu's Sotoba Komachi
Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (B)
Calderon, Life’s a Dream
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, The Divine Narcissus
Ibsen, Ghosts
Synge, The Well of the Saints
Tagore, The Post Office
Brecht, Life of Galileo
Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Miller, The Crucible
Susan Lori Parks, In the Blood
Stephen Adly Guirgis, The Last Trial of Judas Iscariot
