VPDP 11H3: Theatre

History II

Don

Matt Jones
mf.jones@mail.utoronto.ca

Return to Pecha Kucha

Catalyst Theatre (Edmonton)
Project Tobong
Professional Puppets
This is Water Theatre
That Time We Wrote a Play
Suspending Disbelief
Christchurch Free Theatre
Forward Theatre Company
Theatre in Memphis

Neo-classical rules
Verisimilitude
Three unities
Decorum
Poetic justice

Molire
Aka Jean-Baptiste
Poquelin
1622-1673
Writer, actor, manager

The School for Wives

(Lcole des femmes)

1662

1663

Tartuffe, or The Impostor

1664

Don Juan, or The Feast of the Statue

(Dom Juan, ou Le Festin de Pierre)

1665

Don Juan

Sganarrelle

Don Louis

Don Carlos &

Don Alonso

Don Juan &

Donna Elvira

Don Juan &

Charlotte

The laws presume that all women are usually bad

because they are so full of mischief and vices that are
difficult to describe
-- anonymous, 1524

Berlin Staatsballett, 2014

The Miser (LAvare)

1668

Terry Eagleton on Virtue (2009)

The devil, so they say, has all the best tunes, and this seems to be the case
when it comes to literature as well. Nobody would take a guided tour of
Dantes Paradiso if they could have one of the Inferno instead. Miltons God
sounds like a bureaucratic bore, while his Satan shimmers with mutinous life.
Nobody would have an orange juice with Oliver Twist if they could have a beer
with Fagin instead. So why is evil so sexy, and good so profoundly
unglamorous? And why does virtue seem so boring?
One answer, at least in the West, is the gradual rise of the middle classes. As
the middle classes came to exert their clammy grip on Western civilisation,
there was a gradual re-definition of virtue. Virtue came to mean not energy
and exuberance but prudence, thrift, meekness, chastity, temperance,
industriousness and so on. No wonder people prefer vampires. These may be
admirable virtues, but they are not exactly exciting ones.

Friday 2pm!
Deniz Baar analyzes plays about the ongoing KurdishTurkish War, focusing on works from the alternative theatres
of central Istanbul as well as from the Kurdish region. The
plays are in Turkish and Kurdish, and these texts include
unorthodox characters who represent the wide range of
people affected by the war.
Matt Jones investigates Western NGO theatre initiatives in
Afghanistan during the American Occupation, analyzing the
relationship of theatre companies to humanitarian concerns,
military interests, and Western designs for the region.
Marjan Moosavi examines theatrical responses to the
memory of Iran-Iraq war on the Iranian stage, including the
theatrical modality of value-based theatre promoted by
the state as well as interventionist theatre that critiques the
canonized memory of war. This theatre is committed to
intervening in the politics and aesthetics of memorializing
war on the stage.

Kabuki
Theatre:
Chikamatsu
Monzaemon
The Love
Suicides at
Amijima
(1721)

Readings:
Zarrilli et al, pp. 203-206; 219-227

Monzaemon, The Love Suicides at Amijima