Dramatic Arts

This foundation level course introduces the history, genres, aesthetics, practice and relevance of live and performance art along with interaction strategies that facilitate engagement with audiences or augment the performer’s capabilities. This course discusses how art can influence society, the art world and politics through enactments and cross-media interventions in public spaces. Students develop critical and artistic skills to frame live and performance art as a reference for their own practice and gain exposure to technical skills, including interactive media technologies, spatial and site-specific awareness and engineering interactivity through the lens of live and performance art methods. Students apply their knowledge in the creation, development, presentation and documentation of an original interactive or participative performance work. For this project, efficient use of technical resources leads to a deeper understanding of media authoring approaches found in electronic and interactive technologies. This learning forms a foundation for further studies in interactive media, interaction design, exhibit design and product design.

The objectives of this course are:

- Conduct a theoretical and practical study of contemporary stage languages, based on the concepts of theatricality and performativity and the dialogue with other artistic languages.
- Expand the ability to perceive the expressive and descriptive elements that make up the stage, through practical experimentation with the relationship between these elements in the body and space.
- Discuss the different theoretical views of the stage, from the modern advent of staging to the break with the canons of Eurocentric Western art, undertaken through decolonial theatrical experiences.
- Analyze the creative processes, stage creation methods, and aesthetic proposals of artists from the contemporary Brazilian stage, critically reflecting on different conceptions of theatrical and performative scenes.
- Encourage the creation of scenes that point to new possibilities for artistic dialogue with the contemporary world.
- Develop practical stage work based on the materiality of the elements that make up the space-time of the stage and their relationships. 

This course uses case studies, theoretical readings, discussions, and seminars. Students participate in stage writing work based on the reinterprettation of textual materials selected from various sources and with a common theme. 

The course explores how drama, theatre, and performance reflect and effect social change. Students think about the relationship of the individual and the community in relation to wider social or institutional structures. The course brings together historical perspectives about drama, theatre, and performance and urgent issues in the present. Key skills students gain include working with theatre texts, historical understanding, and critical analysis about social and cultural change.

Students consider a range of Shakespeare's plays (comedies, tragedies, tragi-comedies, and romances) from different stages of his career, analyzing the playwright's stagecraft, his use of language and his reworking of traditional forms for the commercial stage. While students explore some recent adaptations for stage and screen, the course also focuses on the plays as produced in their original historical and cultural contexts. The course familiarizes students with Renaissance drama's negotiation of contested social and political issues at the turn of the 17th century. Students investigate the social processes of the theatre – notably the playhouses used by Shakespeare's company (the Theatre, the Globe and Blackfriars) – and focus on the interplay of Shakespearean texts and their performance in the production of meaning.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. 

At the end of the course, students will have acquired knowledge of the theoretical and critical reflections on the performing arts in Italy from the second half of the twentieth century to the first decade of the new millennium, with a particular focus on mise-en-scène and dance. Students will be capable of autonomously analyzing critical, theoretical, and poetic texts regarding the performing arts and will have acquired a series of tools for understanding pertinent iconographic and video documents.

What is performance? How is it related to its cultural and historical context? Which tools does its study provide to read the Italian contemporary culture? The course provides an answer to these questions in regard to the history of the Italian Performance Scene since the Sixties. After a methodological introduction on diverse concepts and theories of performance, the course focuses on the most relevant case studies of New Theatre with a focus on the most engaged forms of theatre, which allow for an introduction to the cultural, social, and political changes that shaped the Italian history in between the Sixties and Seventies. The course then focuses on relevant case studies in Applied and Social Theatre (theatre in prison, in health centers, and with vulnerable communities).