Online Undergraduate-Level Course
Script Analysis for Theater
This is a Boston Conservatory course offered through Berklee Online.
Welcome to Script Analysis for Theater. In this course we’re going to work backwards from your love of theater to closely examine how the plays you fell in love with were made. We’ll look at the movements in theater that spawned important genres and aesthetic devices that writers have used to engage audiences across time. Each week, we’ll discuss specific terminology and tools from within specific traditions, while considering how these movements speak to each other, and we’ll apply those ideas to selected readings. Our lens will be global, from ancient Japan and India to twenty-first century Broadway and Boston Conservatory. After deepening our understanding of the roots of theater-making, we’ll end the semester with our eyes focused on the present and the future, by together considering contemporary issues (including racism in American theater), and as students work in groups to present their prognosis for the longevity of specific plays.
This course will not only make you more fluent in some of the most important theater traditions in the world, but enhance your understanding of the texts with which you will engage as theater artists.
By the end of the course, you will be able to:
- recognize the genre of a work and the way that genre varies by time and culture
- identify modes of presentation and how they signal meaning beyond the text of a work
- analyze the intended effect on the audience of a playwright’s choice to defy genre or established modes
- articulate the role of race and culture in how theater is received, promoted, and sustained
- make a critical case for the longevity of a text, based on its artistic merits, cultural context, and your understanding of theater history
Syllabus
Lesson 1: What Makes Theater Distinct
- The Difference of a Live Genre
- Character, Conflict, and Motion
- How to Read a Play Manuscript
- Beats, Scenes, and Acts
- Assignment 1: The Narrative Trio in Action
Lesson 2: Tragedy
- Ancient Tragedy in Greece
- Tragedy in Japan’s Noh Theater
- Shakespearean Tragedy and 'Revenge Plays'
- Tragedy in African Theater
- The Role of Tragedy in Native American Theater Tradition
- The Debate over Modern Tragedy
- Assignment 2: Tragedy in Comparison
Lesson 3: Comedy
- Sanskrit Comedy
- Ancient Comedy: Greek and Roman
- From Clowns to Comedy of Manners
- Farce, Satire, Parody, and Black Comedy
- Assignment 3: Comedy Comparison and Analysis
Lesson 4: ‘Well-Made’ Plays and Beyond
- Story Structure
- The ‘Well-Made’ Play
- The Influence of the Well-Made Play on TV and Film Structure
- Well-Made Play Redux
- Assignment 4: BFE Analysis
Lesson 5: Beyond Genre
- Tragicomedy and Dramedy
- Playing with Tropes and Conventions
- Trope Bingo
- The Perils of Using Tropes
- Devised Work
- Directing Father Comes Home from the Wars
- Assignment 5: Bootycandy Analysis
Lesson 6: Naturalism and Realism
- Why Realism and Naturalism Aren’t Always Interchangeable
- Naturalism in France
- Realism from Ibsen to Chekhov
- ‘Angry Young Men’ and ‘Kitchen Sink’ Plays
- Assignment 6: A Taste of Honey Analysis
Lesson 7: Beyond Naturalism
- Non-Naturalism
- Heightened Naturalism
- Absurdism
- Playing with Time
- Assignment 7: Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue Analysis
Lesson 8: Musicals and Their Conventions
- Music and Spectacle from the Beginning
- Popular Genres of Musicals
- Archetypal Numbers and Characters
- Musicals That Defy Expectations
- Assignment 8: The Band’s Visit Analysis
Lesson 9: Contemporary Theater Part One: Theater as Protest and Movement
- Twentieth Century Movements for Theater as Change
- Perils and Promises of ‘Message Plays’
- Documentary Theatre
- Assignment 9: Pipeline Analysis
Lesson 10: Contemporary Theater Part Two: Racism and Bias in American Theater
- Language Matters
- Own Voices
- Reenacting Trauma
- Colorblind vs. Conscious Casting
- Intersectionality
- Assignment 10: Identity and Intersectionality in American Theater
Lesson 11: Central Inquiry, Part One: The Lifespan of a Play
- ‘Canon’ and Gatekeepers
- The Influence of Criticism
- Critical Reception, Then and Now
- Context Matters
- Assignment 11: Central Inquiry Research and Preparation
Lesson 12: Central Inquiry, Part Two: Presentation and Portfolio
- Encapsulating a Play
- What Makes the Work (and Its Author) Unique or Distinct?
- What Makes a Play Last?
- You Take the Stage
- Assignment 12: Final Project (Central Inquiry)
Requirements
Prerequisites and Course-Specific Requirements
Prerequisite Courses, Knowledge, and/or Skills
- This course does not have any prerequisites.
Textbook(s)
- All of the following plays are required:
- Kamloopa by Kim Senklip Harvey
- Bootycandy by Robert O'Hara
- The Band's Visit by Itamar Moses
- Pipeline by Dominique Morisseau
- A reading anthology compiled by course author, David Valdes, will be included as a free download in the course.
Software
- Presentation software, such as Microsoft Powerpoint, Google Slides (free), Apple Keynote, Apache OpenOffice (free), etc.
Student Deals
After enrolling, be sure to check out our Student Deals page for various offers on software, hardware, and more. Please contact support@online.berklee.edu with any questions.
General Course Requirements
Below are the minimum requirements to access the course environment and participate in Live Classes. Please make sure to also check the Prerequisites and Course-Specific Requirements section above, and ensure your computer meets or exceeds the minimum system requirements for all software needed for your course.
Mac Users
PC Users
All Users
- Latest version of Google Chrome
- Zoom meeting software
- Webcam
- Speakers or headphones
- External or internal microphone
- Broadband Internet connection
Instructors
Author
David Valdes is an award-winning playwright whose work has been performed across the US and abroad. He has worked with Actor’s Theater of Charlotte, Milagro, Borderline, Mixed Blood, Boulder Ensemble Studio Theater, The Humana Festival, New York International Fringe Festival, Portland Stage, Stage Left, Fresh Ink, the Boston Center for the Arts, Company One, and others. His plays have twice been featured in the National Showcase of New Plays, and he has received fellowships from Company One, IATI, and the Boston Foundation. As a columnist, he has written for the New York Times, Boston Globe, Huffington Post, and Medium.
Instructor
Sarah Anne Stinnett is a Boston-based writer and educator. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and an ALM in Dramatic Arts and ALB in Humanities from Harvard University. Previously, she attended Berklee College of Music for bass performance, often extending her studies through the ProArts Consortium at Emerson College, Boston Conservatory, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.
Sarah Anne’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in Plume, Booth, Palette Poetry, Mom Egg Review, On the Seawall, Chicago Quarterly Review, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere. Her work received Honorable Mention in Common Ground Review’s 2024 Annual Poetry Contest and won the 2020 Cambridge Sidewalk Poetry Contest, now incised in cement.
With Boston Dance Theater (BDT), Sarah Anne teaches voicework and embodied practices. Coaching and writing credits with BDT include Bodyspeaking supported by New England Foundation for the Arts, SURGE presented by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution & Boston Center for the Arts, and Man of the Hour presented by Global Arts Live at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.
Sarah Anne has supported and taught speech, communication, and social media courses at Harvard Extension and Harvard Summer Schools since 2017; she offers a graduate course on oral interpretation of literary works at Lesley University; and she has instructed liberal arts courses at Berklee Online since 2022. Her core tenets in teaching are as in life: employ unparalleled curiosity, doing is discovering, and a life of learning is impelled by the study of the masters before. Read Less
What's Next?
When taken for credit, Script Analysis for Theater can be applied towards the completion of these related programs:
Related Certificate Programs
Related Degree Majors
Questions?
Contact our Academic Advisors by phone at 1-866-BERKLEE (U.S.), 1-617-747-2146 (INT'L), or by email at advisors@online.berklee.edu.
