English 2902\/Theater 2510 c-ESD, VPA. Performing America: Identities on Stage. Sarah Bay-Cheng.\u00a0Every Year. Spring 2016<\/p>\n
What does it mean to act (or dance) like an American? In 1840, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the\u00a0characteristics of this young nation, the United States of America, and its people could be studied in its theaters. He based\u00a0this on a few\u00a0key observations. Theater is a social event, where people gather in groups to watch other groups of people\u00a0interact. Theater is also an immediate art, performed live in front of a specific audience. Takes its start from Tocqueville’s\u00a0observations by\u00a0looking at American performances in drama, dance, and theatrical events as reflections of changing\u00a0American identities. Looks at indigenous and colonial drama, but majority of the course will focus on drama, musical\u00a0theater, and dance of the 19th\u00a0and 20th centuries. In particular, looks at the ways in which specific performances defined\u00a0what it meant to be American, as well how individual artists reshaped theater and dance to represent their own diverse\u00a0identities. As part of the reading, attends\u00a0to the variety of identities\u2014racial, ethic, gendered, classed, and religious\u2014that\u00a0emerge from and continue to define the diversity of America on stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
English 2902\/Theater 2510 c-ESD, VPA. Performing America: Identities on Stage. Sarah Bay-Cheng.\u00a0Every Year. Spring 2016 What does it mean to act (or dance) like an American? In 1840, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the\u00a0characteristics of this young nation, the United States of America, and its people could be studied in its theaters. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-2510-spring-2106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-2510-spring-2106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-2510-spring-2106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-2510-spring-2106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-2510-spring-2106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-2510-spring-2106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/theater-2510-spring-2106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}