This course surveys and explores the forms, traditions, expressive styles and aesthetics of theatre from its origins to post-colonialism and contemporary globalized international theatre markets. This is to provide a solid introduction to several aspects of the world theatre: theatre histories, literatures, and theatre theories. Students will study an array of theatre practices, including Athens in the Fifth Century BCE, Roman theatre, early Modern European theatre, Asian theatre, contemporary American theatre, African and South American theatre, etc. Theatre architecture, technology, design concepts, acting styles and significant dramatic works representing the rich cultural heritage of various theatre traditions of Western and non- Western cultures will be explored.

Students will read and analyze classical, modern and contemporary representative plays from different traditions and approaches drawing on the varied perspectives of our culturally diverse students from cultural, historical and a practitioner’s perspectives. Questions of indigenousness, fundamental freedoms, and cultural exportation are to be discussed. As a result, students will learn to situate dramatic forms and theatrical practices within historical contexts, recognize and analyze the rhetorics of periphery versus center, Occident versus Orient, and cultural hegemony, and discriminatory practices.