Theatre and the University at the end of the Twentieth Century

THEATRE AND THE UNIVERSITY AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Bonnie Marranca THEATRE AND HISTORY In the twentieth century the reform of arts education was inspired by avantgarde ideals, the magnificent examples being the Bauhaus in Germany and, with the invaluable contribution ofits exiles from the Nazis, Black Mountain College in North Carolina. The struggle to imagine new artistic forms that would engender new social values was the very foundation of these educational experiments. Now the topography of our own era is becoming more detailed decade by decade, allowing ever new insights into the configuration of artists, art works, and ideas that has defined modernity. As the still emerging histories of the arts take shape, it is apparent that the schools of modernism, which transformed artistic, political, and cultural values in the twentieth century, are what we consider our tradition. The worlds within the words "modernism" and "avant-garde" have been contested in recent discussions of the arts, so precisely for their highly charged and inexhaustible resonance, and their formulation of the modern intellectual heritage, I continue to use them here. It is not my intention to address all of the arts, nor the entire history of theatre. My comments are limited to the twentieth-century context, the area I have focused on in my own teaching of the last decade, and to which since the founding of PAJ I have devoted nineteen years of research and publication. I believe that the twentieth century should be at the center of any arts curriculum because its artistic contributions in matters of form, style, and organizing principle, shape contemporary art and popular culture, its critique, and, increasingly, the construction of its history. Emphasis on the twentieth century is a pragmatic choice as well since America lacks a classical repertoire to engage in dialogue and reinvention. It was in the post-war period that American experiments in the arts became so influential here and abroad, particularly in painting and performance. Yet, while a rich and expansive scholarship in art history exists, theatre has still to develop a comprehensive history of performance ideas. I am not the first to lament that theatre lacks a definable epistemology. What body of knowledge should an educated theatre artist or intellectual know? U 55 At its very core theatre study lacks sustained intellectual rigor and breadth. Theatre departments, though they may seem to be "modern," actually offer in the course of study only a cluster of the best-known canonical plays around the turn-of-thecentury , and the early decades, with Williams, Miller, Beckett, perhaps Genet, and Pinter at mid-century, and the trendy American and British plays of recent years. Most programs are organized around historical periods, genres, styles, and master artists, with huge gaps in essential areas of study. The list of subjects regularly not taught (unless by chance there is a faculty member with a special interest in any of them) is long and all-encompassing: to start with, modernist movements between the wars (Futurism, Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, Bauhaus, Constructivism), Piscator and other radical political theatre, Russian plays after Chekhov, EasternEuropean theatre, Scandinavian drama after Ibsen and Strindberg, any Italian artist other than Pirandello, any Spanish-language author other than Lorca, the German drama tradition, the history of avant-garde performance, American theatre history, the history of directing, concepts in stage design, the history of acting theories, comparative world drama, Oriental aesthetics in Western theatre, dramatic and theatrical theory. An evolving history of ideas about theatre might embrace the disparate views of, for example, Aristotle and Plato, St. Augustine, Diderot, Rousseau, Wagner, Zeami, or the concepts informing the Natya Sastra,medievalism, epic drama, theatricalism, poor theatre, semiotics, theatre anthropology. The overemphasis on drama and indifference to staging practices and multimedia in the curriculum is frequently the result of the traditional interrelationship of the Theatre and English departments on some campuses. So, if the teaching of nonpractical training courses is initiated in the English department the BritishAmerican dramatic heritage is highlighted rather than drama or staging in European and non-Western theatre cultures. Likewise, theatre courses in Classics and Language departments also focus on dramatic literature rather than theatrical technique. But Theatre departments are marked...