LMS, Faculty of Arts, University of Colombo

This course aims to provide the students with a sound knowledge of human migration and urbanization. It also provides the analytical skills on trends, patterns and consequences of migration and urbanization.

The lecture is conducted by

V.P.N Senadhi

Compulsory for Demography Special Degree Students

Course Description

In this course students will be introduced to the study of playwrights and playwriting associated with the making of twentieth-century modernist drama. The focus of the course will be the exposition and development of modern drama, which brings into discussion the naturalist and realist aesthetic in the theatre, and the corresponding aesthetic departures that have paved the way for avant-garde performance. While the foundation of the course will be structured through a chronological introduction to the development of modern drama, the study of the texts in discussion will direct attention to socio-historic context, thematic concerns, visual codes and devices of performance-making, and contemporary theoretical approaches to performance. The course will also consider this developmental stage in theatre history in terms of its resonances with the landscape of theatre in Sri Lanka.

Course Content

The course will include writers (and work) such as Henrik Ibsen (A Doll’s House/ Hedda Gabler), August Strindberg (Miss Julie/ The Ghost Sonata), Anton Chekhov (Three Sisters/ The Seagull), Bertolt Brecht (Mother Courage and Her Children/ The Good Woman of Setzuan), Luigi Pirandello (Six Characters in Search of an Author), Frederico Garcia Lorca (House of Bernada Alba/ Yerma) and Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot/ Happy Days/ Not I). The course’s discussion of the avant-garde context will draw on the work of Salvadore Dali, Pina Bausch, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Cage, among others. 

In relation to the aesthetics in the theatre, the course will consider the following: Realism, Naturalism, Surrealist Theatre, The Theatre of the Absurd, Dadaism in Visual Art and its Impact on the Theatre, The Epic Theatre, The Theatre of Instruction and ‘Alienation,’ The Moscow Art Theatre and its impact on Performance Practice and In-Yer-Face Theatre. Students will also be expected to attend contemporary Sri Lankan theatre performances.

Lecturer: Ruhanie Perera