01 T 4,5 CAC 15051 MURPHY MU-302
Rehearsal and Performance
This class puts literature on its feet. This semester, we will stage Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, Bertolt Brecht’s visionary anti-war play that about the behavior of everyday people in a totalitarian state. The class is both a rehearsal and a literature seminar: you will expand your skills as a critic, develop your ideas in writing, and test those ideas in performance. No prior theater experience needed.
Fear and Misery is a montage of separate scenes, so you won’t be “cast” as a character: everyone will be an actor, designer, director, and dramaturg, and you’ll learn how to do that work in class. To deepen our sense of the world of the play, we will read other writing by Brecht, plays and political texts from the period, and theater criticism. Grades will be based on 1. attendance & participation, 2. the performance developed in class (its critical components, not your skill as an actor), and 3. a revised research paper.
A historical account of Nazi Germany, Fear and Misery depicts violence in a variety of forms. Copies are available in the Undergraduate Studies office (MU101) if you’d like to read the play before registering.
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