Theatre in Italy: Comedy

Catalog description

From the erudite satires of the humanists to the political farces of contemporary playwrights, Italian comedy has always done more than just entertain. In this course we will study dramatic works by some of Italy's most prominent authors (Machiavelli, Aretino, Goldoni, Pirandello, et al.) and explore the development of comic theater in Italy from the Renaissance to the present. We will weigh the social function of humor in Italian theater, along with issues relating to gender, power, and performance. We will focus on the literary and historical dimensions of these texts and use these lively comedies to hone our reading, writing, and oral skills in Italian. To that end, we will watch clips of the plays, regularly perform scenes together in class, and even experiment with improvised "commedia dell'arte" scenarios.