Drama – Beyond the Text

Course convenor

Miklos Almasi

Course content

As Roman Ingarden famously wrote, the play does not „tell” every detail: dramatis personae are reticent, reluctant to divulge their secret; the secret of the plays is to be discovered, resolved by the spectators. This makes good theatre interesting and even fascinating. The hidden words are more exiting than the actual ones uttered by the actors. Secret is the very essence of good drama. One has to read between the lines. During the semester we try to decipher the interactions between the told and the untold story, analysing four iconic plays: Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Chekov’s Three Sisters, Büchner’s Woyzeck and En attendant Godot of Beckett.