Crash Course Theater and Drama

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What Is Theater?
Episode overview
Welcome to Crash Course Theater with Mike Rugnetta! In this, our inaugural week, we're going to ask the two classic questions about theater. 1.What is theater? And 2. Is it spelled -re .. show full overview
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Thespis, Athens, and The Origins of Greek Drama
Episode overview
This week on Crash Course Theater, Mike is acting like theater started in Greece. Well, for the western theater, this is true. The earliest recorded drama in the west arose in Athen, and .. show full overview
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Tragedy Lessons from Aristotle
Episode overview
Aristotle. He knows a lot, right? And if you choose to believe Aristotle, then you must believe all the mechanics of tragedy that Mike is about to lay on you. This week, we're looking at .. show full overview
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Greek Comedy, Satyrs, and Aristophanes
Episode overview
Get ready for hilarity, because this week, we're diving head first into Greek Comedy. Actually, though, maybe don't get TOO ready for hilarity. Taste in humor has changed a little over .. show full overview
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Dances to Flute Music and Obscene Verse. It's Roman Theater, Everybody
Episode overview
Today, Mike Rugnetta takes you from our beginnings in ancient Greek theater, and moves on to the development of Roman theater. Which, it turns out, is A LOT like Greek theater. Because .. show full overview
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Roman Theater with Plautus, Terence, and Seneca
Episode overview
In which Mike delves into the theater of ancient Rome. It wasn't all gladiators and Christian-killing, you know. There was theater, too. Roman drama drew heavily on Greek drama. So .. show full overview
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Nostrils, Harmony with the Universe, and Ancient Sanskrit Theater
Episode overview
Ancient Sanskrit theater is one of the oldest theater traditions, and thanks to Bharata Muni and his treatise on theater, the Natyashastra, we can tell you quite a bit about it, all the .. show full overview
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The Death and Resurrection of Theater as...Liturgical Drama
Episode overview
As the Roman Empire fell, so did the theater. If there's anyone who hates theater and actors more than Romans, it's early Christians. As Christianity ascended in the west, theater .. show full overview
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Hrotsvitha, Hildegard, and the Nun who Resurrected Theater
Episode overview
When last we saw Theater, it was just making it's way back in the West, by sneaking a little drama into the Easter mass. In today's episode, we're talking about Hrotsvitha, the cool 10th .. show full overview
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Get Outside and Have a (Mystery) Play
Episode overview
Not long after drama reappeared in the unlikely home of European churches, the church decided again it didn't like theater. And so, the budding dramatic scene was kicked out into the .. show full overview
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Just Say Noh. But Also Say Kyogen
Episode overview
This week on Crash Course Theater, Mike is taking you to Japan to have a look at Noh theater. Noh, and its counterpart Kyogen are some of the most revered theater forms in Japan, and are .. show full overview
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Pee Jokes, the Italian Renaissance, Commedia Del'Arte
Episode overview
This week, we're going to Italy for a Renaissance. The Middle Ages are over, and it's time to talk about the flourishing of art and humanism across Europe. Painting, sculpture, music, .. show full overview
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The English Renaissance and NOT Shakespeare
Episode overview
The Renaissance came to England late, thanks to a Hundred Years War that ran long and lasted 116 years, and then a civil war to decide who would be the royal family. BUT after all that, .. show full overview
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Straight Outta Stratford-Upon-Avon - Shakespeare's Early Days
Episode overview
This is the story of how a young Englishman named William Shakespeare stormed London's theater scene in the late 16th century, and wrote a bunch of plays and poems that have had pretty .. show full overview
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Shakespeare's Tragedies and an Acting Lesson
Episode overview
Shakespeare's tragedies...were tragic. But they had some jokes. They also changed the way tragedies were written. Characters like Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear had tragic outcomes, but .. show full overview
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Comedies, Romances, and Shakespeare's Heroines
Episode overview
This week we're continuing our discussion of William Shakespeare and looking at his comedies and romances. As well as something called problem plays. Some of his plays, they had .. show full overview
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English Theater After Shakespeare
Episode overview
This week on Crash Course Theater, Shakespeare is dead. Long live Shakespeare. Well, long live English theater, anyway. Actually, it's about to get banned. Anyway, we're discussing where .. show full overview
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Where Did Theater Go?
Episode overview
The English Theater survived a lot of pushback from various powers that be, but in the 17th century, it had to go into hiding, from PURITANS. Let's take a look at how the English Civil .. show full overview
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The Spanish Golden Age
Episode overview
This week on Crash Course Theater, Mike and Yorick take us to beautiful Spain, and look at its Golden Age. Spain was having kind of a moment in the 16th and 17th centuries. They had this .. show full overview
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Rules, Rule-Breaking, and French Neoclassicism
Episode overview
Everyone knows, you need a bunch of rules to make good theater. That's what the French thought in the 17th century, anyway. The French Neoclassical revival had a BUNCH of French .. show full overview
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Moliere - Man of Satire and Many Burials
Episode overview
This week on CC Theater, Mike Rugnetta teaches you about the greatest playwright of Renaissance France, Moliere. We'l talk a bit about early French theater design, and the kingly love of .. show full overview
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Pre-Columbian Theater, Spanish Empire, and Sor Juana
Episode overview
This week, we're headed to the Americas to learn about the theater that existed there prior to the arrival of Europeans, how the theater of the Spanish influenced it, and the impact of .. show full overview
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Japan, Kabuki, and Bunraku
Episode overview
We're headed back to Japan, this time in the Edo period to follow up on Noh theater, which had gone out of style last time we checked in. Now, under the Shoguns, there's couple of really .. show full overview
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All Night Demon Dance Party - Kathakali
Episode overview
This week, we're headed back to India to learn about the all night dance shows that culminate in killing a Demon (metaphorically): Kathakali! This form arose in the Kerala region of .. show full overview
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China, Zaju, and Beijing Opera
Episode overview
This week we're headed to China to learn about the ancient origins of theater there. We'll look at the early days of wizard theater (not a typo), the development of classical Chinese theater, and the evolution of Beijing Opera.
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England's Sentimental Theater
Episode overview
This week, we're headed back to England to learn about Sentimental Comedies. They weren't that funny, but they were definitely sentimental. The people of England were shaking off the .. show full overview
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Why So Angry, German Theater?
Episode overview
Theater had a slow start in Germany, mainly because Germany wasn't really a thing until *relatively* recent times. After Germany finally became a unified state, it had a couple of really .. show full overview
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The Rise of Melodrama
Episode overview
At the turn of the 18th century, audience were ready to go over the top, and get some really, really dramatic theater in their lives. Like, a dog dueling a man type of dramatic. In .. show full overview
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North America Gets a Theater...Riot
Episode overview
It's lights up in America! This week, we're headed to North America. We'll look at Native American storytelling traditions, the theater that Europeans brought along starting in the 17th .. show full overview
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Race Melodrama and Minstrel Shows
Episode overview
We’re continuing our discussion of nineteenth-century American theater with a look at some upsetting parts of the US's theatrical past. In the nineteenth century, race and racism .. show full overview
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Zola, France, Realism, and Naturalism
Episode overview
This week, we're back in Europe to learn about Realism and Naturalism. In the 19th Century, playwrights like Eugene Scribe, Alexandre de Dumas Fils, and Emile Zola remade the French .. show full overview
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Realism Gets Even More Real
Episode overview
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, theater was evolving rapidly in Europe. Impresarios like Georg II, Duke of the Duchy of Saxe Meinengen (in what is now Germany), were pushing .. show full overview
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Symbolism, Realism, and a Nordic Playwright Grudge Match
Episode overview
It's a Scandinavian grudge match on Crash Course Theater. We're looking at a couple of the key movements in European theater that deeply influenced the modern theater of today. We'll .. show full overview
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Chekhov and the Moscow Art Theatre
Episode overview
Get ready for Russian modernism. Mike is teaching you about the playwrighting of Catherine the Great, Anton Chekhov's plays, the Moscow Art Theatre, and the acting theories of .. show full overview
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The Horrors of the Grand Guignol
Episode overview
Prepare to be horrified, and to look into the face of inhumanity with the Grand Guignol. Mike Rugnetta teaches you about one of theater history's most horrible chapters. The Grand .. show full overview
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Synge, Wilde, Shaw, and the Irish Renaissance
Episode overview
The Irish Renaissance in the early 20th century included a wealth of new plays written both in Ireland, and by Irish ex-patriots elsewhere. W.B. Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory, and J.M. .. show full overview
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Dada, Surrealism, and Symbolism
Episode overview
Watch. Dime. Develop. Powder. Pantry. Dirt. That's right, it's time for a dip into the random, because we're talking about the Dada theater that grew out of Symbolism, and the Surrealist .. show full overview
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Expressionist Theater
Episode overview
Join us here, in the darkness. Our theater journey takes us into the heart of expressionism today, as playwrights in the late 19th and early 20th centuries explored the limits of human .. show full overview
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Futurism and Constructivism
Episode overview
It's time to go Back...to the Future. By which I mean, we're going back into the past to talk about Futurism. Which seems like it would be cool, but it was started by this terrible guy .. show full overview
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Little Theater and American Avant Garde
Episode overview
In the early 20th century United States, big melodramatic productions were on Broadway, and everywhere across the country. Which inevitably led to an Avant-Garde backlash. An interesting .. show full overview
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The Harlem Renaissance
Episode overview
In the 1920s, there was a blossoming of all kinds of art made by African Americans in the New York neighborhood Harlem. Let's call it a renaissance. While all the arts were having a .. show full overview
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Federal Theatre and Group Theatre
Episode overview
The 1930s in the United States were pretty bad for employment in all industries, and the theater was no exception. As part of Roosevelt's New Deal, the Works Progress Administration .. show full overview
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Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty
Episode overview
I don't mean it mean, but today we're going to be cruel. It's the fun-loving Theatre of Cruelty, which was pioneered by the genius Antonin Artaud in France during the inter-war period in .. show full overview
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Bertolt Brecht and Epic Theatre
Episode overview
Are you ready to learn something about the world? Then you're ready for Bertolt Brecht, and his ideas about Epic Theatre. Brecht wanted to lean into the idea of theater as a tool to .. show full overview
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Beckett, Ionesco, and the Theater of the Absurd
Episode overview
Get ready to get weird. Mike Rugnetta teaches you about the Theater of the Absurd, a 1950s theatrical reaction to the dire world events of the 1940s. You'll learn about Jean Genet, .. show full overview
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Broadway, Seriously
Episode overview
We're going to Broadway, everybody, and it's not going to be that fun. In fact, it's going to be a very serious experience with lots of powerful social commentary and indictments of life .. show full overview
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The Birth of Off Broadway
Episode overview
By the middle of the 20th century, the epicenter of American theater, the Broadway theater district in New York, was getting to be a pretty staid and commercial place. There was a lot of .. show full overview
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Poor Unfortunate Theater
Episode overview
Poor Theater and Theater of the Oppressed were two sort of concurrent movements that shared some of the same aims. Jerzy Grotowski's Poor Theater eschewed the use of lighting, props, .. show full overview
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Into Africa and Wole Soyinka
Episode overview
It's difficult to talk about African theater thanks to colonialism. Pre-colonial Africa was home to many spoken languages, and not nearly as many written languages. The chain of oral .. show full overview
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Broadway Book Musicals
Episode overview
This is it! We're going out with a singing, dancing look at the Broadway Book Musical. Oklahoma! On the Town! Annie Get Your Gun! Also, just Annie! Today you'll learn about the .. show full overview

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