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Drama

Drama

Welcome / Drama Courses / Drama Faculty / Drama Opportunities / Upcoming Drama Classes

Drama is alive and well in Indianapolis! Our multivalent city offers theatre-goers a wealth of options every day of the week, from the full-length professional fare of the Indianapolis Repertory and Dance Kaleidoscope
to the "best of contemporary theatre" in Indianapolis at the Phoenix, to the shorter works of the annual IndyFringe Festival, and to a dynamic new company of young talent—combining IUPUI students and Indianapolis actors, Hoosier Bard Productions.   Throughout the year, the city is flush with amateur and professional productions of the plays of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Williams, and Beckett, as well as the premieres of works of local playwrights. A new state-of-the-art theater in the heart of the IUPUI campus center will open in Spring 2012 to provide a venue for new Department of English course offerings in Drama—a development that will put students, faculty, and citizens right in the middle of this vibrant theatre community.

 

Drama Courses

* Offered Spring 2012

L203   Introduction to Drama *
L220   Introduction to Shakespeare *
L315   The Major Plays of Shakespeare
L363   American Drama
L365   Modern Drama: Continental
L366   Modern Irish Drama
L433   Conversations with Shakespeare *
L495   Independent readings in English
L378   Early Modern Women Writers
L625   Readings in Shakespeare *
L681   Genre Studies *
L695   Individual Readings


Drama Faculty

Terri Bourus / Francis X. Connor / Sarah Neville


Terri Bourus

 

Terri Bourus

tbourus |at| iupui.edu

My work on the stage includes dramatic roles, comedic roles, dance, and American musical theatre. From Sophocles (Antigone) to Shakespeare (Isabella, Kate, Gertrude, Beatrice) to Laurents/Sondheim (Maria), to Simon (Charity, Paula), to Synge (Pegeen Mike), to name a few. I’ve directed student productions of the Irish classic, The Rising of the Moon and the Greek classic, Lysistrata. I have choreographed a street production of Stravinsky’s Firebird and a university production of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.  I directed and acted in Hamlet at "IU at the State Fair" and Young Hamlet at the Fringe Theatre. I am the Founding Director of the Indianapolis-IUPUI troupe, Hoosier Bard Productions and I am a five-time award winning teacher, incorporating, as I do in my research, both performance and text. My stage work informs my teaching and my teaching informs my work on the stage whether I am acting or directing, or both, since all of these combine elements of learning—and I believe that all drama informs. My forthcoming book addresses the issues involved with the problem of three authoritative texts of Shakespeare Hamlets. By investigating them as performances, in addition to the rich and mysterious dramatic tales of how the printed texts came into existence, I argue that all of them are authored by Shakespeare, and each one tells us something different about the writer, the stage, and the audiences of this iconic play. But there are many plays, and many writers who have important things to say to us about the nature of drama, and it is my vision to create on the IUPUI campus, a recognition of the importance of the art of the stage in any well-rounded university education, and especially on an exciting urban campus. The experience of Drama is life-changing. It enriches us all—those who are learning and those who are paying it forward to new generations. Join us!

Recent Courses

   
Francis X. Connor
 

Francis X. Connor

fconnor |at| iupui.edu

Born and raised in the coal region of Pennsylvania, I converted from bratty slacker to informed reader after a friend lent me some graphic novels to read while I recovered from a hideously broken leg (an injury that ended an astonishingly unpromising football career). Duly inspired, I studied Renaissance literature and drama at the University of Scranton (indeed, I watch The Office). Upon graduation I moved to Arlington, VA, where I furthered my literary studies at George Mason University and the Folger Institute while working at a (now-defunct) independent bookstore in Georgetown. Being able to use early modern books at the Folger allowed me to fuse my work in the modern book trade with my academic interests in English Renaissance and Restoration literature. As a result, I earned a doctorate at the University of Virginia, where my studies concentrated on bibliography, book history, and textual theory.  To earn my keep at UVA I taught a variety of literary topics, including Shakespeare, medieval literature, and early modern literature, as well as classes on popular music and The Wire (which is about as close a television show can come to Shakespeare.) As part of the team editing the New Oxford Shakespeare, I have lucked into my dream job, and I look forward to contributing to the 400-plus year tradition of Shakespearean textual scholarship.  As part of the English and Drama faculty at IUPUI, I look forward to turning today’s bratty slackers into the scholars, performers, and dramatists of tomorrow.

Recent Courses

   

Sarah Neville

 

Sarah Neville

nevilles |at| iupui.edu

My first encounter with Shakespeare was in the third grade, when I was cast as Lysander in an all-female production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Since then, I’ve acted in productions of The Spanish Tragedy (by Thomas Kyd), Every Man Out of His Humour (by Ben Jonson), and Hoosier Bard’s 2011 production of Young Hamlet, as well as worked as a theatre technician on many other plays. As a researcher, however, the majority of my engagement with the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries has been on the page rather than the stage; my primary investigations centre around the means by which literature comes down to us through the physical artifact of the printed book. Much of my work is interdisciplinary in nature, moving beyond the canonical texts and traditional literary criticism of English departments to consider the ways that people read books for facts as well as for fiction. My doctoral work explored the history of books of botanical and medical science in early modern England, while my other research projects have used large-scale quantitative analysis to investigate the economics of Renaissance book publishing. My work asks questions like: "What kinds of books did Shakespeare and his contemporaries reference when they had questions about science?" "What happens when a widow takes over management of her late husband’s printing house?" "How much money could an early modern publisher expect to make when he or she published a popular play?" No matter what I’m teaching, I like to get students involved with and within the works we’re studying as we attempt to locate the various ways in which books and drama interact.

Recent Courses

        

Drama Opportunities

The New Oxford Shakespeare Project at IUPUI is editing an edition of Shakespeare for the next generation. As editors, performance plays a central role in our vision, so we have created Hoosier Bard Productions as the theatrical arm of the New Oxford Shakespeare Project. We are primarily concerned with staging the most problematic plays in the Shakespeare canon, but we are also reaching out to other playwrights in order to create, along with the IUPUI campus and wider Indianapolis community, an innovative, challenging theatre company that is willing to take risks. By embracing rarely-staged plays, Hoosier Bard uses live theatre to teach and to learn about the staging and writing methods of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In February 2011, we staged Young Hamlet, a infrequently performed work based on the earliest printed text of Shakespeare’s most famous play. After five sold-out shows, the city buzzed with excitement about the differences—and the similarities—between this early play and the customary Hamlets of the later texts, demonstrating that Indianapolis audiences are eager to see familiar works of theatre in new and unexpected ways. Our theatrical work on Young Hamlet directly informs our editorial work on New Oxford Shakespeare, and Hoosier Bard is now in the process of discovering how it can continue to entertain and instruct Indianapolis audiences through performances of equally dynamic and challenging dramatic works.

Hoosier Bard Productions is linked to the student body of IUPUI in very significant ways: through the classroom, through the opportunity to work with trained international actors and top professors, and through the IUPUI Shakespeare Club. Hoosier Bard Shakespeare Club offers students on the IUPUI campus the chance to be cast in a Hoosier Bard Production as an actor, stage-hand, set designer or technician. The Club encourages internships with local theatre and performance organizations, and keeps students up-to-date with opportunities to see Shakespeare performed on campus and city stages in Bloomington, Notre Dame, and Chicago. Become a part of the IUPUI Shakespeare Club and join a group of students and faculty who are as excited about drama and Shakespeare as you are! We want and need your ideas, your creativity, your energy, and your comradeship in the sheer joy of experiencing—and challenging—the works of Shakespeare!  You can also "Like" the IUPUI Shakespeare Drama Club and join us on Facebook.

 

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