Theatre and Pop Culture

Humans use stories to make sense of the world, and one of the primary ways we share these stories with each other is through performance. Theatre is the original performance-based storytelling form. In theatre, we can show people the world through design, imitate it through acting, and describe it through text.

Contemporary pop culture & media also use a lot of performance to tell stories. We are literally surrounded by film, TV, music, 24 hour news channels, and endless scrolls of social media that provide a non-stop stream of performance. Increasingly, it is through media and pop culture (rather than via direct experience) that many of us learn about the world around us.

The world as we each know it is reflected in the stories and media we consume, but is also constructed by it. Even if a product of pop culture is created just to entertain the masses or make a profit - and has no intention of ever exploring deeper themes, messages, or meanings – it still offers a particular vision of the world. Maybe that vision reflects the world as it actually exists, but maybe it’s an imagined version/vision of the world that constructs the world for its audience. It might be a version of life that others use when trying to make sense of their own worlds – or when trying to imagine parts of the world they have not yet seen for themselves.

Because pop culture both reflects and constructs the world around us, what and who are/aren’t represented in these visions matters deeply, as does how they are represented. And how they are performed.

In theatre studies, we spend a lot of time looking at how humans use stories to shape our understandings of each other. We focus on the performative and representational aspects of storytelling. We have analytical tools in theatre studies that can be very useful when applied to an analysis of pop culture. That’s what we will be doing in this course.

Dram 103 – Theatre and Pop Culture explores the intersections between theatre and pop culture media, including film, music, journalism, and social media. Students will be provided with a toolkit of key concepts from theatre studies applicable to conducting critical analyses of current trends in pop culture and performance. In our discussions, we will encounter many examples where theatricality and pop culture collide, including drag queens, superheroes, Hollywood movies, pop music stars, cable news & reality TV, bingeable Netflix series, TikTok trends, YouTube dramas, and social media influencers.

TOPICS

This course includes 11 modules, each comprised of a collection of readings, narrated PowerPoints, videos, and podcast commentaries on topics related to Theatre and Pop Culture.

This course is not self-paced. It progresses week-by-week. Each module includes some completion tasks that are due weekly.

Some modules also include discussion forums that have specific due dates so please keep a close eye on the course timeline.

Periodically, we will schedule live zoom drop-in discussion sessions for anyone interested in digging a little deeper into course concepts and/or asking questions about our core assignment, the Pop Culture Analysis Assignment.

Attendance at these is not strictly required as the sessions will be recorded and posted to onQ.

Here is a list of the topics covered in this course:

• MODULE 1 – Introducing Theatre and Pop Culture
• MODULE 2 – Identifying Theatricality
• MODULE 3 – Performing Authenticity
• MODULE 4 – Drag and the Theatricalization of Gender
• MODULE 5 – The Analysis Project
• MODULE 6 – Musicals as Happiness Machines
• MODULE 7 – Interrogating Representation
• MODULE 8 – Liveness and the Art of Failure
• MODULE 9 – Theatricality in Pop Music
• MODULE 10 – TikTok Dances and Other Social Media Performances
• MODULE 11 – Case Study: the Work of Kent Monkman