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Adaptation in Contemporary Theatre and Performance

Module description

You will learn to account for stage adaptation as a prominent and evolving phenomenon in contemporary theatrical representation. In the first week you will historically locate specific examples of the directions adaptation has taken since the Restoration Theatre era.  You will investigate the factors that have contributed to the popularity of adaptation and make a case for its impact on drama and performance history, but also on theatre going communities more broadly as a powerful means of making urgent statements about the collective historical present. You will also interrogate the status given to adaptation as somehow ‘secondary’ or as having an ‘infidelity’ to the ‘original’ source text. The adapted text forms part of a unique continuum of intertextuality that encompasses the past, present and future of performance and our class will aim to capture the inherent liveness of this strand of representation and its distinctive resonance as we examine its changing aesthetics, trends and approaches.     

Students can take this module from other disciplines. This module would be of interest to English and Visual Culture Students.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module encourages students to examine, critique and challenge adaptation theory, dramaturgical practice, and contemporary theatrical performances. Students will analyse these theoretical discourses and performances alongside and through performance theory, theatre historiography and ideas about the culture industry. The module involves watching a wide variety of performances and engaging with them through critical framework. In particular students will be asked to write weekly blogs offering performance analyses of these adaptations. Students will also engage with critical theoretical discourse by presenting on their concepts about performance in groups. Finally, students will engage their critical analytical skills through writing the final paper for the course. Ultimately, the course asks the student to interrogate what it means to write an original text. Is this a legacy we inherited from Romanticism? Is every play always already an adaptation? Or might every adaptation always already be original in its response to a re-telling of a story?

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate a knowledge of a range of scholarly theoretical approaches to adaptation theory in theatre history and performance studies
• 2. Watch and analyse theatrical adaptations and apply theoretical models from adaptation theory to these performances

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Contribute research to small groups in effective presentations, to critique, and manipulate complex material.
• 4. Demonstrate the ability to engage critically and analytically from different theoretical perspectives, to explore theoretical concerns t, and to synthesise findings in written tasks.

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Demonstrate advanced personal research skills using personal initiative; set personal objectives and identify and evaluate personal learning strategies.
• 6. Demonstrate group cooperation skills, including the ability to give and receive constructive critical feedback.

Syllabus plan

While module content may vary year on year, it is envisioned the module will cover some or all of the following:

The module begins with a series of lectures on the adaptation theory and history beginning with the Restoration theatre and Shakespeare and the Victorian treatment of the novel onstage. The focus of the course will then move onto theories of contemporary stage adaptation with a particular emphasis on postmodern contemporary adaptation. Whenever possible we will attend theatrical productions. When it is not possible we will watch videos. In particular, we will look closely at intratheatrical adaptations, which are adaptations of plays into other new plays. We will also examine the adaptation of the novel onto the stage. This will be accompanied by structured seminar tasks exploring examples of specific adaptation as well as pair and small-group critical analysis of theoretical approaches and reading group tasks on the scholarly literature. Students will also be required to write a weekly course blog from which they will select three entries for their final portfolio.

The middle section of the module will invite groups of students to give 40 minute presentations in groups which apply critical theoretical models of adaptation to specific performances we will examine.

The final weeks of the module will bring theoretical, historical and practical examples together in a focused discussion of contemporary debates on adaptation to help students to prepare to write their final course essay.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Carlson, Marvin, The Haunted Stage: Theatre as a Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).
• Genette, Gerard, Palimpsests, Literature in the Second Degree (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997).
• Hutcheon, Linda, A Theory ofAdaptation (London; New York: Routledge, 2006).
• Krebs, Katja, Translation and Adaptation in Theatre and Film, (London; New York: Routledge, 2013).
• Kristeva, Julia, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980).
• Murray, Simon, The Adaptation Industry: the Cultural Economy of Contemporary Literary Adaptation (New York; London: Routledge, 2012).
• Postlewait, Thomas The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009).
• Reynolds, Simon, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past (London: Faber and Faber, 2013).
• Sanders, Julie, Adaptation and Appropriation (London; New York: New Critical Idiom Series Routledge, 2006).

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=4618

Key words search

Adaptation, comtemporary theatre, dramaturgy, theory