first off: the basics

This is not a course in drama production. It is, rather, a course which aims to help people deepen or extend their understanding of what theatre is and how it works for audiences, and the ways in which knowing about a play and its textual context (the page) can affect the audience's experience of a production and its social context  (the stage). The central aim of this course is to give each student these opportunities:

• to explore in some depth the experience of being an informed audience for theatre,
• to become more aware of the potential complexity and richness of that experience,
• to consider how knowledge, understanding and expectations can shape and alter that experience,
• to participate in, and learn about, the processes of doing research on (and informing others about) the background of theatre productions, and
• to reflect (in writing and orally) on that experience and the learning afforded by the course.
• to become a more flexible and resourceful writer

It is also, therefore, a course organized in a very different way from most. It is important to understand the concrete differences at the outset.

An important way in which it is different is that it has some basic, categorical requirements, which must be fulfilled in order to get credit for the course. These are not optional. Furthermore, most tasks, being hooked to events in the outside world (that is, play productions), have deadlines which are not flexible. To get credit for the course, each student must, for five of the plays which appear on the course list of plays, do the following (further, at least five other members of the class must participate in the same process for the play):

• read the script of the play and post a thoughtful, extended, descriptive reflection (no less than 500 words) on that reading on the online discussion forum by a set deadline, that will be before the play opens;
• post on the forum, before the play opens, at least two thoughtful responses to the reflections of others;
• attend a performance of the play and post a thoughtful, extended, descriptive reflection on that performance (no less than 500 words) on the forum within two days of the closing of the play;
• post on the forum, within a week of the final performance, at least two thoughtful responses to the reflections of others.

• participate actively in a group, usually of four or five (a "task force"), which will do research and assemble a Web site on one play, and present their findings to the rest of the class at least a week before the play opens;
• participate actively in a group selecting from and editing the Web site of a task force (not the one she participated in) to create, at least three working days before the play opens, an agreed text of about 1000 words to be used as the basis of a "playgoer's companion."

This description is intended to be as thorough as I can make it, and at the beginning of the course I'll give everyone lots of opportunity to read, think about, and discuss it, because it's a very unconventional course and I would like to make it as clear as I possibly can just what will be involved -- so that, if it's not your cup of tea, you can find an alternative as soon as possible.

more generally

Probably the most immediately important thing you need to know is this: this course will attempt to provide you with rich, varied experiences -- of reading scripts, discussing them, attending theatre performances, doing research on drama and theatre, and writing about and discussing all of that. Your job will be to work at learning in the situation I try to provide. The course will expect you to engage with the experiences, and be open to learning from them. I will not lecture about theatre and reading, although I will occasionally, usually in response to questions, talk about my own views and knowledge of those matters. Your writing will not be produced for a professor who evaluates and marks it; it will exist to inform, persuade, engage or amuse other readers. I will not provide "feedback" on your work except in very specific ways (for example, in editing the final copies of Playgoer's Companions). I attempt to provide a structure in which you can learn: the learning is something you have to do. It's not about learning from me; it's about learning with my help. I often say that learning is not something that happens to you; it's something you do.

It's also important to bear in mind that this course, unlike most courses in English, is focused on a process -- not on a list of set texts, or on a particular literary form, period or person. What we'll be concerned with is the way in which a script is changed or reshaped as it moves from the reader's experience (the page) to the audience's (the stage), or vice versa, and the ways in which the readers' and the audience's experiences of it are different. Another way to say this is to say we're concerned with how the situation a text is encountered in -- whether you read it in your room or see it in a theatre, what you know and expect in advance, how others you know, or know about, feel about it -- can shape, or reshape, the way you understand, think and feel about, and respond to it. As part of the process, you'll have opportunities to shape the situations in which you and others encounter texts and performances.

To make it possible to organize this, it should be clear, pretty much everything about the course needs to be rather different from a conventional course; it will be much more like a research and production studio or small enterprise. Class meetings will not be lectures, or even, usually, discussions: they'll either be working sessions or the venue for presentations by a task force of their research about a play. We are scheduled to meet every Monday and Wednesday afternoon from 2:30 to 3:45, but we may well not always meet for the entire time; or we may not meet at all if our time would be better spent elsewhere. Some considerations that follow from this:

• This course will expect you to budget about eight hours, on average, every week -- including time spent in class meetings -- for library work, reading, writing, working on line, attending theatre performances, discussions (this will vary: it might be heavier the week your group is working on its presentation or on a Playgoer's Companion, and lighter at other times). All this is not intended to be a heavier workload than other classes, where often the rule of thumb is about the same -- two hours reading and studying outside, for each hour spent in class. But I'm aware that in many classes professors actually don't expect this. That's their choice. I do expect it. I consider this to be one-fifth of the full-time job of being a student. If you think it's unlikely you can do that, given the rest of your class load, work commitments, or whatever, you should think about finding another course.
• This course will require you to take action -- to read, ask questions, write, to inquire actively, to take responsibility for your learning -- rather than sit back and absorb facts. It will not tell you things and ask you to remember them; it will not give you rules and recipes. It will, on the other hand, help you learn how to ask useful questions and find useful answers. And it will almost always have real, inflexible deadlines. For one thing, live performances mean that there are times beyond which the occasion of an assignment simply no longer exists (the play is over); for another, since the course is organized to be a continuous process of learning, not participating in the process means, for practical purposes, dropping out of it.
• This course will require you to attend at least five theatrical productions. This will mean procuring (and paying for) tickets and getting yourself to the venue. This will cost you a good deal less than what texts for a conventional course might cost. Organizing to buy tickets and get to theatres -- perhaps, if necessary, in Saint John or Sackville -- is part of what I mean when I say the course asks you to act rather than to accept.
• This course will invite you to reflect on and assess your own learning rather than using tests and formal essays; at the same time, it will promise that consistent and engaged effort will produce a decent mark; it will also promise, more important, that participating actively in it will produce learning.
• You'll have the opportunity (and encounter the necessity) to learn some important things, if you don't know them already, about information technology -- computers and computer networks and the internet, online research and the physical and digital resources of the library. Writing in this course is created and exchanged primarily through electronic media.

being specific

Each of the headings below takes up a different aspect of the course.

subject matter:

In this course we will focus not on a pre-determined set of texts, but on a question: what's the experience of theatre, how does it arise from and relate to texts, and how can that experience be influenced by knowledge, experience and understanding? I begin creating a situation in which to explore these questions by assembling a list of theatre productions planned for the local area -- or within a reasonable distance -- and choosing those that involve scripts and authors that it will be possible for us to find out about through library and Internet research. The plays on that list constitute the course's focal texts.

methods:

The central method of this course is what I call "collaborative investigation." This means that what actually happens in class meetings is quite different from what happens in many courses. There are no formal lectures. There is a minimal amount of full class discussion, and I do an equally minimal amount of explanation of background (as far as possible, I do this only in answer to questions). The primary activities during the course are individual and group investigation of the course's focal issues or questions. That means that members of the class read widely, do library and other research, interpret, describe and comment on their reading, read and learn from the work of others, and share what they learn in writing -- in large part through the medium of computer networks -- with the rest of the class. We learn, that is, from and with each other.

As I've said, during the term we will focus on plays actually being produced in the local area or within reasonable travelling distance. For most, probably all, of the appropriate plays, the following will happen, more or less in this order:

• Everyone in the two groups responsible for that play (the "task force" preparing a Web site, and the "editorial team" who will select, from the Web  site, a focused text for publication) will read the play and post on the appropriate Forum a thoughtful reflection on her reading.
• Members of the task force will conduct research on the script. They will find out what they can about its author, the tradition or context it was written or produced in, previous productions, background on the time or place the play is set in, etc. -- anything we can learn about the play which will help us to understand it better and more fully. This group will create a Web site -- using a wiki, a collaborative site -- to teach the rest of us what they've learned about the play.
• The task force will present what they have learned to the rest of the class, normally through an in-class presentation of their Web site, substantially in advance of the opening of the production.
• A second group -- the "editorial team" -- will select from, and edit, the work of the task force into the text for a Playgoer's Companion which will be printed and distributed to audiences at the theatre (editorial team members must have posted their reflections on reading the script before the final text is agreed upon).
• Other members of the class who have chosen that play as one of their four will read the script and post their reflections on it on the forum before the play opens.
• Everyone involved in the task force and the editorial team (and other members of the class who chose the play) will attend the production and write public reflections on their experience on the online discussion forum within two days of the closing of the play.
• Everyone who posts on the forum will then respond, thoughtfully and reflectively, to the postings of at least two other members of the class, by a week after the play closes.

Much of the work of the course occurs in the library or at a computer, at the theatre, or reading and writing independently, or organizing wiki sites, presentations, or Playgoer's Companions during the scheduled class time. Class time may occasionally be used for work in the library or the computer lab rather than in the classroom, for group organization of research and presentations, and for presentations by task forces. We will use classroom time when it's most useful; when other ways of working are more useful we'll use them. You should plan, however, on being in the classroom every Monday and Friday afternoon unless an alternative is announced in advance.

aims:

One way to characterize the "collaborative investigation" approach is to say that it is a course in how to use a library and other resources, such as the Internet, to find out about things -- how, that is, to learn independently. It is also, in effect, a course in writing in various forms and media, for various audiences, and for various purposes.

There are at least two ways in which this method is "collaborative." First, members of the class learn from, and teach, each other through research, discussion and writing; and, second, many of the actual tasks are undertaken and completed by groups rather than individuals. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that in many cases it's more efficient to spread a task among a number of people. Another is that doing things with others can promote conscious reflection on what you're doing, and why. And finally, it helps to learn how to organize and work in and through groups of people, This is often a difficult task; it's worth it.

At the end of the course you should be more comfortable and engaged when reading playscripts and attending theatre performances than you probably are now; and you should have a deepened understanding of the ways in which texts relate to performance, and of the ways in which context (knowledge, experience, and immediate situation) affects understanding and response. Perhaps equally important, you should have a clearer idea of what it means to learn about texts -- what research and publication is all about, in other words -- and you should be a more confident and more skilled learner, and a more confident and fluent writer. You should, that is, have enriched your store of the skills and knowledge necessary to begin learning about any new area of interest, not just this one.

computers, networks and the Web:

This course is computer-based, in that everyone will be required to circulate work to others in the class via computer networks -- email, Web-based discussion forums, wiki spaces, a personal blog or learning journal. Much of this work will be conducted through the university's course management system, Moodle. You will need to send and read email regularly, to enter, edit, and save text in a specified format to a designated location, to register and post on an online discussion form, and to use the library's physical and electronic resources, as well as the Internet, for research. You'll need regular access to the Internet.

evaluation:

The question of evaluation is probably one you're already thinking about. People often ask, "In a course organized like this, how can I have any idea what mark I'm likely to get? I need to get some minimum mark to stay in school (or maybe to keep my scholarship, to get a job, etc.). In the usual class, I know what I can expect and I know pretty well what I need to do to be pretty sure of getting that mark: here, so much is new that I feel very vulnerable."

My primary concern in evaluating a student's work in this course is that the process be fair and open, that it be directly related to what the course is actually about, and that it not poison the learning process by focusing everybody's attention on marks. I believe people learn better when their attention is on the subject, on learning, and on teaching what they've learned to others, rather than on demonstrating their knowledge and ability to some authority. Members of the class should be able to feel confident that they will get a mark that makes sense to them, that they won't be surprised at the end of the course, and should be able to forget their anxiety about marks and get on with the work of learning.

One way in which I try to achieve this is simply by making the consistency and depth of each student's engagement in the course an important factor in determining her mark. One reason for this is that the course is founded on the assumption that to be involved actively in such a process is the best way to learn. If someone is genuinely, consistently and actively involved, and still doesn't learn, I think that's a problem with the course design, rather than with the student.

Yes, you're probably asking, but in practice how do I really get a mark in this class? In short, you can establish a minimum mark simply be completing all the tasks the course requires; you can establish another minimum by writing a final learning reflection; you will get the higher of the two marks. For a full explanation of the evaluation process, see the appended document on "how evaluation works in this course" or, if you're reading this on line, click here.

term papers, examinations, etc.:

It should be clear by this point that there is no "term paper" or final exam in this course. It's important to make it even clearer, however, that there's not therefore less writing or less work. Writing is used to explore subjects, as a tool for thinking, and to share information, ideas, feelings and learning, rather than as a way to demonstrate and measure knowledge. Students in this course, consequently, do a great deal more writing than usual.

This writing, though, is quite different in style and in content from that done in more conventional courses. It regularly describes or reports rather than analyzes or interprets, and it always has as its audience other members of the class who do not already know what the piece of writing has to say, and who need to know in order to continue their own work, or members of the public interested in finding out more about a play. Unlike most conventional classes, writing is not written to or for an instructor who, it is presumed, already knows what the writer has to say and whose aim is to evaluate it. Much of the writing in the course is circulated in "first draft" form; also, however, everyone spends significant time editing their own and other people's writing for "final publication" in Playgoer's Companions or on the course Web pages.

what others have thought

If you want to see what other students who've taken this course thought about it, you are invited to have a look at the result of the survey people responded to at the end of this course last year. It's here. It's worth reading through it, at least in part because the comments of other students may help you see more about how this all works in practice.

who I am and how you can reach me

I'm Russ Hunt (I much prefer to be called Russ. If you're uncomfortable with that, avoid "Professor" or "Doctor." Those terms make me uncomfortable. Use "Your Excellency.") You can reach me by email at hunt@stu.ca (much the best way), or by stopping by Casey Hall 308 (I'm there Wednesday and Friday after my 9:00 class, and MW afternoons before class), or by calling extension 424 (if you're off campus, 452-0424).

a final note

It probably will not be clear from this rather exhaustive description that the course is supposed to be fun -- but, according to many students who've taken this course in the past, it can be. At least it can if you think hard, meaningful work and fun can be compatible. Learning, talking, performing and writing are all, in the most fundamental possible way, social activities, activities that put people in touch with each other and with their world, making them part of an increasingly wide and rich social fabric. This course is designed to make those activities as social, as fruitful, and as enjoyable as possible. I hope you'll find them so.