Teaching Apprentice for “Award-Winning Playwrights”

In the fall semester of 2019 at Wesleyan University, Pugh served as the teaching apprentice for the class “Award-Winning Playwrights” (ENGL 281 / THEA 280 / AFAM 279) under the direction of Associate Professor of English  Rashida Z. Shaw McMahon. As teaching apprentice, roles included:

  • Guiding and facilitating class discussions on ten contemporary plays

  • Conducting office hours for help on papers and assignments

  • Checking in with students on group projects and their progress in the class

  • Creating an alternate syllabus with additional plays + art related to the main ten plays

  • Leading class with a self-created presentation on Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview

  • Helping assemble the syllabus (Pugh’s Wesleyan Argus review of Woolly Mammoth Theater Company’s production of Fairview was featured as an assigned reading)

The course’s description, objectives, themes, and syllabus are below. A PDF of the complete syllabus is available upon request.

SYLLABUS

Each week, the class explored a contemporary play-text, its production histories, and the critical discourse around its stagings. Some weeks included open-discussion days where multiple plays were studied collectively, as well as presentation days that included short staged readings and presentations. Plays that were studied included:

  •  Angels in America - Tony Kushner

  • Indecent - Paula Vogel

  • Water by the Spoonful - Quiara Alegría Hudes

  • Sweat - Lynn Nottage

  • The Humans - Stephen Karam

  • born bad - debbie tucker green

  • The Brothers Size - Tarell Alvin McCraney

  • Cost of Living - Martyna Majok

  • Fairview - Jackie Sibblies Drury

  • Hamilton - Lin-Manuel Miranda

DESCRIPTION

With textual analysis and intellectual criticism at its core, this course examines the dramatic work of award-winning playwrights through theoretical, performative, and aesthetic frames. A select range of reviews and popular press publications help to supplement our discussions. In all cases, we are interested in surveying the ways in which these playwrights work within varying modes of dramatic expression and focus their plays on such topics as class, ethnicity, era, disability, gender, locale, nationality, race, and/or sexuality.

OBJECTIVES

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

  • Utilize advanced methods of close-reading when analyzing dramatic texts;

  • Theorize independently about the ways in which select dramatic texts reflect specific histories, aesthetics, traditions, experiences, and/or ideologies as expressed by their respective playwright;

  • Critique scholarly articles in terms of the author’s main argument, supporting arguments, and/or overall analysis of performance/text;

  • Employ critical writing skills to craft originally conceived papers that analyze the distinct works of selected playwrights.

THEMES

Central questions asked by the class and through assignments were:

  • How do playwrights experiment and subvert the literary genre of the play?

  • What does or should define the category “award-winning?”

  • How do playwrights stage their own identities/communities and also ones that do not belong to them?

  • And how do playwrights (especially playwrights of color) react to the theater industry and the multiple audiences that interact with that industry?