Cultural History of Cities and Theatres

Designed for the Department of History, University of Victoria
Course by Dr. Kat Sark ​

Course Description:

This course is an interdisciplinary, multimedia course for undergraduate and graduate students. It covers the cultural history of cities, theatres, and historical milestones that took place in these performance venues and shaped cultural histories. This interdisciplinary course focuses on gender, media, performance, spectacle, architecture, art, costume, consumerism, and other areas of critical inquiry and cultural analysis. This course allows students to engage with cultural history, cultural analysis, urban history, theatre history and theory. It introduces students to historical, cultural, and critical approaches to urban culture, cultural production, and media. This course is designed to help students to develop skills in critical thinking, close reading, writing, and comparative and interdisciplinary analysis. Students are expected to keep up with the readings and actively participate in the class discussions.

Course Readings:

  1. Joy Dixon and Jeffrey W. Alexander, Nelson Guide to Writing in History. 2nd Edition (Toronto: Nelson Education, 2010)
  2. Jennifer Homans, Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet (New York: Random House, 2010)
  3. Other course readings and materials will be available online

Course Outline:
(Subject to changes / in progress)

Week 1
Introduction, Methodologies, Research in History
​
READINGS: 
  • Joy Dixon and Jeffrey W. Alexander, Nelson Guide to Writing in History, pp. 1-36, 49-65, 68-75
DISCUSSION:

​What is cultural history? What is cultural analysis? 
Week 2
London

Globe Theatre (1599)
William Shakespeare
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (1732)
Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev
 
READINGS: ​ FILM: Anna Karenina (dir. Joe Wright, 2012)
Week 3
Paris
​
​Opéra de Paris (1669)
Louis XIV
Comédie-Française(1680)
Molière
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1913) 
Ballets Russes and the Rite of Spring (May 29, 1913)

READINGS: 
  • Jennifer Homans, Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet (New York: Random House, 2010), chapters 1, 3, and 8
  • Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys Limited, 1989), selections
Week 4
Milan

​La Scala (1778)
Marie Taglioni

READINGS: 
  • Jennifer Homans, Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet (New York: Random House, 2010), chapter 6
  • Marvin Carlson, Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), selections. 
Week 5
Vienna

​Burgtheater (1741)
Gustav Klimt

READINGS: 
Week 6
Berlin

​Deutsches Theater (1850)
Max Reinhardt
Berliner Ensemble (1892/1949)
Bertolt Brecht, Helene Weigel

READINGS: 
Week 7
Copenhagen

​Royal Danish Theatre (1748)
Royal Danish Opera House
Royal Danish Playhouse (2008)

READINGS: 
TBA
Week 8
St. Petersburg

Hermitage Theatre (1783)
Catherine the Great
Alexandrinsky Theatre (1832)
Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull
Lermontov’s Masquerade by Meyerhold at the outbreak of the Revolution
Mariinsky Theatre (1860)
Peter Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa
Mariinsky II 

READINGS: 
  • Murray Frame, The St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters: Stage and State in Revolutionary Russia, 1900-1920 (Mcfarland & Co Inc., 2000), selections
  • Katerina Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), selections
  • Jennifer Homans, Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet (New York: Random House, 2010), chapter 7
  • James Adams, “From Toronto with love, a new theatre for St. Petersburg,” Globe and Mail (July 29, 2009), p.A8

FILM: The Russian Arc (dir. Alexander Sokurov, 2002)
Week 9
Moscow

Bolshoi Theatre (1821)
Moscow Art Theatre (1898)
Konstantin Stanislavsky

READINGS: 
  • Jennifer Homans, Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet (New York: Random House, 2010), chapter 9
  • Elena Siemens, Theatre in Passing: A Moscow Photo-Diary (Bristol: Intellect, 2011), selections
  • Stanislavsky, Konstantin. My Life in Art (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950), selections
Week 10
New York

MET Opera (1883/1966)
George Balanchine
Nutcracker Nation
New Amsterdam Theatre (1902)

READINGS: ​ 
  • Stacy Wolf,  Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), selections
  • Jennifer Homans, Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet (New York: Random House, 2010), chapters 11 and 12
  • Elena Siemens, Theatre in Passing 2: Searching for New Amsterdam (Bristol: Intellect, 2015), selections
​
FILM: Vanya on 42nd Street (dir. Louis Malle, 1994)
Week 11
Web Project Presentations
​DISCUSSION:

Bibliography:

Adams, James. “From Toronto with love, a new theatre for St. Petersburg,” Globe and Mail. Toronto, July 29, 2009, p.A8.
Arnold, Catherine. Globe: Life in Shakespeare’s London. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.
Brown, David. Tchaikovsky: The Final Years 1885-1893. London: W. W. Norton, 1991.
Carlson, Marvin. Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.
Clark, Katerina. Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys Limited, 1989.
Fisher, Jennifer. Nutcracker Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
Frame, Murray. The St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters: Stage and State in Revolutionary Russia, 1900-1920. Mcfarland & Co Inc., 2000.
Garafola, Lynn. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998.
Homans, Jennifer. Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet. New York: Random House, 2010.
Leach, Robert. Makers of Modern Theatre: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Prevots, Naima. Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1998.
Schorske, Carl E. Fin-De-Siecle Vienna – Politics and Culture. New York: Vintage Books, 1981.
Schuler, Catherine A.  Women in Russian Theatre: The Actress in the Silver Age. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Senelick, Laurence. “Vera Kommissarzhevskaya: The Actress as Symbolist Eidolon,” Theatre Journal, Vol.32, No.4, Dec. 1980, pp.475-487.
Siemens, Elena. Theatre in Passing: A Moscow Photo-Diary. Bristol: Intellect, 2011.
Siemens, Elena. Theatre in Passing2: Searching for New Amsterdam. Bristol: Intellect, 2015.
Stanislavsky, Konstantin. My Life in Art. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950.
Wolf, Stacy. Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Disclaimer: The contents of this site are copy-right protected and cannot be reproduced without the author's permission. © Katrina Sark, 2019