This elective drama course, affiliated with urban studies and cultural studies, is designed to introduce students to a general survey of the dramatic works representative of two distinctively defined eras of the twentieth century in two mega-metropoles: New York in the 20s, and London in the 60s. Both decades are marked by booming economy, thriving arts movement, resurgence of popular culture, rebellious youth culture, and conspicuous consumerism. The twenties, known as the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age, saw a flowering of the arts on all fronts in New York, peaking right before the abrupt stock market crash of 1929. The dark cynicism bred by the traumatic horrors of WWI stands in sharp contrast with the buoyant optimism bolstered by the enfranchised suffrage of women in 1920, and the emancipation of ethnic minority culture, such as African Americans, ushering what is known as the Harlem Renaissance, as well as the flourishing of Yiddish theatre in the Ashkenazi Jewish communities in New York.
The post-Suez Crisis (1956) of Britain also witnessed an unprecedented surge of youth culture discounted with the decayed values of the crumbling British Empire. Dubbed the Angry Young Men, after John Osborne’s eponymous play (1956), the budding dramatists and filmmakers in London aligned themselves with a new youth culture heavily influenced by Northern industrial working class, resulting in a grassroots urban movement keenly conscious of class divide in what has come to be known as the “kitchen sink drama.” The radical social restructuring brought about by modish Mod youth movement and revamped work ethics brings the simmering gender issues to a fore, highlighted by women playwrights such as Delaney and Jellicoe, where ill-concealed taboo issue of homosexuality are also explored. These issues will be discussed in the context of the historical rise and fall of censorship (Hollywood code enforcement 1930 to abolition of British Office of Chamberlain 1968). The technological advances that helped introduce novel media and genres such as jazz music and rock and roll, sound film in 1927, and the emerging industry of commercial photography in the 60s, will be investigated by reading of key theoretical texts, such as Joan Riviere’s“Womanliness as Masquerade (1929), Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936), Susan Sontag’s Notes on Camp (1964), John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972), and Houston Baker’s blues ideology (1984), to examine and address the overdetermined issues of gender, class, race, cultural production and consumption.