Suggested Reading List
CORE READING LIST FOR THEATRE STUDIES MAJORS
What follows is a suggested list of plays and theatre texts which a literate theatre major should be familiar with by the time they graduate. The list includes plays that are representative of significant dramaturgies, which exemplify the historical and cultural variety of dramatic literature, and which will provide a basis for further reading in these periods and cultures.
PLAYS
CLASSICAL DRAMA (GREEK AND ROMAN)
Aeschylus
The Oresteia
Sophocles
Oedipus Rex
Antigone
Oedipus at Colonus
Euripides
The Bacchae
Medea
Aristophanes
Lysistrata
The Birds
Plautus
The Twin Menaechmi
Seneca
Thyestes
DRAMA OF EASTERN CULTURES
Indian Hindu epic
The Mahabharata (see also: Peter Brook film of the same)
Guan Hanqing (Chinese Zaju play)
Snow in Midsummer
Namiki Sosuke (Japanese Kabuki play)
The Chronicle of the Battle of Ichinotani
Author Unknown (Japanese Noh play)
Dojoji
MEDIEVAL DRAMA
Anonymous
Everyman
The Second Sheperd’s Play (Wakefield Cycle)
ITALIAN COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE
Niccolo Machiavelli
The Mandrake
ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN DRAMA
Christopher Marlowe
Doctor Faustus
William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part I
As You Like It
King Lear
The Tempest
Much Ado About Nothing
A Midsummer Nights’ Dream
Macbeth
Hamlet
Othello
The Winter’s Tale
Twelfth Night
Richard III
The Taming of the Shrew
Ben Jonson
Volpone
John Webster
The Duchess of Malfi
SPANISH GOLDEN AGE DRAMA
Lope de Vega
Fuente Ovejuna
Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Life is a Dream
Sor Juan Ines de la Cruz (Mexico)
El Divino Narciso
FRENCH NEO-CLASSICAL
Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
Tartuffe
The Misanthrope
The Imaginary Invalid
Jean Racine
Phaedra
RESTORATION AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ANGLO-EUROPEAN
John Dryden
All for Love
Aphra Behn
The Rover
William Wycherley
The Country Wife
William Congreve
The Way of the World
Carlo Goldoni
Servant of Two Masters
Pierre de Beaumarchais
The Marriage of Figaro
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust, Part I
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
School for Scandal
The Rivals
MODERN ANGLO-EUROPEAN DRAMA
Georg Buchner
Woyzeck
Henrik Ibsen
A Doll’s House
Hedda Gabler
An Enemy of the People
The Master Builder
August Strindberg
Miss Julie
A Dream Play
Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest
Salome
George Bernard Shaw
St. Joan
Arms and the Man
Major Barbara
Heartbreak House
Anton Chekhov
The Cherry Orchard
The Seagull
The Three Sisters
Uncle Vanya
Georges Feydeau
A Flea in Her Ear
Luigi Pirandello
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Edmond Rostand
Cyrano de Bergerac
J.M. Synge
The Playboy of the Western World
Riders to the Sea
Alfred Jarry
Ubu Roi
Sean O’Casey
Juno and the Peacock
The Plough and the Stars
Bertolt Brecht
Mother Courage
The Good Person of Setzuan
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
Frederico Garcia Lorca
Blood Wedding
Yerma
The House of Bernarda Alba
Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot
Endgame
Jean-Paul Sartre
No Exit
Jean Genet
The Balcony
The Maids
Eugene Ionesco
Rhinoceros
The Chairs
The Bald Soprano
Peter Weiss
Marat/Sade
Friedrich Durrenmatt
The Visit
Peter Schaffer
Equus
Amadeus
John Osborne
Look Back in Anger
Dario Fo
Accidental Death of an Anarchist
We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!
Harold Pinter
The Birthday Party
The Caretaker
The Homecoming
Betrayal
Tom Stoppard
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Arcadia
Caryl Churchill
Top Girls
Cloud Nine
Joe Orton
Loot
What the Butler Saw
Edward Bond
Saved
Martin McDonagh
The Beauty Queen of Leenane
The Pillowman
MODERN DRAMA OF AFRICAN CULTURES
Athol Fugard
Master Harold and the Boys
The Road to Mecca
Wole Soyinka
Death and the King’s Horseman
MODERN DRAMA OF AMERICAN CULTURES
Susan Glaspell
Trifles
Eugene O’Neill
The Hairy Ape
Emperor Jones
Long Day’s Journey into Night
Sophie Treadwell
Machinal
Thornton Wilder
The Skin of our Teeth
Our Town
Lillian Hellman
The Children’s Hour
The Little Foxes
Clifford Odets
Waiting for Lefty
Awake and Sing!
Tennessee Williams
The Glass Menagerie
A Streetcar Named Desire
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Arthur Miller
All My Sons
Death of a Salesman
The Crucible
Edward Albee
The Zoo Story
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Three Tall Wome
Lorraine Hansberry
A Raisin in the Sun
Maria Irene Fornes
Fefu and Her Friends
I.A. Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
Dutchman
Luis Valdez
Zoot Suit
Sam Shepard
Curse of the Starving Class
Buried Child
True West
August Wilson
Fences
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
The Piano Lesson
Marsha Norman
Getting Out
‘night Mother
David Mamet
American Buffalo
Glengarry Glen Ross
Oleanna
Anna Deavere Smith
Fires in the Mirror
Paula Vogel
How I Learned to Drive
Baltimore Waltz
Milcha Sanchez Scott
Roosters
Holly Hughes, Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver
Dress Suits for Hire
Tony Kushner
Angels in America
Henry David Hwang
FOB
M. Butterfly
Naomi Wallace
Slaughter City
One Flea Spare
Susan – Lori Parks
Venus
Top dog / Underdog
The American Play
TEXTS*
Robert Edmond Jones
The Dramatic Imagination
Poetics
Jersy Grotowski
Towards a Poor Theatre
Bertolt Brecht (Willet ed.)
Brecht on Theatre
Laura Bohannon
Shakespeare in the Bush
David Ball
Backwards and Forwards
Augusto Boal
Theater of the Oppressed
Eric Bentley
The Life of the Drama
Peter Brook
The Empty Space
Joseph Chaikin
The Presence of the Actor
Antonin Artaud
The Theatre and Its Double
Richard Gilman
The Making of Modern Drama
Konstantin Stanislavski
An Actor Prepares
*in addition to those texts you will encounter in Theatre coursework
