#  Slavic 199 hfa (Fall)/hfb (Spring) - Russian Culture in Performance 

 





 Semester:   Fall 

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 Year offered:  2016 

 

 

 

A one-time only, collaborative course organized around the October, 2016 performance at Harvard of Petersburg’s Bolshoi Drama Theater’s production of *The Visible Side of Life*, a one-woman play about the poet Elena Shvarts. This is a year-long course, for four credits. The course will meet for four 90-minute sessions in fall, 2016 to discuss traditions of performing poetry in the theater; the history of the Bolshoi Drama Theater; Russian performances as a research topic; Russian poets’ styles of reading; poetry performance across media; and the poetry of Elena Shvarts, particularly its dramatic aspects. The goal of the fall semester sessions will be to prepare students for the theater performance of *The Visible Side of Life*; to build a foundation for students to do academic work in performance studies; and to formulate research questions on adaptation, transformation, translation across media and art forms.

In the spring semester, students will work on independent projects under the supervision of a faculty member. Collaborations, curated web sites, performances, performance proposals, conference presentations, and traditional seminar papers will all be welcome. The spring semester will end in a celebratory gathering for participants to share their work.