The course accompanies the theatre productions that are about to take place in the Department of Theatre Arts, TAU, during the 2017-2018 academic year. We will learn how to conduct preliminary, pre-production, research towards performance, focusing on such issues as the context of the composition of the play; the thematic and stylistic questions involved; the creative world of its writer; the specific place of the given play within the writer's entire corpus of works; its various translations into Hebrew; and notable past productions of the play in Israel and abroad.

The students will be divided into small work-groups, each accompanying a specific production. Every group will be responsible for conducting research of the chosen play and its writer. This research will be presented in class, and will later serve as the basis for composing the official program-notes to be handed to the production's spectators. This activity will involve a discussion of the program as a pedagogical-communicative tool, meant to mediate the performance to the spectators, as well as a performative tool, meant to achieve a specific effect by the way it is edited and designed. Moreover, we will watch the performances and discuss them, to examine how the themes of our preliminary research coincide with the specific choices and dramaturgical interpretation offered in the TAU production.