Happy Blackboards: Anti-Thematic Script Analysis, or How to Teach Beyond "Themes"

Abstract: Since the word "theme" consistently warrants redefinition, it fails to find felicitous, longstanding meaning in theatre pedagogy. In response, I have found that asking students to identify a play's "topics," "questions," and "arguments" instead of its "themes" has saved a great deal of teaching time and student confusion—confusion that the word "theme" inevitably carries with it. Through this change, not only have my students found a much deeper engagement with the assigned plays, but the quality of the dramaturgical and practical work they produce in response to their script analyses is at a much higher level than before.