February 9, 2018 • 14m
Welcome to Crash Course Theater with Mike Rugnetta! In this, our inaugural week, we're going to ask the two classic questions abou...Read more
February 16, 2018 • 10m
This week on Crash Course Theater, Mike is acting like theater started in Greece. Well, for the western theater, this is true. The...Read more
February 23, 2018 • 12m
Aristotle. He knows a lot, right? And if you choose to believe Aristotle, then you must believe all the mechanics of tragedy that ...Read more
March 2, 2018 • 11m
Get ready for hilarity, because this week, we're diving head first into Greek Comedy. Actually, though, maybe don't get TOO ready ...Read more
March 9, 2018 • 12m
Today, Mike Rugnetta takes you from our beginnings in ancient Greek theater, and moves on to the development of Roman theater. Whi...Read more
March 16, 2018 • 11m
In which Mike delves into the theater of ancient Rome. It wasn't all gladiators and Christian-killing, you know. There was theater...Read more
March 23, 2018 • 12m
Ancient Sanskrit theater is one of the oldest theater traditions, and thanks to Bharata Muni and his treatise on theater, the Naty...Read more
April 6, 2018 • 12m
As the Roman Empire fell, so did the theater. If there's anyone who hates theater and actors more than Romans, it's early Christia...Read more
April 13, 2018 • 12m
When last we saw Theater, it was just making its way back in the West, by sneaking a little drama into the Easter mass. In today's...Read more
April 20, 2018 • 11m
Not long after drama reappeared in the unlikely home of European churches, the church decided again it didn't like theater. And so...Read more
April 27, 2018 • 12m
This week on Crash Course Theater, Mike is taking you to Japan to have a look at Noh theater. Noh, and its counterpart Kyogen are ...Read more
May 4, 2018 • 11m
This week, we're going to Italy for a Renaissance. The Middle Ages are over, and it's time to talk about the flourishing of art an...Read more
May 11, 2018 • 12m
The Renaissance came to England late, thanks to a Hundred Years War that ran long and lasted 116 years, and then a civil war to de...Read more
May 18, 2018 • 11m
This is the story of how a young Englishman named William Shakespeare stormed London's theater scene in the late 16th century, and...Read more
May 25, 2018 • 12m
Shakespeare's tragedies...were tragic. But they had some jokes. They also changed the way tragedies were written. Characters like ...Read more
June 1, 2018 • 11m
This week we're continuing our discussion of William Shakespeare and looking at his comedies and romances. As well as something ca...Read more
June 8, 2018 • 12m
This week on Crash Course Theater, Shakespeare is dead. Long live Shakespeare. Well, long live English theater, anyway. Actually, ...Read more
June 15, 2018 • 13m
The English Theater survived a lot of pushback from various powers that be, but in the 17th century, it had to go into hiding, fro...Read more
June 29, 2018 • 11m
This week on Crash Course Theater, Mike and Yorick take us to beautiful Spain and look at its Golden Age. Spain was having kind of...Read more
July 6, 2018 • 13m
Everyone knows, you need a bunch of rules to make good theater. That's what the French thought in the 17th century, anyway. The Fr...Read more
July 13, 2018 • 11m
This week on CC Theater, Mike Rugnetta teaches you about the greatest playwright of Renaissance France, Moliere. We'l talk a bit a...Read more
July 21, 2018 • 12m
This week, we're headed to the Americas to learn about the theater that existed there prior to the arrival of Europeans, how the t...Read more
July 27, 2018 • 12m
We're headed back to Japan, this time in the Edo period to follow up on Noh theater, which had gone out of style last time we chec...Read more
August 3, 2018 • 10m
This week, we're headed back to India to learn about the all night dance shows that culminate in killing a Demon (metaphorically):...Read more
August 10, 2018 • 11m
This week we're headed to China to learn about the ancient origins of theater there. We'll look at the early days of wizard theate...Read more
August 17, 2018 • 12m
This week, we're headed back to England to learn about Sentimental Comedies. They weren't that funny, but they were definitely sen...Read more
August 24, 2018 • 11m
Theater had a slow start in Germany, mainly because Germany wasn't really a thing until relatively recent times. After Germany fin...Read more
September 7, 2018 • 12m
At the turn of the 18th century, audience were ready to go over the top, and get some really, really dramatic theater in their liv...Read more
September 14, 2018 • 12m
It's lights up in America! This week, we're headed to North America. We'll look at Native American storytelling traditions, the th...Read more
September 21, 2018 • 13m
We’re continuing our discussion of nineteenth-century American theater with a look at some upsetting parts of the US's theatrical ...Read more
September 28, 2018 • 12m
This week, we're back in Europe to learn about Realism and Naturalism. In the 19th Century, playwrights like Eugene Scribe, Alexan...Read more
October 5, 2018 • 12m
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, theater was evolving rapidly in Europe. Impresarios like Georg II, Duke of the Duchy of...Read more
October 12, 2018 • 13m
It's a Scandinavian grudge match on Crash Course Theater. We're looking at a couple of the key movements in European theater that ...Read more
October 19, 2018 • 12m
Get ready for Russian modernism. Mike is teaching you about the playwrighting of Catherine the Great, Anton Chekhov's plays, the M...Read more
November 2, 2018 • 11m
Prepare to be horrified, and to look into the face of inhumanity with the Grand Guignol. Mike Rugnetta teaches you about one of th...Read more
November 9, 2018 • 11m
The Irish Renaissance in the early 20th century included a wealth of new plays written both in Ireland, and by Irish ex-patriots e...Read more
November 23, 2018 • 12m
Watch. Dime. Develop. Powder. Pantry. Dirt. That's right, it's time for a dip into the random, because we're talking about the Dad...Read more
November 30, 2018 • 12m
Join us here, in the darkness. Our theater journey takes us into the heart of expressionism today, as playwrights in the late 19th...Read more
December 7, 2018 • 13m
It's time to go Back...to the Future. By which I mean, we're going back into the past to talk about Futurism. Which seems like it ...Read more
December 15, 2018 • 11m
In the early 20th century United States, big melodramatic productions were on Broadway, and everywhere across the country. Which i...Read more
December 21, 2018 • 12m
In the 1920s, there was a blossoming of all kinds of art made by African Americans in the New York neighborhood Harlem. Let's call...Read more
January 4, 2019 • 12m
The 1930s in the United States were pretty bad for employment in all industries, and the theater was no exception. As part of Roos...Read more
January 13, 2019 • 11m
I don't mean it mean, but today we're going to be cruel. It's the fun-loving Theater of Cruelty, which was pioneered by the genius...Read more
January 18, 2019 • 11m
Are you ready to learn something about the world? Then you're ready for Bertolt Brecht, and his ideas about Epic Theater. Brecht w...Read more
January 25, 2019 • 11m
Get ready to get weird. Mike Rugnetta teaches you about the Theater of the Absurd, a 1950s theatrical reaction to the dire world e...Read more
February 1, 2019 • 11m
We're going to Broadway, everybody, and it's not going to be that fun. In fact, it's going to be a very serious experience with lo...Read more
February 8, 2019 • 12m
By the middle of the 20th century, the epicenter of American theater, the Broadway theater district in New York, was getting to be...Read more
February 15, 2019 • 13m
Poor Theater and Theater of the Oppressed were two sort of concurrent movements that shared some of the same aims. Jerzy Grotowski...Read more
February 22, 2019 • 12m
It's difficult to talk about African theater thanks to colonialism. Pre-colonial Africa was home to many spoken languages, and not...Read more
March 1, 2019 • 13m
This is it! We're going out with a singing, dancing look at the Broadway Book Musical. Oklahoma! On the Town! Annie Get Your Gun! ...Read more