In the old version of my course, I relied heavily on lectures, taking the students on a tour of the production process (playwright, playscript, theatrical space, director, designers, actors, technicians, performance, and audience), introducing them to such topics as "theatre in America," "ethnic theatre," and "theatre on a screen," and even attempting hasty glimpses of such historical high-water marks as classical Greece, Shakespearean England, and Moliére's France. I also sent them to see a few shows: our own major production of the term, plus a couple of plays produced by local community theatres or the occasional touring troupe like the Guthrie or Seattle Rep.

In general, I was satisfied with my broad strategy, which aimed at bringing the students to the field from both the inside and the outside, giving them some understanding of the process and some appreciation of the result. Yet in actuality, the course made the students too passive—they read the book and they listened to lectures. I hadn't found enough ways to generate class discussions (if you know but little about a topic, you have difficulty talking about it), and Bakersfield just doesn't offer enough professional theatre to permit my fantasy, which would consist of sending the students to a different play every week. I know of instructors who turn their Theatre 101 courses into seat-of-your-pants performance exercises, with untrained and inexperienced students rehearsing and presenting one-acts or scenes in the classroom, but I feel that such an activity too closely resembles what we do in our beginning acting course, and I believe that the pressure of even low-key production can distract the students' attention from the big picture.