This introductory course examines 20^th-century Anglophone drama, especially in connection with the specificity of theatre as a medium. Special attention is paid to the conventions that dictate the modern dramatic text and to performance as a signifying process. At the same time, a development is emphatically traced in 20th-century drama from Realism to the Theatre of the Absurd, The lesson aspires to make the students aware of the dramatic text as a complex system which inscribes its own representation, as, for example, in the stage directions, as well as the historical moment of its production.