Fiction has always provided rich source material for drama. But much 20th and 21st century fiction can seem unadaptable—it is often sprawling, poetic, interior, fragmentary, or cerebral (or all of the above!). This hands-on course will challenge students to approach modern and contemporary literature with unconventional tools of staging, editing, and design. Students will also be introduced to the work of contemporary theater companies and productions that have taken on seemingly impossible adaptation projects, and closely study adaptations of Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf and others.