Digital Commons Network^™

The Gentrification Of Drag, Kyle Kucharski

Capstones

The world of drag has reached virtual mainstream visibility thanks to a combination of shifting social norms, social media and the success of shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race (which just won its third Emmy). No longer relegated to the confines of queer subculture, drag queens are now exported worldwide on prime-time television. When a “man in a dress” is no longer subversive, how can drag as a subculture continue to push the boundaries?

This critical essay looks at the art of drag, its historical position in culture and how its currently blowing up mainstream entertainment. Increased success and visibility can …

Rachmaninoff And The Flexibility Of The Score: Issues Regarding Performance Practice, Tanya Gabrielian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s piano music is a staple of piano literature, but academia has been slower to embrace his works. Because he continued to compose firmly in the Romantic tradition at a time when Debussy, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg variously represented the vanguard of composition, Rachmaninoff’s popularity has consequently not been as robust in the musicological community. He left a rich legacy of recorded material which provides a first-hand account of his approach to musical interpretation. Few have analyzed Rachmaninoff’s recordings in great detail, and there are even fewer studies addressing Rachmaninoff’s performances of works by other composers.

The aim of this …

Brooklyn Bedroom: An Ethnodrama On Female Sexuality, Third World Feminism And Performance Ethnography, Ayshia Stephenson

Doctoral Dissertations

Brooklyn Bedroom is a performance that interrogates societal perceptions of race and sexuality. I have utilized the writing of the performance as my method; the performance is an act of Third World feminist resistance and liberation. Storytelling is the type of research preferred by many black female playwrights. A type of qualitative inquiry, ethnodramatic work forms a bridge between individual stories and social issues affecting society with the goal of socio-political change. The source of reality for this ethnodrama is the Rose family, their history was a catalyst for the writing of Brooklyn Bedroom. I have explored their stories to …

And Where Is The Body?, Tyler Durbano

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In combination with a Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, and where is the body?, this dossier offers the following as accompanying components: an extended artist statement, a transcribed interview with artist Francisco-Fernando Granados, documentation of my artwork and my curriculum vitae. The section containing documented artwork provides a selected overview of my creative research and material exploration made during my time at Western University. These components complement my creative research and expand on ideas of queer identity, performance, vulnerability, assemblage and drag that are explored in my thesis exhibition.

Anachropomorphism!, Carson Evans

Masters Theses

Folks, the Truth is hard to know—if can be known at all.¹ Conventional Western wisdom tells us: stick to the facts. (I’m looking at you, Enlightenment.) We privilege the written word as an objective and reliable vehicle for communication. Useful, yes, but we over-rely. I counter with this: bodily performativity and purposeful inaccuracy that produces, paradoxically, narrative accuracy. These methods roil in our gut or tug at our heartstrings—instead of recoiling, we should embrace them.

I like to unpack “the stories we tell ourselves,”² our personal and societal mythologies, with a particular eye to how the past plays a role …

Selfie-Portrait, John Shield, John Shield

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The selfie has become the currency of today; boldly stating: I was here, this is how I felt, and, most importantly, I exist.

This has become our self-reflection. Exploring the self-portrait, as have countless artists of the past, Johnny Shield uses the various selfies as reference for his sculptural works - both empty vessels and sculptural busts. Made from glass these fragile objects are all doomed to break. You, the viewer, are witnessing a truly damned object: the central portrait uneasily rests on a pedestal that is actively electrolytically corroding. While on display, this pedestal will lean more and more …

Murmur/Murmuro, Paola M. Di Tolla

Theses and Dissertations

By using repetition or misplacing intonations and accents, etc. one can imitate the slipperiness of spoken language. However, it is the accidental slippage that I find most revealing and exciting because it allows for two conversations to exist in one. Once spoken language is transcribed as text, it is put through another filter and the risk of [accidental] slippage increases by a different measure. Fingers don’t keep up or autocorrect insists on taking matters into its own hands.

Thesis For Graduate Study In Tuba Performance, Allen Parrish

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

A document in support of the graduate tuba recital given on April 1, 2017. A description of composer biographies for each work performed as well as performance considerations and how those specific performance considerations were addressed in preparation for the recital. Submitted as part of the requirements for the Master of Music in Tuba Performance.

Making Sounds, Patrick Costello

Theses and Dissertations

Using collaboration and performance as tools, I situate my personal story, my body, and my skills and interests within a contemporary landscape that is intersectional, full of partialities, and rooted in evolving ecologies.

The Examination Of A Magic Show In Its Past, Current, And Future Forms Based Around A Recorded Performance Before A Live Audience, Armory Hermetz

Honors Theses

This project is an analysis and reflection on a magic show performed by myself before a live audience and recorded for documentation. It is a snapshot in time of my progress as a performer at a particular point in my career as a magician. In this paper, I detail my current philosophies on the performance of magic and the reasons why I made certain decisions regarding the structure of the show and the routines I performed. In addition to this, I also discuss adaptations that I have made to these routines since the performance. The analysis is based entirely on …

Being In Performance: A Philosophical Account Of The Embodied Actor, Brad M. Krumholz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I present and analyze three distinct actor-training exercises primarily through the lens of the Embodied Cognition (EC) branch of contemporary philosophy, which attempts to frame human understanding as a fully embodied interaction with the environment. Drawing from neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, and other branches of philosophy, EC provides both an excellent set of tools and a strong theoretical framework to help explain how people encounter meaning in life. I apply its unique perspectives to this philosophical account of the embodied actor as I analyze the various elements at play in actor training praxis, which allows me to shed …

Cellist, Catalyst, Collaborator: The Work Of Charlotte Moorman, Saisha Grayson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

When classically trained cellist Charlotte Moorman (1933-1991) moved to New York City in 1957, she swiftly positioned herself at the intersection of experimental music, performance, video, and the visual arts. She interpreted works by composers like John Cage, collaborated with artists such as Nam June Paik, and founded and organized the New York Avant Garde Festival from 1963 to 1980. This dissertation argues that Moorman’s career sheds new light on what it meant to be an artist in this post-medium-specific moment and proposes that Moorman’s deterritorialization of authorship exerts pressure on traditional art histories. The generative dynamics of her collaborations …

The Experience Of Live And Recorded Music: A Cello Solo, Sarah Hunter

Honors Projects

Americans experience 98.5% of their music in a recorded medium such as radio, online streaming, TV, CDs, or other physical mediums. As a composer of classical concert music, I challenged myself to compose music that offered audiences a meaningful experience as a live performance and as a recorded piece of music.

Music & Media: A Senior Recital & Honors Project, Kayla Luteran

Honors Projects

Music & Media: A Senior Recital & Honors Project is a cross-media marketing strategy. The main purpose of this project was to develop visually appealing, informative graphic elements and branding to effectively promote a musical performance. This is interdisciplinary in nature and includes written and oral communication.

While many music students post about their senior recital on social media or place flyers, they do not develop a thorough methodology for generating buzz about their event. Although musical preparation is of utmost importance for a performance, I believe that time should be spent on all aspects of planning the recital. With …

Performance Anxiety And The Benefits Of Proper Breathing For Singing, Kate Zecher

Undergraduate Theses

The intent of this thesis is to help those with Music Performance Anxiety, or anxiety in general, better understand their anxiety and its causes. They can then use this knowledge to reduce or control their symptoms in order to improve their performance, whether on a stage or in a classroom. One of the main symptoms of Music Performance Anxiety is constriction of the chest. It is one of the most debilitating symptoms to singers as it causes shortness of breath. Therefore, focusing on anxiety in relation to breathing will most benefit those with Music Performance Anxiety. In addition, learning about …

In-Between: The Spaces Of Modernity, Elisa Fabris Valenti

LSU Master's Theses

During the past three years as a graduate student, I have experienced loneliness. Having recently emigrated from Italy, I have often asked myself why I am experiencing such hard times adjusting to a different country. My thesis explores this question. Referring to Marc Augé’s idea of non-place, I have chosen a geographical and spatial starting point to approach my work. Italian cities are built around the central piazza where social, political, and economic life revolves. In my thesis, I depict American spaces that lack specific location and create solitude within the urban corridors. Private feelings, such as loneliness, are paradoxes …

Theatrical Weddings And Pious Frauds: Performance And Law In Victorian Marriage Plots, Adrianne A. Wojcik

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study investigates how key Victorian novelists, such as Anne and Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy, emphasize performativity in their critiques of marriage. Given the performative nature of wedding ceremonies, this project focuses on wedding descriptions in select novels by the aforementioned authors. Such a focus highlights an interesting dilemma. Although we often think of Victorian novels as overwhelmingly concerned with marriage, the few wedding descriptions found in Victorian fiction are aborted, unusually short or announced after the fact. Those Victorian novelists who do feature weddings often describe them …

Performing "Hurt" : Aging, Disability, And Popular Music As Mediated Product And Lived-Experience In Johnny Cash's Final Recordings, Adam Davidson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sitting at a rarely examined intersection between aging, disability, and popular culture, this project explores how the aging body becomes the disabled body in the context of popular music. In what follows, I trouble the distinction between bodies and mediation, between lived-experience and cultural product, and I argue that the voice of the aging artist engages with his lived-experience even as he performs socially-constructed conceptions of aging and disability.

I read Johnny Cash’s 2002 cover of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt” on American IV: The Man Comes Around as a performance of the singer’s age and disabled condition. Through pain- saturated lyrics, …

Gestural Ekphrasis: Toward A Phenomenology Of The Moving Body In Joyce And Woolf, Lauren Nicole Benke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This theoretical project seeks to introduce a new critical methodology for evaluating gesture - both represented in text and paratextual - in the works of Virginia Woolf - specifically The Voyage Out (1915), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), and Between the Acts (1941) - and James Joyce - particularly Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). Though gesture studies has developed significantly as an interdisciplinary field in recent decades and performance studies has elaborated on the moving body's significance to both text and performance, literary scholarship itself has not yet adequately incorporated possibilities for specific critical attention to gesture. Gesture is …

The Experiential Effects And Relationships Between Student Anxiety In Music Performance And Classroom Assessment, Jordan Diego Chua

Dissertations

Both as an art and assessment, music demonstration and performance in test-taking are closely related. Particular traits are shared between performance in test-taking in the classroom and musical performance "on stage." Tests and performances are normally considered a "high-stakes" setting when the quality and perception of one's skill are under critical scrutiny. Since undergraduate and graduate music students experience assessments in both performance and academic areas, this study allowed consideration for the connections where these two areas overlap, and the possible interventions students may have initiated that are effective in stemming or reducing anxiety. Students' experiences regarding Music Performance Anxiety …

An American Myth In The (Re)Making: The Timeless Fantasy Appeal Of 'The King And I', Lina Purtscher

Scripps Senior Theses

It is now well-known that The King and I has little claim to truth. Recent research has exposed the inaccuracy of the “biographical” works on which the musical is based: Anna Leonowens invented many things about her personal background and experiences. Much of her life, then, is a contrived fantasy. Yet her life of fantasy has been resurrected in countless adaptations, including the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and its 2015 revival production, that ceaselessly draw audiences. The fascination of American audiences with Anna’s tale lies their belief in the timeless American ideals that her fantasy employs: those of freedom …

Motivation Strategies For Improving Consistency In Live-Entertainment Employees' Performances, Anthony G. Ricotta

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The lack of discrete motivation strategies to improve the consistency of employees' performances was the problem that instigated this research. The purpose of this single-case study was to explore the motivation strategies live-entertainment artistic directors (ADs) use to improve consistency in the artists' performances. Data were collected within an international live-entertainment company to uncover whether artists self-determined the approach to improving consistency in performance or whether consistency occurred from strategies developed by the ADs. Data were collected from face-to-face interviews with ADs and senior ADs and performance evaluations of employees, and then analyzed using Miles, Huberman, and Saldana's data analysis …

The Direction Of Why Torture Is Wrong, And The People Who Love Them, Donald Hart

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Hart, Donald C., M.F.A. Thesis. The Direction of Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them. Mankato: Minnesota State University, Mankato, 2018.

This is a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the Master of Fine Arts degree in theatre. It is a detailed account of Donald C. Hart's artistic process in directing Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them in the fall of 2017 for Minnesota State University, Mankato's department of Theatre and Dance. The paper chronicles the director's artistic process from pre-production through performance in five chapters: a pre-production analysis, a historical and critical …

Tyler Kline’S Render: A Formal Analysis And Performance Guide, John Douglas Handshoe

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Since the 1950s, composers worldwide have explored the use of the trombone in new and exciting ways, from expanding the functional range of the instrument to creating unique timbres through the use of mutes and extended techniques. Since then, many standard works in the literature have been born from this pushing of the envelope from composers like John Cage, Luciano Berio, Iannis Xenakis, and Daniel Schnyder.

On the forefront of the newest crop of composers expanding the voice of the trombone is Tyler Kline (b. 1991). This project will function as a formal analysis and performer’s guide to his 2015 …

(Re) Thinking The Past Through Performance: The (Re) Construction Of Militant Childhood Imaginaries In The Post-Dictatorship Of Argentina’S Cultural Production From 2003-2015, Stephanie Rubi Orozco

Theses and Dissertations

Burdened by the atrocities of Argentina’s coup d’état (1976-1982), many children of persecuted parents were forced to live as clandestine hideaways. In recent decades, adult survivors who experience the dictatorship as clandestine children have become primary protagonists, seeking to (re)construct past experiences through the creation of visual and textual productions. In attempt to (re)create their experience in hiding; such adults propose an alternative non-conventional image of a witnessing childhood under military rule as the child of prosecuted parents. For such children, life in secrecy meant having to find refuge from state officials seeking to eliminate their parents. It demanded strict …

Lynne Ramsey, Violist: Biography, Pedagogical Background, Teaching Techniques, And Career Advice, Ignacio Cuello

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This research document explores teaching methods, career advice, and major influences that shaped the professional course of the violist Lynne Ramsey. Ramsey teaches viola at the Cleveland Institute of Music and is first assistant principal viola in the Cleveland Orchestra. For over thirty years, she has taught countless viola students in the US while maintaining a full-time performance career.

The introductory chapter covers Ramsey’s biographical and educational backgrounds during her time as a student of Ramon Scavelli, David Dawson, and Karen Tuttle. It is worth mentioning that Tuttle was the primary student of one of the best-known violists in …

Showing One’S Manhood: The Social Performance Of Masculinity, Fayaz Kabani

Theses and Dissertations

Contrary to much criticism of the past thirty years that regards Shakespeare’s Prince Hal as the epitome of unfettered Machiavellian subjectivity, Hal should be regarded as a teenaged male navigating the contradictory discourses of early modern masculinity in order to perform an integrated, consistent masculinity for his audience. His acceptance of hegemonic masculinity is complicated by his father Henry IV’s usurpation of the throne. The resulting ambivalence in Hal results in his participation in the countermasculine world of Eastcheap. However, once Hal “chooses” his role as Prince of Wales, he finds it difficult to sacrifice his personal self, or body …

Compositional Craft And Theory Across Tonal Languages, Liam Butchart

Honors Theses

This paper accompanies Liam Butchart's senior honors voice recital and his composition for the Colby Symphony Orchestra, Genevan Overture. The essay examines how form and cadence, two integral components of compositional craft, have been utilized by composers who either were included in the voice recital or were major influences on the composition. Specifically, the paper analyzes how different composers end their musical sentences similarly and differently through the lens of structurally-relevant cadences.

Gender Beyond Binary, Sidra Zubairi

Theses and Dissertations

Transgender individuals challenge the binary definition of gender accepted in Pakistani society and as a result, Pakistan’s transgender community is highly marginalized. Pakistani society regards transgender individuals as “abnormal,” because their physical appearance and behavior fail to conform with conventional expectations. Based on contextual research and interviews conducted with transgender individuals in Pakistan, my thesis explores the obstacles transgender individuals face in the course of everyday survival. My research responds to the physical realities of being transgender in Pakistani society and analyzes cultural norms associated with gender, which trigger harassment. By designing transformable apparel for these individuals, informed by primary …

I Am An Author: Performing Authorship In Literary Culture, Justin R. Greene

Theses and Dissertations

Authorship is not merely an act of putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard; it is a social identity performance that includes the use of multiple media. Authors must be hyper- visible to cut through the dearth of information, entertainment options, and personae vying for attention in our supersaturated media environment. As they enter the literary world, writers consciously create characters and narratives around themselves, and through the consistent and believable enactment of these features, authors are born. In this dissertation, I analyze the performance of authorship in U.S. literary culture through an interdisciplinary framework. My work pulls from …