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Queer Temporality And Aesthetics In Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge: A Dramaturgical Exploration Of The Play At Umass Amherst, Gaven D. Trinidad

Masters Theses

This master’s thesis documents the dramaturgical exploration of the spring 2018 University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Theater’s production of gender non-conforming performance artist Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge. The thesis is separated into two parts. The first half focuses on my dramaturgical analysis of Mac’s play and its exploration of queer temporality and queer embodiment, asserting the importance of queer aesthetics in American drama and its vital role in shaping the future of LGBTQIA+ politics in the United States. The second half includes reflections on rehearsal processes and performances, giving readers and fellow artists examples of the potential …

Motion As Music: Hypermetrical Schemas In Eighteenth-Century Contredanses, Alison N. Stevens

Masters Theses

An important part of the recent growth in scholarship on meter focuses on reconstructing 18th-century listening practices. Danuta Mirka (2009) studies contemporary accounts of meter in theory treatises to build a model of 18th-century metric listening, while Stefan Love (2016) takes a corpus studies approach, arguing that surveying repertoire provides a more accurate view of meter than 18th-century theorists. But despite the known debt that much 18th-century art music owes to dance and dance music, Mirka and Love only briefly mention dance. In touching so lightly on dance, these and other authors overlook the more fundamental connection between meter and …

The Lily's Revenge: Staging Love And Community In The Style Of The Ridiculous, Jennifer Onopa

Masters Theses

This written portion of my thesis documents my process as a director in staging Taylor Mac’s play The Lily’s Revenge in collaboration with a creative team of designers, dramaturgs, and performers.

I share with the reader my processes toward fostering cohesion and collaboration among a team while working on a complex play that departs from many theatrical conventions. I discuss significant learnings from several areas of dramaturgical and performance research that dovetail within the play: queer performance practice, Theater of the Ridiculous, and Noh theater, and how I used this research to support the communication with my design collaborators to …

Asian American Heritage Seeking: Personal Narrative Performances Of Ancestral Return, Porntip Israsena Twishime

Masters Theses

Asian American belongings, migration patterns, and transnational identities are largely constructed in the United States as static, unidirectional, and invisible. Asian Americans complicate these constructions through the practice of ancestral return. In this thesis, “ancestral return” is constituted through one’s participation in a university study abroad program to a specific place to where one traces her heritage. I use “return” not necessarily to account for a form of reverse migration; rather “return” here names the multiple, sometimes contradictory kinds of return, including “return” to a place that one has not yet been. This project examines how Asian American identities are …

How The Light Gets In: A Reflection On The Costume Design Process For Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge, Christina Beam

Masters Theses

A reflection on the costume design process for the theatrical production of Taylor Mac’s The Lily's Revenge: A Flowergory Manifold, with book and lyrics by Taylor Mac and music by Rachelle Garniez. The production was directed by Jen Onopa. Performed at the Fine Arts Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, April 20th to April 29th, 2018.

The Lily’s Revenge is a piece of queer durational theater that tells the story of a Lily who falls in love with a bride and goes on a journey to become a man, so she can marry her. Along the way she faces challenges …

Infants Of The Spring: Disrupting The Narrative, Ifa Bayeza

Masters Theses

This written portion of my thesis will document and codify how I as dramaturg, writer and director adapted and staged the classic Harlem Renaissance novel Infants of the Spring by Wallace Thurman. I walk the reader through how seeing as a director influenced my creative choices through key aspects of production: script development, design, and building the ensemble. The thesis will conclude with a post-production reflection and summary.

Transgressive Acts: Adapting Applied Theatre Techniques For A Transgender Community, Theo F. Lefevre

Masters Theses

This MFA Thesis traces my work as a joker (a la Theatre of the Oppressed) and facilitator through a three-year-long project with a trans applied theatre troupe. The troupe explored several techniques, including Image Theatre, Playback Theatre, storytelling exercises, and somatic movement. In three semester-long workshops, the troupe focused work around three sets of techniques. In the first workshop, the troupe explored the community-based interview process of Undesirable Elements, as designed by Ping Chong in collaboration with Talvin Wilks and Sara Zatz. These techniques were interrogated using queer and trans temporalities. In the second unit, the troupe practiced Augusto …

On The Contrary: Subverting The Canon With Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, Christina Pellegrini

Masters Theses

This written portion of my thesis is aimed at documenting and synthesizing how I, as director, staged an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler through ongoing collaboration with a creative team comprised of dramaturges, designers, and actors.

I walk the reader through my exploration of Ibsen’s life and work through travel to the International Ibsen Festival in Oslo, Norway, and describe how I endeavored to lead the production’s creative team by applying feminist theories in directing and embracing the possibility of failure as a means of discovery. I discuss the casting process and establishment of an all-women ensemble, explore the …

Women On Trial: Translating Femininity Through Journalism, William B. Ollayos

Masters Theses

The focus of this thesis is on cultural translation as a means of understanding the relationship between sociocultural identity with respect to bourgeois white female sexuality and interpretations by news journalists, writers and filmmakers. The thesis brings translation scholar Lawrence Venuti’s description of foreign and domestic texts (2008) into conversation with Catherine Cole’s analysis of journalists as active interpreters of newsworthy events (2010) to support my view of the media as a translator of sociocultural identity. The thesis outlines the construction of bourgeois white femininity within the U.S. imaginary and a more detailed account of its direct impact upon journalistic …

Designing Hedda: Questioning The Canonical Play Hedda Gabler, As A Feminist Text Through Abstraction, Bethany Eddy

Masters Theses

A thorough reflection on the process of costume design for the theatrical production of Hedda. An adaptation of Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen, translated by Eva Le Gallienne, edited by Finn Lefevre and Directed by Christina Pellegrini. Performed at The Rand Theater, University of Massachusetts Amherst, February 24th to March 4th, 2017.

Ibsen is considered “The Father of Modern Drama”, with Hedda Gabler as one of his most widely performed plays. Hedda Gabler in the 1890’s was a disruptive reflection of society, and is considered by many to be a feminist work. I disagree with this assessment of …

Laughing At Ourselves: Music And Identity In Comedic Performance, Peter Trigg

Masters Theses

Standup comedy actively performs and engages with constructions of self and social identity, especially in terms of ethnic difference and the negotiation of American race relations. Musical comedy, wherein standup comedians perform song onstage, represents one facet of this expression that configures musical texts and expectations in the service of cultural observation and critique. Bo Burnham and Reggie Watts characterize two disparate approaches to the practice based on their aesthetic tastes, existential anxieties, and racial experiences. The two present their respective identities onstage in relation to a changing American political landscape of the early 21st century that has seen widespread …

Visual Rhetoric And Semiotics In Scenic Design: A Pedagogical Analysis, Chris Guzzardo

Masters Theses

Scenic designers are professionals in theatre who design sets for the stage that communicate aspects of a performance, such as time of day, location, and era. Sets are supposed to lay a foundation to performances as they communicate information to audiences through visual design. Since visual rhetoric and semiotics play a big part in the successful completion of transmitting messages, knowledge of both concepts should be taught to scenic designers. This thesis provides a content analysis of ten popular books used by scenic designers and their respective education programs. The analysis provides a structured search for visual rhetoric and semiotic …

A Light On The Subject: Refugee By Milan Dragicevich, Colin Marsh

Masters Theses

The role of the American theatrical lighting designer is to be a visual collaborator on the design team. While other designers can produce elements that the rest of the team can hold or listen to such as a model of the set by the set designer or a sound effect from the sound designer, the lighting designer must rely on his or her ability to communicate his or her ideas. Visual lighting elements are complex ideas and must be clearly stated and planned for if the production is to be cohesive. This thesis presents the goals to communicate verbally, collaborate, …

Carmen(Es) Y Lola. El Continuo Generacional De La Educación De La Mujer Desde La Novela Y El Monólogo Teatral De Cinco Horas Con Mario Hasta La Película Función De Noche, Elisabet Pallàs

Masters Theses

Taking as a point of reference the voice and figure of Carmen Sotillo, the present study analyzes Miguel Delibes’ Cinco horas con Mario (1966), the theatrical adaptation with the same name directed by Josefina Molina, and the film Función de noche (1981), directed also by Molina. The study addresses, on the one hand, the analysis of the mentioned works, establishing a cause-consequence relationship between Carmen’s speech and the educational paradigms of the Francoist regime in regard to women. On the other hand, the study is interested, from a general perspective, in the ideological state apparatuses and the mechanisms destined to …

Songs Of Ishq, Freedom And Rebellion: Selected Kafis Of Bulleh Shah In Translation, Zainab Sattar

Masters Theses

Abdullah Shah (1680-1757) was the birth name of the boy who would later become one of the most eminent Sufi poets of South Asia, and the master of Sufi lyrics in Punjabi—Bulleh Shah. Living during times of strife and major conflict between the Sikhs and the crumbling Mughal Empire, Bulleh Shah wrote poetry with an underlying humanist and tolerant philosophy that challenged the turmoil of his times. Blind to the bounds of religion and caste in an increasingly divided India, Bullah’s spiritual philosophy and his message of equality found voice in his kafis—a genre of poetry indigenous to the …

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: 60 Years Of American Dialogue On Sex, Gender, And The Nuclear Family, Amy Brooks

Masters Theses

This thesis is a two-part work. Its components, a written paper and a one-night symposium/film screening event entitled Tennessee Williams: Gender Play in 2015 and Beyond, have been closely coordinated with my dramaturgical research for the February 2015 University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Theater production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The written inquiry is structured around a chronological, selected American production history of Cat; this history, rendered in a series of three case studies, will (1) synthesize preexisting analyses of Cat’s dramaturgical profile, its impact on American theater, and its position in Williams’s oeuvre; …

The Merchant Of Venice At Umass: An Exploration In Collaboration And Representation, Elizabeth L. Pangburn

Masters Theses

Through an analysis of the details of The Merchant of Venice, I will show that a costume design which only satisfies the basic role of articulating the relationships, status, time and place, etc of the play but has no point of view regarding that text’s inherent assumptions will always support, rather than subvert, any problematic issues present therein. Secondly, I will show that without tandem movement from the creative team, no rehabilitation or subversion is possible.

The Collaborative Process In Directing A Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Jared L. Culverhouse

Masters Theses

With this thesis I will explore the many challenges that confront a leader on a creative project, the difficulties that prevent open communication, and the discoveries that I will use to serve myself on future projects. Through diligent notes during the multiple months that Cat on a Hot Tin Roof took to produce, I was able to re-create what my experience was and how it benefitted me moving forward.

This thesis will document the entire process from play selection, through the final product including the response from the audience. Through this document I will try and highlight, how my own …

An Evaluation Of The Lighting Design Process And Composition For "A New Brain" By William Finn, James Horban

Masters Theses

The following pages will explore and evaluate the process and composition of my lighting design for the musical A New Brain produced by the UMass Amherst Theater Department in November 2014. This analysis will begin with an overall assessment of my lighting-design work and working methods throughout my career up to this production in order to identify the areas of personal growth that were focal points for this production. A reflection upon the design, collaborative, and technical process, and how the lessons learned from these processes apply to my career goal as an educator of theatrical design, will round out …

A Step Of Two Or The Pas De Deux, Molly A. Hoisington

Masters Theses

The second part of a two-part MFA Thesis presentation, this paper distills the content from the preceding exhibition A Step of Two or The Pas de Deux: an installation of paintings, drawings and projected video. It touches on various themes that surround [well researched] ideas about perception, dissociation, the gaze, and relationships. Most of all, this paper and the body of work it describes is about the visual representation of a sensual understanding of the world.

A Lighting Design Concept For The Lighting For William Shakespeare's: The Merchant Of Venice, Michael Blagys

Masters Theses

I designed the lighting for William Shakespeare's complex piece, The Merchant of Venice, which was produced by the UMass Amherst Theater Department. In this thesis paper, I will discuss the creative process from start to finish, including relevant lighting paperwork and production photographs.

Encountering "Agaat": Toward A Dramaturgical Method Of Adaptation, Paul Adolphsen

Masters Theses

This M.F.A. thesis in dramaturgy presents the first-ever stage adaptation of South African writer Marlene van Niekerk’s 2004 novel Agaat. Van Niekerk is an internationally acclaimed novelist, short story writer, poet, and dramatist particularly known for her lengthy novelistic excavations of Afriakner identity, in which sexuality, race, and gender collide in compelling but fraught ways. Covering nearly fifty-years of South African history—from the establishment of apartheid in 1948 through the nation’s transition to democracy in 1994—Agaat investigates everyday cycles of abuse and intimacy through the story of white farmer Milla de Wet and her coloured adopted daughter-cum-maid, Agaat Lourier. …

From God Terms To Gaga: The Bad Romance Between Motherhood And Female Suffragists In American Film, Mary Ellis Glymph

Masters Theses

Ninety-five years ago, the Nineteenth Amendment was passed by Congress, and women across America were given the right to vote. Nearly a century later, the long-gone figure of the female suffragist continues to subtly permeate American film, a reoccurrence that is not easily justified. Why would viewers in the English-speaking world continue an interest in a historically-contextualized feminist that seems, at first, to have little to do with what a “modern-day feminist” portrays?

Although the woman that history calls the suffragette hasn’t existed in America since 1920, representations of her in film and visual media have reminded viewers that this …

Strike A Note Of Wonder: A Director's Adventures In Peter Pan, Brianna A. Sloane

Masters Theses

This written portion of my thesis documents how I, as Director, set about to bring J.M. Barrie’s classic, Peter Pan to the contemporary stage. I take the reader through my in-depth research into Barrie’s many adaptations of his story, seeking an understanding of the evolution of Peter Pan and noting major elements that were retained across time and those that were changed, in search of the “true” story of Peter Pan. I explore how my discoveries informed design choices, were folded into rehearsals, and ultimately arrived on stage.

In seeking the backbone of a classic, the vast interpretive history of …

Queering Identity In The African Diaspora: The Performance Dramas Of Sharon Bridgforth And Trey Anthony, Adewunmi R. Oke

Masters Theses

Noticeably, there is little to no cross-cultural analysis of Black queer women artists of the African diaspora in Diaspora, Literary and Theatre and Performance studies. These disciplines tend to focus on geographic locations with an emphasis on the United States, the Caribbean islands and Europe in relation to the African continent. In addition, the work of Black men artists holds precedence in discussions of blackness, diaspora, and performance. Overwhelmingly, the contributions of Black women artists in the diaspora pales in comparison to their male counterparts, especially in number. More drastically, the voices of Black queer women artists actually published are …

Costume Design For My Fair Lady By Alan Jay Lerner And Leonard Loewe, Emily I. Taradash

Masters Theses

This paper discusses a theoretical costume design for the Musical "My Fair Lady" by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. The costume designer chose to set the production in 1912, stylizing choices clothing based on period silhouettes and social research. The paper includes character analysis, research, and a discussion of the design process.

We Are French. Et Anglais Nous Restons., Alison Jane Bowie

Masters Theses

French Canadian playwright Joseph Armand Leclaire (1888-1931) was very well known and respected in his time. Although he wrote over thirty plays, lyrics to several songs and an abundance of political poems, most of his work has been lost and Leclaire himself seems to have been forgotten. Several of his plays were produced at the time they were written, including his 1916 play La petite maîtresse de l'école (later published in 1929 as Le petit maître d'école), but none have been presented postumously nor have any been translated. This M. F. A. thesis presents the first ever translation and …

Master Of The Universe: The Theatrical Director As Artist And Communicator, Audrey Thomas

Masters Theses

This qualitative study was undertaken to examine the processes by which theatrical directors determine the theme for a production and communicate their unifying artistic visions to the agents who, in turn, relay it to the audience. The research revealed that the director's message is formed through comprehensive study of the text, the artifact around which the system is formed, as well as information which provides context for the work of the playwright; consideration of the theatrical organization's missional objectives (the environment in which the system exists); and concerns of artistic leadership. Communication of the concept to stakeholders, and ultimately to …

Litterature Quebecoise Et Problematique Identitaire: Poetique De L'Exil, Veronique Lamothe Bell

Masters Theses

This thesis is an analysis of problematic identity in French Canadian literature ("Quebecois literature"). I propose to study this issue through two works, the first written by a French-Canadian writer, Jacques Poulin, and the second, created by an Arab author who immigrated to Quebec, Wajdi Mouawad. My investigation demonstrates how the unique context of Quebec's writing explores identity while highlighting a status that is reminiscent of exile. The metaphor of identity, adjoined to the literature from Quebec, as represented by Poulin’s "Volkswagen Blues" (1984) manifests itself in the works of Mouawad, particularly in the play "Incendies" (2003) and the novel …

Women As Victims In Tennessee Williams' First Three Major Plays, Ruth Foley

Masters Theses

Although Tennessee Williams does not openly champion the rights of women in his plays, he presents strong cases against their social alienation in a harsh and brutal world governed by men. Williams' emotional leanings, sensitivity, and intuition enable him to see life through women's eyes. In The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Summer and Smoke, Williams astutely sounds the battle cry for women to fight against male oppression. He shows how Amanda Wingfield, Laura Wingfield, Blanche Dubois, Stella Kowalski, and Alma Winemiller are held hostage to the rules governing patriarchal society and become unhappy marginalized victims. The self-contained …