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Zeus Iv, Lauren Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

How do you survive a pandemic? When you’re trapped inside for weeks? When society’s rules are revealed as largely arbitrary?

You get a dog and bring it to the park.

This play is about a group of devoted dog owners in Boston who stumble on an unexpected community. It's a dog park ballet about the close care of strangers.

The Passion Of Love Or The Love Of Passion In A-Minor, Brendan Whitt

ETD Archive

A-Minor is an one-act play that examines the relationship between a Black artist and the predominantly white society and industry he must assimilate into in order to be considered a success. The main character Jacque Bonnet is used as a vessel to interpret the life and career of Joseph Bologne Chevalier de St. George. Despite Bonnet and Bologne being from different eras (Bologne mid to late 1700’s, Bonnet Mid 1800’s) I used Bonnet as a device to investigate the lesser explored life of Bologne. By creating a meta-gothic world for Jacque Bonnet to exist in, the crowd can watch his …

Contradictionary Lies: A Play Not About Kurt Cobain, Katie R. Wallace

ETD Archive

Contradictionary Lies: A Play Not About Kurt Cobain is a one-act play that follows failed rocker Jimbo as he deals with aging, his divorce, and disappointment. As he and his estranged wife Kelly divvy up their belongings and ultimately their memories, Jimbo is visited by his guardian angel, the ghost of dead rock star Kurt Cobain. Part dark comedy, part docudrama, this play shows how closely man emulates their heroes, and how in the void of depression, music serves an escape.

Jamil Khoury Interview, Dasha Lubitov

Asian American Art Oral History Project

This interview focusses on Silk Road Rising's video play Not Quite White: Arabs, Slavs, and the Contours of Contested Whiteness.

Bio: Jamil Khoury is the Founding Artistic Director of Silk Road Rising. Promoting playwrights of Silk Road backgrounds (Asian and Middle Eastern) is a passion that dovetails well with his experiences living in the Middle East and his eleven years as a cross-cultural trainer and international relocations consultant. A theatre producer, essayist, playwright, and film maker, Khoury’s work focuses on Middle Eastern themes and questions of Diaspora. He is particularly interested in the intersections of culture, national identity, and citizenship, …

Professional Wrestling: Local Performance History, Global Performance Praxis, Neal Anderson Hebert

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Professional Wrestling: Local Performance History, Global Performance Praxis, is a work of interdisciplinary scholarship (combining elements of theatre history, performance studies, and philosophy) that addresses an area of performance currently under-researched within the liberal arts and humanities: professional wrestling. My dissertation directs much-needed attention to the fact that professional wrestling is the only kind of live drama many Americans ever see (or even want to see). Although it is no doubt easy for theatre historians and performance theorists to dismiss this performance practice because of its location somewhere between “illegitimate sport” and “lowbrow popular entertainment,” I contend that United States …

A Regional British Dialect Guidebook For Actors, Kylie J. Rose

All Undergraduate Projects

This book endeavors to cover the major dialectical regions of the UK by focusing on one to two major dialects in each region. It additionally seeks to provide actors with the tools they need to convincingly portray characters from these areas: primarily in the form of audio recordings and accompanying transcriptions using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

Hangin' With Judas: A Narrative Analysis Of Stephen Adly Guirgis's 'The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot', Constance Falconer

Masters Theses

Stephen Adly Guirgis has created an era-melting play, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, which explores the timeless debate between divine mercy and free will. A systematic application of Walter R. Fisher's narrative analysis, through form identification and a functional analysis, determined how Guirgis accomplishes persuasion. This qualitative study focused on Guirgis's narrative, using Walter R. Fisher's narrative paradigm as a framework to answer the research question(s): (1) If Guirgis's ideology and created world in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot are foreign and imagined, how is narrative probability and narrative fidelity achieved?; and, (2) How does Guirgis persuade his …

Labeling Abigail, Annora E. Brennan

Honors Theses

Three Plays I Like and Why- first research paper that explored my own personal interests in plays and what made them entertaining to me The Demands of Playwriting- second research paper that outlined the requirements of a play and how I would incorporate these demands in my own writing process Final Performance Script- Labeling Abigail: my final script with performance stage notes included Director’s Concept- third paper that detailed my intentions for the performance and my rehearsal process Director’s Calendar- created to present my intent for each rehearsal and when my tech and dress would be for the show; this …

The Dramaturgy Of Dialect: An Examination Of The Sociolinguistic Problems Faced When Producing Contemporary British Plays In The United States., Talya A. Kingston

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

To fully realize plays in another culture, it is important for the actors and audience to understand the meaning of the words that are being spoken in the context of the culture of the play. This thesis examines the various dramaturgical problems that arise in producing British plays with dialect in the United States, and uses sociolinguistic analysis to explore the various solutions that have been applied to bridge the gap between script and audience. Alan Bennett’s The History Boys (2004) and Irvine Walsh’s Trainspotting, (adapted for the stage by Harry Gibson in 1995), are both deeply connected to the …

Making Victim: Establishing A Framework For Analyzing Victimization In 20th Century American Theatre, Victoria Hahl

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is my belief that theatre is the telling of stories, and that playwrighting is the creation of those stories. Regardless of the underlying motives (to make the audience think, to make them feel, to offend them or to draw them in,) the core of the theatre world is the storyline. Some critics write of the importance of audience effect and audience reception; after all, a performance can only be so named if at least one person is there to witness it. So much of audience effect is based the storyline itself - that structure of which is created by …

A Few Of My Favorite Scenes, Nancee Farrer

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

I presented my senior project on Wednesday, February 22, 2006, at 5:00p.m. and again at 7:30p.m. It was the final product of several months of research followed by several weeks of rehearsals.

This project was designed, directed, and produced by myself. I chose all of the scenes, managed all of the rehearsals, chose the actors, designed the sets and gathered any technical support that I needed for the run of the recital.

My original task with this portion of the research began as an analytical paper on the background of each of the scenes that I performed for my senior …

“Charley's Aunt” Revisited, Willie Camina

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This is a Creative Study involving the directing of Charley's Aunt . This thesis comprises three elements: Preplanning, the Production Record and an Evaluation. The Preplanning Section will communicate the meaning of the play through an external and internal analysis. The Production Record contains the materials used in the execution of this production. The third chapter is an evaluation of the project. There is an essay reporting the audience's reaction and the quantitative results of an exit survey given to audience members to quantify how effectively "the story" was communicated.

John Millington Synge And The Irish Women's Suffrage Movement, Nicholas A. Ewen

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

John Millington Synge is considered to be among the greatest playwrights of the English language. During his lifetime, however, his plays caused controversy and even riots. Of particular interest is the fact that much of the controversy surrounded Synge's portrayal of Irish women. Because of the radical Irish nationalism that developed in the early 20 th century, much of Synge's work has been interpreted in light of this movement. This thesis, however, explores the theory that Synge was more closely connected with an another movement that was taking place in the early 1900's: women's suffrage. His sympathies for the enfranchisement …

Dancing At Lughnasa, Oct. 31- Nov. 2, 2002, Theatre Arts Discipline

Theatre Programs

University of Minnesota, Morris production of Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel and directed by Ray Schultz.

Synopsis: Set in the fictional Irish village of Ballybeg, Ireland, Dancing at Lughnasa is a memory play, told from the perspective of an adult Michael. He recalls one summer he spent at his aunts' home when he was seven years old. The five Mundy sisters, all unmarried, live in a big cottage just outside of the small village. Kate, the eldest, is a schoolteacher; Agnes and Rose knit gloves and help keep house with Maggie and Christine (Michael's mother), who have no income …

Broadway And The Paycock: The Broadway Musical Adaptation Of Sean O'Casey's Juno And The Paycock, Julia M. Furay

Publications and Research

The 1959 Broadway musical Juno, based on Sean O'Casey's 1924 classic Juno and the Paycock, is notable despite its ultimate artistic and financial failure. Musical adaptors Joseph Stein and Marc Blitzstein were inspired by the inherent musicality of O'Casey's play. However, O'Casey's linguistic complexity, profound characterization and political commentary were impossible to translate onto the Broadway stage. Instead, Stein, Blitzstein and de Mille emphasized ritualism and psychology within the story of the Boyle family, and were careful to conform O'Casey's world to that of 1950s Broadway. In doing so, however, the adaptation became different thematically from its predecessor. …

Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird As Adapted By Christopher Sergel: A Thesis In Directing, Andrew Vastine Stabler

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis describes the directorial process of a production of Christopher Sergels's adaptation of Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. It follows the process of preproduction through rehearsals. It makes use of the influences of the prior history and the recent educational experience of the director. Throughout it accesses the choices made and concludes with conclusions on the final product.

Occasional Papers: On Creativity In The Arts, Janice Rowan Poley

Hollybush Series

Volume 3 of The Hollybush Series contains thirteen essays on creativity, and three photographs of visual artwork, by Rowan College of New Jersey faculty.

The editor is Janice Rowan Poley and the authors of the works are Joseph Robinette, Antoinette Libro, Rodney Gates, William Morris, Kenneth Kaleta, William Travis, E. Michael Desilets, Donald Gephardt, Joseph Tishler, Bertram Greenspan, Daniel Chard, Richard Ambacher, Harold Oliver, N. Jeane Hartman, Richard Grupenhoff, and Joseph Bierman.