Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Manipulated Manipulation: The Political Origins And Implications Of Shakespeare's Henry V, Kate Morton

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Shakespeare’s Henry V has long been one of the most ambiguous adaptations of the story of England’s most celebrated historical figure: King Henry V. This adaptation raises the question of why Shakespeare presents Henry V in a way that not only differs significantly from the other accounts of Henry V’s life, but is also entirely ambiguous as to whether this presentation of Henry V’s character is optimistic or pessimistic in nature. In my thesis, I will argue that the ambiguities present in Henry V are actually a result of Shakespeare's own stress over the political succession looming over England at …

Theatre For The Community: A Practical Application, Megan Larissa Ciszek

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Theatre for the Community: A Practical Application

This paper serves to synthesize and reflect upon my Creative Honors Capstone project entitled “Theatre for the Community: A Practical Application.” The initial steps of the project included research into community based theatre and community outreach. This research was then used to inspire the process necessary for a fully realized production of Annie Baker’s Body Awareness, structured with community collaboration in mind. In this way, Body Awareness’ process acted as my first attempt at the practical application of my research. This paper both acts as the exploration of the concept of creating and …

When Grade Schools Stage Musicals, It’S Broadway Or Bust ..., Erin Degregorio

Capstones

St. Ephrem School, located in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, just introduced its drama program in Fall 2016. After much success with last year’s first-ever production of Disney’s “Aladdin JR.," the St. Ephrem students put on “Elf the Musical JR.” in time for the winter holiday season in December 2017. But it’s not your mediocre school drama club, putting on simple pageants. It’s more like Broadway Lite – and it’s part of a cross-country wave of professionalization hitting grade-school plays.

Project can be found at http://erindegregorio.com/grade-school-productions.html

Starting Over On Stage, Keydra Manns

Capstones

RTA is a non profit organization based out of New York that uses the arts as a way to rehabilitate inmates. Research shows that this type of rehabilitation strongly impacts an inmates behavior, self esteem and possibly reduces their likelihood to return to prison. This is one man’s story on how practicing theater during his prison sentence changed his life.

https://medium.com/@keydra.manns/starting-over-on-stage-3614e7bc0dd9

Carol And The Ugly Sisters: A Play In Three Acts, Judith Jones

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Carol and the Ugly Sisters, reflects the trajectory of two teenage African American girls growing up in 1960s Harlem. They met when Anita was 16, and Carol was 17. Anita, the protagonist, is from a lower middle-class family, and goes on to graduate Columbia University. Carol, her friend, dropped out of middle school, and is an unwed mother of three children, when she meets Anita. She remains mentally closed in a lower socio-economic mindset for the remainder of her life, and dies of the same alcoholism that killed her parents.

A Production Process For Developing A Web Series, Snaptv, Toebey T. Caldwell

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

My project for this Interdisciplinary Master’s Program, studying Film Theories and Media Production methods, details “A Production Process for Creating a Web Series, called SNAPtv”. This media production was designed to demonstrate my experience and knowledge I gained through this degree, by specific areas of developing and producing media, including script writing, filming and editing media content, to construct an original web series from Pre-Production to Post-Production.

SNAPtv is a hybrid, sketch comedy, talk show produced as an online web series that mimics the characteristics of a semi-scripted Reality-Television series and combines the elements of a talk show …

Booming Laughter: The New Era Of Experimental Comedy Shows, Oscar F. Gonzalez

Capstones

This project looks at the rise of experimental comedy shows in New York City. The comedy industry is in a second boom that caused an increase in variety shows that test performers 'writing and performance skills. I interview the producers of the shows, the comedians that perform in them to understand how they're challenged and the audience members who watched the show. I talk with historians and comedy experts on the history of the comedy industry and the neighborhood in New York City where it originated in.

https://oscarfgonzalez.com/2018/12/21/booming-laughter-the-new-era-of-experimental-comedy-shows/

Thinking Before You Act: A Constructive Logic Approach To Crafting Performance-For- Development Narrative, Angela Duggins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this thesis was to test the feasibility of constructing performance-for-development narrative using a constructive logic approach. I created an equation which expressed the sum of non-human-elements as the sum of a narrative with each element serving as a variable. I used a review of persuasion literature to provide insight into the selection and manipulation of each variable. I provided my family as a hypothetical example and used my knowledge of their preferences and communication styles in conjunction with the literature and the equation to craft a narrative which might increase pro-school attitudes in other families like my …

Beyond The Mortal Coil: The Culture Of Ghost Belief And Storytelling In The Modern-Day Theatre, A.P. Anderson

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Because We Have To: Flamenco As Survival Strategy Against Detrimental Effects Of Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder, Dolores Garcia

Theatre & Dance ETDs

Can daily practice in flamenco training help mediate the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on the brain and body? This thesis focuses on the inner-workings of the brain and how it processes stress and trauma. This is discussed through the idea of the Fear Circuit, which is a habitual response to reminders of the original trauma; the review of a current therapy for PTSD patients-Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR); the theory that throwing (skill in speed and precision –based throwing activities), music, and dance can all work to increase strength in areas of the brain that atrophy …

Aphra Behn On The Contemporary Stage: Behn's Feminist Legacy And Woman-Directed Revivals Of The Rover, Nicole Elizabeth Stodard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study theorizes the origins and history of the professional female playwright and director from the Restoration period to the present day through the stage history of Behn's most popular play, The Rover. Part one is comprised of two chapters: the first in this section argues the importance of appreciating Behn's proto-directorial function in the Restoration theatre and her significance to the history of feminism and women in professional theatre; the second chapter in this section examines the implications of casting practices and venue changes to eighteenth-century revivals of Behn's canon with a particular eye towards what a contemporary director …

Precarious Democracy: "It Can't Happen Here" As The Federal Theatre's Site Of Mass Resistance, Macy Donyce Jones

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The scholarly consensus of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) is that it was a massive undertaking set to employ theatre professionals during the Great Depression. That undertaking resulted in vibrant, relevant theatre that helped to build a theatre audience across the nation. Outside of the overview-style scholarship, specialized studies have delved into the FTP as a community-building enterprise, a site of racial/ethnic study, and an essential new play creator.

My scholarship fills a hole that previous FTP scholarship has left open. The FTP was a political machine engaged in producing pro-American propaganda. That aspect of production has been largely left …

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 …

Vanya And Sonia And Masha And Spike Senior Project By Lauren Frautschi, Lauren Frautschi

Student Research Submissions

This is a description of my acting process throughout my senior project production. I played Masha in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, and documented my discoveries and education along the way.

Effects Of Musical Theater Education On The Self-Esteem Of Middle School Students, Kimberly Kokx

CUP Ed.D. Dissertations

Musical theater combines two educational components; music and theater. These arts classes have demonstrated positive influences on student academic achievement and student self-esteem. Musical theater, however, has not been fully examined as a pathway to enhance student self-esteem. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of musical theater education on middle school student self-esteem. Using a qualitative case study, 11 students from a private Christian school in suburban Minnesota participated in a musical theater production to measure the effects of musical theater education on their self-esteem. Likert surveys, interviews, observations, records, and artifacts were collected to determine …

Choteo Cubano: Humor As A Critical Tool In Twentieth-Century Cuban Theater, Rebecca L. Salois

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project analyzes the incorporation of choteo in specific Cuban theater texts written during three distinct periods in twentieth-century Cuban history, all of which coincide with specific moments of social, political, and/or economic unrest or transition. Choteo in the theater has served as a tool to demonstrate discontent and frustration with authority figures in various contexts. As that need has altered over time, so too has the approach that playwrights have taken to speak out about these issues. I suggest that by responding to changing circumstances with choteo, confronting a difficult situation is more palatable to audiences or readers than …

One Endless Dance: Tanaka Min's Experimental Practice, John (Zack) Fuller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work is the first in-depth study of the work of avant-garde Japanese dancer/choreographer Tanaka Min, and focuses on his extensive innovations in the fields of improvised dance, training, and choreographic method. These interrelated aspects of his experimental practice are intimately concerned with the relation between space and the body, employ collaborative methods, and are strongly influenced by the life and work of Hijikata Tatsumi (widely to considered to be the founder of the butô movement). They are also deeply informed by his choice to live his daily life as an organic vegetable farmer, a choice that I argue constitutes …

Spectacular Politics And Everyday Performance: Tracing Music From Ceauşescu’S Romania To Multicultural America, Benjamin Dumbauld

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drawing from fieldwork conducted throughout the United States and Canada, this dissertation examines the continued performance of socialist-era music within the Romanian-American community. It addresses why a community largely made up of people who sought to leave the country during the authoritarian regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu continue to perform music tied to that period by tracing the historical performance and reception of multiple genres, ranging from traditional peasant music to folk rock. The dissertation begins by examining the nationalization of Romania’s music industry under the early socialist regime (1944-1965), and locates the difficulties Communist Party members confronted in delineating a …

Appearing Live: Spectatorship, Affect, And Liveness In Contemporary British Performance, Meghan O'Hara

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The liveness of theatre is a much-debated topic in playwriting, arts policy, and performance studies. Discussions of liveness, by scholars such as Peggy Phelan, Richard Schechner, and Herbert Blau, have historically suggested that performance is an ephemeral medium, defining “liveness” as a descriptor of theatre’s transient existence, a phenomenon which disappears at the same moment it is performed. More recently, scholars such as Philip Auslander, Rebecca Schneider, and Amelia Jones have reconsidered this historical debate, suggesting that performance does not simply occur once and then disappear, but that its temporality must include repetition, reperformance, and memory. However, these approaches continue …

Mediating Machines: Human Mechanisms And The Modern Stage, Kerri Ann Considine

Doctoral Dissertations

Vast changes in technology during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries fundamentally altered the way living bodies related to the machines they increasingly encountered in everyday life. One consequence of this shift was a preoccupation with questions about bodily agency and creative authority that would continue into the modern era. While artists of all kinds engaged with these issues, the theatre proved uniquely suited to addressing the relationship between living bodies and their mechanical environments by not only cultivating a theoretical understanding of the relationship between live bodies and mechanism, but also necessitating the practical enactment of this relationship.

Modern theatre …

Persistence Of Memory: Revision, Nostalgia, And Resistance In Contemporary American Drama, Sinan Gul

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the usages of memory in contemporary American drama. Analyzing selected mainstream and alternative dramatic texts, The Persistence of Memory is a study of personal and communal reflections of the past within contemporary plays. The introduction provides examples from modern plays, major terms, and vital concepts for memory studies and locates their merits in dramatic texts. The first chapter makes a critique of family plays, which uses historical elements to indicate a revisionist yearning for the past as well as the American Dream. Similarly, the second chapter contains business plays, which implement a heavy feeling of nostalgia …

Crossover Trumpet Performance: Jazz Style And Technique For Classical Trumpeters, Kevin Christopher Tague

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This document examines crossover trumpet playing: the ability to comfortably transition from classical to jazz style. Problems trumpeters face when shifting between classical and jazz styles and the importance of always performing idiomatically are discussed. There is no consensus regarding the best way to develop crossover ability, but experts agree that the proper use of articulation is vital for stylistically authentic performances. A review of the literature reveals fundamental differences in how articulation is taught in classical and jazz pedagogies. Additionally, jazz and classical musicians approach printed music differently. By detailing key elements of jazz articulation and interpretation the document …

Opal Clark On Directing Stop Kiss An Exploration Of The Directorial Process, Opal Clark

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this thesis and thesis project was to execute a successful run of the play, Stop Kiss by Diana Son while achieving the playwright’s intended message. Opal Clark directed this production of Stop Kiss at East Tennessee State University under special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc. It was performed to sold out audiences in ETSU Theatre and Dance Studio 205 October 2-7, 2017. The play explores experiences and hostility toward same sex couples, their relationships with one another and how one individual discovers sexuality. The discovery and actualization of the characters’ struggles were communicated in the play …

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 …

The Drama Of Race: Contemporary Afro-German Theater, Jamele Watkins

Doctoral Dissertations

The first investigation of Afro-German theater my dissertation, “The Drama of Race,” argues that Afro-German theater empowers as Black actors take ownership of a German stage, a white German space. My dissertation highlights four crucial Afro-German plays: real life: Germany (2008), Heimat, bittersüße Heimat [Home, bittersweet Home] (2010), Also by Mail (2013), and Mais in Deutschland und anderen Galaxien [Corn in Germany and Other Galaxies] (2015). In Chapter I, I discuss the cultural conditions in which Afro-German theater emerged—after an established literary corpus by Afro-German authors. Chapter II introduces the first Afro-German play and its improvisational methods as empowering for …

Performing Narrative Medicine: Understanding Familial Chronic Illness Through Performance, Alyse Keller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study presents the process of creating a performance ethnography of my family’s narratives about familial chronic illness and disability. I label this process performing narrative medicine. By documenting and granularly analyzing the process of my performance ethnography, the following chapters provide a step-by-step discussion of how families communicate about chronic illness/disability through storytelling and humor, and how/what performance does as a method, metaphor and object of study to further our current communicative practices and understandings of chronic illness and disability in families. I argue that performing narrative medicine is a heuristic for families living with chronic illness and …

Images Of Women In Refugee Drama: Eve Ensler’S Necessary Targets And Ellen Mclaughlin’S The Trojan Women, Kaitlyn Tossie

Theses and Dissertations

In the past ten years, a critique of the conceptualization of refugees in Western mass media has emerged as a developing discourse in response to post-20th century genocides. Photographs in mass media of wailing refugees began to appear in the early 1990s when reports of the Bosnian genocide appeared in the United States. These images, and the stereotypes that surround them, contribute to the universal depiction of refugees as weak. Though the way in which theatre comments on this conceptualization of refugees has largely been ignored, theatre has a unique ability to comment on, reflect, and create a culture that …

Over The Ropes: Boundary Play In Professional Wrestling, Ethan Ingram

Theses and Dissertations

Within the anthropology of performance, scholars have traditionally considered theater, spectacle, sport, and ritual performances in terms of the discrete boundaries of space and time that separate these events from daily life and in terms of the disparate roles that demarcate performers from audience members. Professional wrestling, a popular performance genre in the American Midwest, exhibits features that challenge these boundaries through the collaborative construction of the event by performers and audience members. Audience interaction is an essential part of wrestling performances, characterized by routine and contextually understood behaviors that performers can process as evaluative feedback. Moreover, during wrestling matches, …