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Improvisation For Actor Training And Performance In 20th Century America (With Special Emphasis On The Spolin And Sills Tradition), Jeff David Brone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the methods and value of using improvisation to train actors in their craft and to help them perform scripted material more effectively. The period and place covered is primarily America in the 20th century. The dissertation also analyzes the use of improvisation from a theoretical, historical and practical perspective and discusses the work of various acting teachers and companies who use (or used) improv to create theatre and who have been influenced by the basic teachings of Spolin, Sills or, in some significant instances, Stanislavski.

After a brief introductory chapter on the use of improv in the …

Conflicting Attributions In The Continental Motet Repertory From Ca. 1500 To Ca. 1550, Young-Han Hur

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study attempts to bring together all the conflicting attributions in the motets attributed to composers who worked on the Continent during the first half of the sixteenth century. In all, it accounts for a total of 266 motets (listed in the Inventory, Appendix A) that involve conflicting attributions among 122 composers. Rather than placing the emphasis on the problem of determining the correct authorship, however, I have used the conflicting attributions as a springboard in order to shed light on a number of different aspects of sixteenth-century music.

Chapter I briefly surveys conflicting attributions in various genres from ca. …

The Changing Face Of Fortune In Six English Versions Of The Tragedy Of Antony And Cleopatra, Mary Aileen Mallery

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study traces the development and changes in the depiction of the goddess Fortune in a selected group of dramas written between 1592 and 1678: the six English versions of the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. The concepts surrounding the goddess Fortune and her place in any culture change with the idea of the individual's ability to shape his own destiny. In the seventeenth century in particular Fortune becomes increasingly connected to questions of personal identity and what Stephen Greenblatt has called "self-fashioning," so that by 1678 the subject of John Dryden's All for Love is not the quest for …

The American Academy Of The Fine Arts, New York, 1802-1842. (Volumes I And Ii), Carrie J. Rebora

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1802, Robert R. Livingston, the United States Minister to France, conceived of the American Academy as a salon that would inspire American artists and uplift the minds of others. His brother Edward, Mayor of New York who also believed that the city's leaders were responsible for the cultural enlightenment of artists and the general public, generated financial support from the city's ruling elite. Neither the Livingstons nor the members, however, planned for the Academy's operation. The institution languished until Mayor De Witt Clinton assumed the Academy presidency in 1813. With the help of his friend John Pintard, Clinton placed …

Class Culture And Generational Change: Immigrant Families In Two Connecticut Industrial Cities During The 1930s, Ivan Greenberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent social history stresses the autonomy of workers, especially the ways that immigrant families made "lives of their own." However, little attention is focused on the particular experiences of the second generation and the ways they forged their own group identity. This study, by locating the emergence of this generation, highlights an important demographic change within the working class.

Familiar developments of the 1930s take on new meaning. For example, the pivotal role of the second generation in the rise of the CIO helps to recast the early history of industrial unionism. The resurgence of the labor movement parallels the …

Influences Of The Post-World War Ii Era On The American Political Theater, 1968–1972, Lydia Alix Gerson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From 1968 to 1972, years which many historians have determined as encompassing the most focussed characteristics of the Sixties as a whole, the United States underwent enormous political upheaval which affected every one of its major institutions, including the theater. The political turmoil of the period was reflected in the theater, both mainstream and alternative. Literally hundreds of political theater pieces were produced and acted in the streets, shopping malls, church basements and stages of the United States. Yet little scholarly attention has been paid to the phenomenon. What little work is available concentrates on aesthetics; content is largely ignored. …