Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Award-Wining Playwright Bess Welden Amplifies Marginalized Voices, Laura Meader

Colby Magazine

As playwright Bess Welden followed stories filed by her sister-in-law, a photojournalist covering the 2015 migrant crisis in Greece, she was captivated by a photo of an unaccompanied minor. She wondered how anyone could keep an emotional distance from a child like this.

Welcome To Broadway: The Sound Inside Costar Will Hochman ’14 Talks About Chasing Your Dream—And Ending Up On Stage With Mary-Louise Parker, Abukar Adan

Colby Magazine

Will Hochman ’14 made his Broadway debut last month in the New York Times critic’s pick The Sound Inside with Tony Award-winning co-star Mary-Louise Parker. Hochman first appeared in the two-person play, about the relationship between a Yale creative writing professor and her student, last year at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Freelance journalist Abukar Adan ’17 sat down with Hochman in his dressing room at Studio 54 to discuss his debut, his time at Colby, and his journey to the big stage.

This Caught Our Attention, Colby College

Colby Magazine

No abstract provided.

Devising From A Distance: A Study Of The Difference In Process, Composition, And Audience Response Between In-Person And Digitally-Mediated Choreographic Collaborations, Kathryn Butler

Honors Theses

This paper argues that dance devising shares a value system with that of the digital age, justifying the use of a virtual choreographic site to facilitate geographically distributed collaborations. The presence of technology in our social lives, working environments, and creative practices is steadily increasing. Before we passively let technology digitize and make virtual the choreographic process, or before we expedite this seemingly inevitable trajectory, we need to know what the consequences and opportunities might be. Through use of a controlled empirical investigation, this study analyzed the process experience, composition, and post-performance audience response between in-person and remote choreographic collaborations. …

Art Forms: Actor Brendan Leonard Explores The Shared Space Of Theater And Dance

Colby Magazine

Actor Brendan Leonard Explores the Shared Space of Theater and Dance.

Devising Performance & Queer Futurity, Brendan F. Leonard

Honors Theses

This project argues that devising performance is an inherently queer and utopian form. In response to recent political movements, such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, which seek to stage dissatisfaction with the systems of late capitalism, I turn to devising performance as a site. Informed by the queer and performance theories of Jose Esteban Munoz, Lee Edelman, and Jill Dolan, I argue that devised theater allows us to process disillusionment, rehearse collectivity, and stage futurity. In conversation with Munoz, I define futurity as an imaginative site that considers what will follow what some scholars suggest will be …

Where's Your Phone?: If You're Lost Without It, You May Have Nomophobia, Jacob Mccarthy

Colby Magazine

Do you feel anxious when your phone battery is low? Check your messages more often than you'd like? You might be a nomophobe.

The Servant Of Two Masters: Lighting Design, Tyler Harley

CLAS: Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

I served as the Lighting Designer for the Department of Theater and Dance spring semester production of The Servant of Two Masters. Work encompassed initial conceptual production research through final realized light design objectives in Strider Theater during performances on April 16-18. More specifically, research consisted of textual and visual analysis, computational understanding of the GIO lighting console, stage lighting equipment theory and functionality, color theory, and cueing analysis based on rehearsal outcomes. To translate research into a viable design, the following process elements were generated: Scene-by-Scene Light Score, Light Keys, Light Plot, Channel Hookup, Instrument Schedule, and Virtual Magic …

Co-Authorship In Action: Curation & Collaboration In American Post-Judson Dance, Sara Gibbons

Honors Theses

This essay aims to illuminate and champion concert dance through an investigation into a sliver of American postmodern dance, which I term post-Judson dance, in an attempt to better understand, define, and assert dance in academe, art, and culture. This thesis examines the use and benefits of collaboration in today’s dance devising processes and the influences that constructed collaboration as a choreographic working method. Through historical, theoretical, contemporary, and practice-based evidence, this essay argues that through choreographer and performer participation, leading to the transformation of content, style, structure, and discovery, choreographers harvest an expansive collection of information that they use …

"Trying To Resurrect People": Musical Theater And Theater For Social Change In Witness Uganda, Emilie Jensen

Honors Theses

In spring 2014, the musical Witness Uganda premiered at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA. Written by Griffin Matthews and Matt Gould, the show takes on the problematic idea of aid work in the United States and worldwide. In this thesis, I look at Witness Uganda in relationship to theater for social change. Theater for social change is theater that actively works for social justice. In studying Witness Uganda, I investigate the possibilities and challenges of creating a piece of commercial musical theater that could be considered theater for social change.

Players: For Paul L. Coffey And Joshua Scharback, Theater Means Good Company, Robert Gillespie

Colby Magazine

Paul L. Coffey ’98 and Joshua Scharback ’98 discovered theater at Colby and have never doubted their calling.

The Apple Of His Ire: For Monologist Mike Daisey, The Death Of Steve Jobs Was Another Defining Moment In A Remarkable Career, Neil Genzlinger

Colby Magazine

Monologist Mike Daisey ’96 had been targeting Apple and Steve Jobs for a year. Then Jobs died and Daisey’s show was changed once again.

The Aesthetic Of Failure: Authenticity, Effort, And Imperfection In American Contemporary Dance, Delaney Mcdonough

Honors Theses

This research examines a slice of American contemporary dance artists and their audiences. American postmodern choreographers such as David Dorfman, Heidi Henderson, Sara Hook, and Paul Matteson use what I am calling the aesthetic of failure as a method to punctuate their work, momentarily blur clarity, steer the viewer’s gaze, make space for live choice making, and in some cases draw laughter. Almost any emotion can be associated with failure: anger, grief, hilarity, absurdity, etc. The underpinning of failure in live performance is the medium of the craft, human bodies. Consider the phrase “humanly possible:” jump as high as humanly …

Mediums Change, Fears Stay The Same, Lucy Wilhelms

Honors Theses

Although generally dismissed by scholars as being overly sentimental or superstitious, the gothic genre has survived for over four centuries and maintained significant cultural appeal, outlasting the sentimental novel and the travelogue as popular literature. What, then, makes this genre different? What is so special about the gothic?

In my thesis, I examine the evolving cultural appeal of the gothic genre that keeps it attractive and relevant for readers by tracing the gothic text, The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, through its initial inception and its subsequent adaptations. As a novel, The Woman in Black both repeats and revises …

Change Through Tradition In The Work Of 'Zulu Sofola Rehearsal Presentation Outline, Ajima M. Olaghere

Undergraduate Research Symposium (UGRS)

This paper highlights the struggle Nigerian playwright 'Zulu Sofola underwent to impart her message. She attempted to confront gender oppression through tradition without contradicting herself in her play, 'Wedlock of the Gods.' ‘Zulu Sofola wrote commentaries about social problems and the influence of Western culture. Her goal was to maintain a traditional framework in the face of encroaching Western perspectives. She advocated enacting change through tradition, irrespective of Western ideologies about change. Sofola focused on gender oppression as a social problem. She intended to address gender oppression rooted in tradition by teaching traditional customs to her audience in order for …

Fata Morgana, Erin Rogers

Senior Scholar Papers

Fora Morgana began as Traveling Light in April, 2000, a Senior Scholars project exploring the performing arts of dance and poetry. I wanted to combine these two an forms into an interdisciplinary research project and, ultimately, a full-length dance work for a production incorporating set design, sound design, costume design, and lighting. During the months following the project's conception, I began to focus the background research on Arthurian literature and legend.

Project In Choreography, Maura Murphy

Senior Scholar Papers

After researching the effects that Eastern philosophies and art forms have had on Western choreography, I noticed that those who implement the Eastern concepts of unity of body and mind produce dances which are more than phrases of movements strung together every eight counts.

As a dancer, I have a tendency to view many dances in terms of pointed feet, straight legs, and cohesiveness of ensemble work, as opposed to seeing the actual choreography. However, when watching video tapes of some "new wave" choreography by various artists interested in East Asia, I saw the dances as whole entities.

I was …