Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Sense Make Before Book, Bradley Sinanan

Theses and Dissertations

“Sense Make Before Book” is an Indo-Caribbean turn of phrase which refers to common sense being more important than book smarts. My sister sent me a post the other day on Instagram of an Trinidadian woman using this phrase, saying it was one of Indo-Caribbean origin. I was interested and asked my mom about it. My mom says that when she was younger my grandpa said it often around their house in Princes Town, Trinidad and Tobago. This adage feels charged thinking about the history of indenture and its effects on the Indo-Caribbean diaspora.

The written word of archival history …

For What Is A Man?: Towards Languaging Contemporary Dance In A Black, Queer, Male-Presenting Body, Thomas Ford

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines Queering Blackness: Solo on a Theme of Reconciliation, a performance event that invokes movement, spoken text, projections and sound to explore the mechanisms of identity. Engaging performance, Black, queer and dance studies, the paper contextualizes cultural identity markers, towards an understanding of what it means to be Black, queer and male-assigned in Black spaces.

Gloria Rehearsal (Excerpt) A Feminist Mechanism For Metabolization, Eleanor Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Weaving embodied trauma studies with feminist theory, non-hierarchical creative structures, and research in dance improvisation, this thesis paper written by Eleanor Smith contextualizes the dance performance gloria rehearsal (excerpt). The performance piece was choreographed and performed by Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, who have been co-choreographing feminist dances since 2006.

An Arbitrary Aesthetic: Cultural Reproduction And Hegemonic Canonical Formations In The Western Theatrical Academy, Sim C. Rivers

Theses and Dissertations

Theatre as an artistic practice has often been celebrated as an art of and for the people, being a modality that in theory the common person has access to learn, explore and experience. In recent years I have become preoccupied with the growing rarification and privileging of this art form, particularly in how it is cognized and taught in the academic world. As such, I set out to investigate the mechanisms at work at levels structural, artistic, and personal that determine how theatre is taught and understood within the western academy.

This thesis seeks to examine and unpack the perceived …

A Gun For Every Woman, Gentë Retkoceri

Theses and Dissertations

Six centuries ago in Kosova, my home country, unmarried women known as sworn virgins, were forced to adopt a male persona and carry a gun to protect themselves. But today, guns have become tools of oppression and violence against women. And while the legal system carries penalties for domestic violence, marital rape is excluded. To shine a light on, and expose the topic of hidden violence, my thesis uses artivism to address a sensitive but provocative issue, exhibiting a large-scale sculpture of a gun, designed to provoke raw emotions; to challenge visitors to consider the terror felt by women threatened …

Childhood Reliquary De Una Catracha/Mexi Entre Nopales, Juliana Bustillo

Theses and Dissertations

Childhood Reliquary De Una CatrachaMexi Entre Nopales is a multisensory based installation consisting of three large and six medium scale mixed media paintings with performance. It is informed by my upbringing in Boyle Heights in the projects during the 90s, followed by East LA in the mid 2000s. It is the reliquary for my discomfort in institutional spaces and why I have found comfort in dystopian-like installations. This is the landscape in which I exist, regardless of where I am now. It is where I place my work. It is the context in which I celebrate the powerful delicacy of …

Spectrum Of Shit, Hannah Hiaasen

Theses and Dissertations

Contending with the loss of a parent to a mass shooting in their workplace, a newsroom, I find myself suspended in time, in an office. Post-its, fans, button-ups, snow globes, clipboards, reporters notebooks, scrap paper, jot downs, keyboards hold me up. I crave the comfort of repetitive cumulative hand work. Quilting, weaving, and cutting away help me breathe, haptically process and memorialize these grieving objects, this grieving person. Weed-wacking towards intimacy, my work employs a range of materials to mourn the mundanity of a workday, fantasize transformative justice, and steward embodied grief to the surface. My only speed is slow-- …

Considering Queerness - Actor Training's Issues And Alternatives, Jacob Leblanc

Theses and Dissertations

Educators in academic theatre programs, whether queer or non-queer, trans or cisgender, may not intentionally consider queerness in their pedagogical practices. What follows is an examination of current issues in academia that can affect queer students negatively and disproportionately. Anecdotal evidence is provided to demonstrate different issues that may be present in the classroom experiences of queer students. The Stanislavski system is critiqued through a contemporary, queer lens to locate possible shortcomings in the acting technique when it is applied by queer performers. Queer alternatives to the Stanislavski system are vetted and offered to queer students who might seek something …

Giglife.Nyc: Blood, Sweat, Tears And Glitter., Erik B. Slavin

Theses and Dissertations

In New York City there's a community of artists who have rejected the obvious choices that the world has offered them and pursued a life of performance and glitter, of bright lights and fire and sensuality.

These performers are extraordinarily compelling. They're artists with lives crafted to entice and delight our gaze. GigLife.NYC: Blood, Sweat, Tears & Glitter is an observational documentary film that invites the viewer, drawn in with the promise of titillating spectacle, to discover the object of their desire is engaged in artistic, romantic, political and economic struggle.

"With The Commodity In The Hand": A Practical Investigation Of The Intersection Of Material Culture With Performance Theory, Katharine M. Given

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the intersection of performance theory and material culture through the practices of garment reconstruction. In chapter 1, I examine key theorists in the fields of material culture and performance studies and articulate the connections between the two fields. In chapter 2, Using practice as research, I recount the experience of building reproduction garments from the eighteenth century using historically appropriate tools and methods, as well as the experience of wearing those garments. Finally, in Chapter 3, I walk through a possible historical examination of my encounter with these reconstructed garments, and consider the way in which feminine …

"We Need To Stop Temporarily Caring: "Pulse, Spoken Word Poetry, And Audience Counter-Narrative Creation, Hannah G. Trew

Theses and Dissertations

On June 12, 2016, 49 people were killed, and 53 people were injured in a shooting at Pulse, a popular gay club in Orlando, Florida. The Pulse Nightclub shooting was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States at that time and the deadliest violent act against the LGBTQ+ community in the United States (Hancock & Haldeman, 2017; Jackson, 2017; Walter, Billard, & Murphy, 2017). The media were divided in labeling the shooting a terrorist attack or a hate crime, creating a master narrative surrounding the shooting. However, LGBTQ+ spoken word poets rejected the media’s storylines, developing counter-narratives, and instead …

Innie / Outie, Josh Roach

Theses and Dissertations

My practice is focused around the characters that I become through the wearing of things that I have made, and the subsequent performances that I do in both constructed and real-world spaces. This paper outlines how my practice is framed by own experience of coming out as a queer person, how that experience relates to my love of play and materials, and how they both inform the strategies I use to relate the ideas surrounding queerness, sexuality, and gender to my audience.

“The Ground On Which I Stand” Healing Queer Trauma Through Performance: Crafting A Solo Performance Through The Investigation Of Ritual Poetic Drama Within The African Continuum, Ashley W. Grantham

Theses and Dissertations

“The Ground On Which I Stand”

Healing Queer Trauma through Performance:

Crafting a Solo Performance through the investigation of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum.

By: Ashley W. Grantham

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Performance Pedagogy at Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University

April 16^th, 2019

Thesis Adjudicator: Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates

Committee: Dr. Keith Byron Kirk, Director of Graduate Studies and Karen Kopryanski, Head of Voice and Speech

How does this method of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum, by extension, solo performance, …

Private Rainbows, Mikey F. Estes

Theses and Dissertations

I make art that refers to how the self is mediated through structures, objects, and images — a kind of self-portraiture that circles around its subject, reflecting a state of simultaneous formation and disintegration. Over the past few years, I have used my iPhone as a tool to make images of everyday life. As the user of this device, I am defined by both my presence and absence. I am interested in the process of locating the self within the scattered yet ordered space of the screen.

Of The Crickets, Kathryn Lien

Theses and Dissertations

Of the Crickets imagines the overlapping worlds of ethical ecological solutions to climate changed sustenance and the potential for collective excellence in female exclusive environments. Using garments, furniture, site-specific installation and directed performance, the project harnesses social and material sensitivity to mine solutions for idealized living.

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 …

"Hippie Acid Freak Drag Queens:" Situating The Cockettes Within An Art Historical Context, Scott Dow

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis situates the Cockettes – a performance group rarely referenced in art historical discourse - within Bay Area performance art, second-wave feminist art, and the Gay Liberation Movement. Contextualizing the Cockettes within their contemporary art movements provides a new understanding of the group and emphasizes their significance to art history.

Should We Straighten Up? Exploring The Responsibilities Of Actor Training For Lgbtq Students, Matthew B. Ferrell

Theses and Dissertations

Gay actors have a long history with the notion of “straightening up” to remain castable and economically feasible in today’s market. Searching to find answers for young acting students while strengthening their own self worth, I will explore the history of gay actors in film, television and theatre and in society to understand this notion more fully. By interviewing working actors and managers in the business I will explore how I can address this question of “straightening up” to the future generation of actors and analyze how we can face the future with integrity and self-respect.

A Performative Script: Play With(In) Me, Erik Patton

Theses and Dissertations

Patton continues his interest in the body, its relation to material, the notion of abstraction (specifically related to queerness), and the phenomenological with this performative script. Enter the bath first; you must wash your dirty asshole, as you shat only two hours ago. Collect your body in the Silver Pond.

Interpreting The Costume Designs Of In The Next Room Through Victorian Fashions Of The 1890s., Devario D. Simmons

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores and describes key factors in my process of designing the costumes for In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play by Sarah Ruhl. The document encompasses justification of decisions made through the researching and producing of period costumes for live performance and the challenges and obstacles faced to make seamless transitions during performance.

“Frailty, Thy Name Is Woman”: Depictions Of Female Madness, Julianna Little

Theses and Dissertations

Concepts of mental health and normality cannot be understood apart from cultural norms and values. The most significant of cultural constructions that shape our view of madness is gender. Madness has been perceived for centuries metaphorically and symbolically as a feminine illness and continues to be gendered into the twenty-first century. Works of art and literature and psychiatric medicine influence each other as well as our understanding and perception of mental illness. Throughout history, images of mental illness in women send the message that women are weak, dangerous, and require containment. What are the cultural links between femininity and insanity, …

Because Of Thy Exceeding Faith: A Choreographic Portrayal Of Women In The Book Of Mormon, Wendy L. Bone

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a choreographic exploration that illuminates and defines moments in the lives of women who are mentioned in the Book of Mormon. These women are Sariah; the wife of King Lamoni and Abish, her servant; and the Ammonite mothers of Helaman's two thousand stripling warriors. It is through these stories that their faith was evident. By understanding the roles these women played in the history of the Book of Mormon, we can use their example to strengthen our own testimonies.
It was discovered through this process that, although one can read about the life of another, a deeper …