Dance Commons^™

Goodbye? Reflections And Stream Of Consciousness On, Underneath And Around The Creation Of “Hello?”, Leonard Shevel Gurevich

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

How Would Jesus Watch This? An Investigation Into Dance Restrictions In American Protestantism, Rebecca Lynn Huppenthal

Theatre & Dance ETDs

In the United States there has been many disagreements concerning the place of dance within Protestant Christianity. Some denominations have banned dance entirely while other utilize dance as an essential element of worship. At the center of this argument is the understanding, treatment, and use of the physical body. Beginning in the sixteenth century through current times, I analyze specific Protestant denominations including the Puritans, Evangelical Fundamentalists, Southern Baptists, the Shakers, certain African American denominations, and Pentecostals. Additionally, I examine notable liturgical modern dancers, as well as my own choreographic work, a dance film titled Rebirth. This research displays …

Eccentric: Writing Through The Lens Of Empathy, Steven M. Blacksmith

Theatre & Dance ETDs

In this essay, I detail my growth as a writer through different periods of empathic learning. I examine my childhood struggle to understand many common emotions and the ways in which I began to logically dissect and replicate them in life and in art. I further delve into this examination through my discovery of comedy and the lifelong process of understand the deep connections humans make with humor. I then discuss how my understanding of empathy allowed me to write my dissertation play, The Eccentrics, and create a world in which empathy among the characters can be a catalyst …

Approaching The 'Small Planet': Remain In Light's Starship Road Trip As Metaphor For Theatrical World-Building, Amy Yourd

Theatre & Dance ETDs

Using Elinor Fuchs’ “Visit to a Small Planet” as inspiration, I consider my play Remain in Light as its own small planet, examining theories of world-building, science fiction, and utopian performativity to investigate possible functions of imaginary worlds onstage. In chapter one, I appropriate Fuchs’ script analysis exercise for my own purposes of play development, discovering a world of sensory detail that parallels the characters’ experience in the play. In chapter two, I conceive of the play’s starship as an imaginary world crashing towards this one, its escape a hopeful reflection on the utopian possibilities of alternate worlds. In chapter …

The 5th Humor, Stella Maria Perry

Theatre & Dance ETDs

I will be using a self-interview as a method of investigating both the origins of myself, the artist, and the work produced I have produced in and out of the MFA Dramatic Writing program with a special focus on my dissertation play, The Blood Vessel.

The intention is to investigate how my plays have come into existence and how they inform each other. This is done through a series of questions I ask myself under the pseudonym Penelope Hawkins. Penelope guides me through the investigation as a character, thus becoming part of the work of the self-interview and still …

Mochizuki: History And Context, Michael Watson

Mime Journal

No abstract provided.

Introducing Genzai Nō: Categorization And Conventions, With A Focus On Ataka And Mochizuki, Diego Pellecchia

Mime Journal

No abstract provided.

From Ataka To Kanjinchō: Adaptation Of Text And Performance In A Nineteenth-Century Nō-Derived Kabuki Play, Katherine Saltzman-Li

Mime Journal

Nō techniques and play borrowings provided important infusions into kabuki throughout its history, but in the nineteenth century, a genre of kabuki plays in close imitation of nō or kyōgen wasadded to the kabuki repertoire. The genre came to be called matsubamemono, meaning “[nō/kyōgen-derived kabuki] plays [performed] on a stage with a pine painted on the back wall” or “pine-boardplays.”1 These plays are the focus of this article, in which I first introduce the genre and its place in kabuki history, and then discuss its most famous example, the play Kanjinchō (Hattori 17–40; Meisakukabuki zenshū 181–197; Brandon, The Subscription List …

Flipping The Script: Gabriela Silang’S Legacy Through Stagecraft, Leeann Francisco

Humanities and Cultural Studies | Senior Theses

Flipping the Script: Gabriela Silang’s Legacy through Stagecraft is a chronicle of the scriptwriting and staging process for Bannuar, a historical adaptation about the life of Gabriela Silang (1731-1763) produced by Dominican University of California’s (DUC) Filipino student club (Kapamilya) for their annual Pilipino Cultural Night (PCN). The 9th annual show was scheduled for April 5, 2020. Due to the limitations of stagecraft, implications of COVID-19, and shelter-in-place orders, the scriptwriters made executive decisions on what to omit or adapt to create a well-rounded script.

In this chronicle, scriptwriters’ choices in character development and musical elements in the show are …

Dmt And “The Man Box:” Provoking Change And Encouraging Authentic Living, An Arts-Based Project, Steven Reynolds

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This thesis explores the mind-body experience through an arts-based research approach to examine, and redefine the emotional capacity and usefulness of males through societal determinants that limits and hinders men from living their authentic selves. Through the lens of a metaphoric “Man Box” 112 men participated in a workshop recreating their personal narratives of socialization through, style of dress, coping mechanisms, belief systems and who they should be as men through society's standards. In the “Man Box,” male bonding, and emotional feelings are discouraged, while the objectification of women, material property and physical/emotional strength are encouraged. This research investigates the …

Decolonizing Playwriting Through Indigenous Ceremonial Performances, Jay B. Muskett

Theatre & Dance ETDs

This dissertation attempts to express the importance of storytelling within the Indigenous Theater framework. It does so by first analyzing the progression of the writer’s unique upbringing and analyzing the influences of story upon an indigenous identity. I will also attempt to describe the aesthetics of Native Theater along two lines of methodology which includes praxis described and developed by Hanay Geiogamah and Rolland Meinholtz. I will also explain how the script 1n2ian tries to follow those concepts of Native Theater to create a ceremonial performance that uses a blending of both methodologies.

The Modern Synthesis Of Josephine Baker And Carmen Amaya, Justice Moriah Miles

Theatre & Dance ETDs

The Modern Synthesis of Josephine Baker and Carmen Amaya explores how flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya and African American performer Josephine Baker utilized modern synthesis in their careers. I define modern synthesis as a synthesis of various ideas and identities that supports a modern fluid identity that points to the idea of an alternative space that is beyond definition and human categorization. Expanding upon the ideas of Brenda Dixon Gottschild and William Washabaugh, I propose that there exists a thread of a tragic/comic dichotomy in African American performance and simultaneous opposition in flamenco and that Baker and Amaya came out of …

Metamorphoses

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman.

Performed February 22-24 and March 1-3, 2018 at the Mitchell Theatre.

Called by Time the “theater event of the year,” Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses brings Ovid’s tales to stunning visual life. Set in and around a large pool of water, Metamorphoses juxtaposes the ancient and the contemporary in both language and image to reflect the variety and persistence of narrative in the face of inevitable change. Nominated for three 2002 Tony Awards, including “Best Play,” Metamorphoses earned Zimmerman a Tony for “Best Direction of a Play.”

Josephine Baker & Me: Black Femme Identity In Performance, Meghan Gwinn

Scripps Senior Theses

The paper explores the complicated intersection between Black womanhood and performance by considering Josephine Baker as a site to engage the concept of “performing identity.” It discuss both the development of burlesque and the history of Josephine Baker to provide a foundation for the investigation of her early-career movement and visual practices. Then, the paper explore these hallmarks through Sherril Dodds’ “critical components of neo-burlesque striptease” writ into her book, Dancing on the Canon: Embodiments of Value in Popular Dance. The second half of this document includes a script of CATHARSIS, a self-devised solo show created to process one’s personal …

Into The Woods

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of Into the Woods. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and book by James Lapine.

Performed November 9-11, 16-18, 2018 at the Mitchell Theatre.

Into the Woods is a combined narrative of the stories and plots of several Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault fairy tales.

The Amish Project

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of The Amish Project by Jessica Dickey.

Performed September 13-16, 2018 at the Mitchell Theatre.

In October of 2006, a gunman walked into an Amish schoolhouse…in this stunning tour-de-force, a single actress plays a host of characters in an Amish community devastated by that terrible tragedy. Jessica Dickey’s fictional exploration of the Nickel Mines Schoolhouse Shooting is a tale of redemption that forges a path of forgiveness and compassion in the aftermath of inexplicable violence. Featuring alum Morgan Morton(Turner ’16) and designed by all theatre alumni, this production is a unique experience for the …

Bringing Life To Theatre: A Scenic Designer's Role In Creating "The Wild Party", Matthew Carlin

Honors College Theses

The purpose of this paper is to examine the research that goes into designing the scenic elements of a musical. I was the scenic designer for Pace School of Performing Arts’ production of Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe’s The Wild Party in the fall of 2017. Directed by Roger Ellis, our version of the vaudeville-style musical was done in an immersive, in-the-round style. As the scenic designer for this production I was strongly focused on the research aspect of the design process. We consulted several art movements and architectural styles, as well as mythology, film and literature in …

Disney And Cameron Mackintosh's Mary Poppins: The Broadway Musical

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of Disney and Cameron Mackintosh’s Marry Poppins: The Broadway Musical.

Performed April 27-29 and May 4-6, 2018 at the Mitchell Theatre.

Young Jane and Michael have sent many a nanny packing before Mary Poppins arrives on their doorstep. Using a combination of magic and common sense, she must teach the family members how to value each other again. Mary Poppins takes the children on many magical and memorable adventures, but Jane and Michael aren't the only ones upon whom she has a profound effect. Even grown-ups can learn a lesson or two from the …

Holding On/Letting Go: Situating Trauma And Memory In Theatrical Spaces, Caroline T. Graham

Theatre & Dance ETDs

In this essay, I review my development as a playwright in the MFA Dramatic Writing program and examine the shifting, overlapping goals of playwright-as-educator and playwright-as-entertainer. In Part One, I position my academic exploration of trauma in relation to ethics in journalism, embodied knowledge, and intersectional feminism and outline my creative experiments in staging trauma through the process of witnessing, retelling, and abstraction. In Part Two, I detail the artistic and personal roots of my dissertation play, The Great Maverick Adventure of 2007, and the structural and dramaturgical tools I employed to rebuild a sense of play and theatricality …

Thoroughly Modern Millie, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2017-2018 Season

The year was 1922 and to live in Manhattan meant, for many, an era of wild optimism, carefree abandonment of antiquated social constraints and for women, unprecedented advancement in how they were perceived by those around them. Everything was lovely and in this age of liberated sensibilities, our heroine, Millie Dillmount enters with just such a need to rewrite her personal narrative. Thoroughly Modern Millie is, to me, a valentine to optimism and a love letter to love itself.

Thom C. Warren, Director

Why We Must Die So Young: The Story Of The White Rose Martyrs

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of Why We Must Die So Young: The Story of the White Rose Martyrs by William Gebby.

Performed February 23-25, 2018 at the Mitchell Theatre.

During the darkest days of WWII, a handful of German college students distributed thousands of anti-Nazi leaflets and worked toward unifying resistance across Germany. They called themselves the White Rose, and their faith drew them to engage in a fight that would cost them their lives. William Gebby’s brand new play celebrates the lives of these brave young people who would not and will not be silent. The TU …

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

Cyrano De Bergerac

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of Cyrano de Bergerac, based on the translation written by Anthony Burgess of the play written by Edmund Rostand.

Performed November 10-12, 17-19, 2017 at the Mitchell Theatre.

Dashing, proud, and romantic, Cyrano is one of the most memorable figures in theatre history. Known throughout Paris for his unmatched bravery and the charm of his verse, poet Cyrano de Bergerac has one problem—his enormous nose. During an age of gallant musketeers and extravagant lifestyles, this beautiful soul is damned by his marred appearance. Not one to give up, Cyrano joins forces with the handsome …

Moments

Taylor Theatre Playbills

Taylor's first-ever dance production is review of our musical history. It includes numbers from past shows, such as Oklahoma!, current works that have come out of dance classes, and previews of upcoming performances, such as The Pirates of Penzance and Mary Poppins. Don't miss this incredible night of storytelling through dance!

Performed October 6-7, 2017 at the Mitchell Theatre.

Clybourne Park

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris.

Performed September 28-30, October 1, 2017 at the Mitchell Theatre.

Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for Best Play, Clybourne Park is a razor-sharp satire about the politics of race. In 1959, Russ and Bev are moving to the suburbs after the tragic death of their son. Inadvertently, they’ve sold their house to the neighborhood’s first black family. Fifty years later, the roles are reversed when a young white couple buys the lot. In both instances a community showdown takes place, pitting race against …

The Matchmaker

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder.

Performed April 28-30 and May 5-7, 2017 at the Mitchell Theatre.

Before the world fell in love with "Hello, Dolly!", Thornton Wilder’s uproarious play "The Matchmaker" introduced Ms. Dolly Gallagher Levi: a cunning, crafty, and thoroughly modern woman who knows a good catch when she sees one. When the wealthy Horace Vandergelder hires matchmaker Ms. Levi to find him a wife, Dolly doesn't need to look far to find his perfect mate. While Dolly is “arranging things” for Mr. Vandergelder, the young, hopeless romantics of Yonkers reap the …

Not The Truth We Seek: The Story Of A Mime, Fierce Women, Proposals, & Pro Wrestling, Steven Meeker Jr.

Undergraduate Distinction Papers

THE SPARK

I have always believed that the best theater comes from a very real and sometimes very painful place. My parents were undergoing a brutal and very open separation and then divorce throughout my junior and senior year of high school. In the middle of the constant war zone that was our home, my brother and I would simply go from one room to the other with our heads down and as quick as possible. The only day we would linger in the living room would be Mondays. On Monday nights, my brother and I owned the living room …

When The Rain Stops Falling

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of When the Rain Stops Falling by Thornton Andrew Bovell.

Performed February 24-26, March 3-5, 2017.

It’s 2039. A fish falls from the sky and lands at Gabriel’s feet. Where did it come from? Gabriel’s estranged son decides to visit for dinner. What does he want? To know about his past? Gabriel barely knows his own past. From 1959 to 2039, from London to Australia, When the Rain Stops Falling follows the fragmented history and mystery of Gabriel’s family and the falling fish.

Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma!

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of Oklahoma!. Books and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, music by Richard Rogers.

Performed on November 11-13, 18-20, 2016 at the Mitchell Theatre.

The high-spirited rivalry between the farmers and cowmen of the Western Indian Territory provides the colorful, turn-of-the-century backdrop for Curley and Laurey’s love story. But with these headstrong romantics holding the reins, the road to love is as bumpy as a surrey ride down a dusty road. Despite many hardships, their rocky romance leads to a new life beginning in a brand new state. Rodgers & Hammerstein's first collaboration remains, …

Antigone

Taylor Theatre Playbills

Taylor Theatre presents Sophocles’ timeless tragedy “Antigone,” translated and directed by Joe Ricke.

Performed September 29-October 2, 2016 at the Mitchell Theatre.

In this story, the bold yet cursed princess Antigone, daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, chooses to confront her unmovable uncle/king about his decision to dishonor her brother by refusing his burial. Her choice to defy him shocks the entire city of Thebes. Ultimately, all concerned, including the audience, are forced to wrestle with the relationship of divine law to human laws.

This striking production, translated and directed by Joe Ricke, explores this universal question in the ancient context …