Playwriting Commons^™

Introduction To Theatre Oer Course, Carmen R. Meyers

Open Educational Resources

Study of theatre and performance throughout history and across cultures including an examination of European, Carribean, and North and South American theatrical styles and genres.

This course is organized for a hybrid/asynchronous format. Our class meets on-campus every week for 75 minutes and the other 75 minutes will be completed asynchronously with weekly learning modules on Blackboard.

The first half of the course focuses on the history of theatre from Ancient Greece through Modern Realism. The second half of the course, students engage in the procedures of professional theatre artists through writing and refining a dramatic text; enacting a performance; …

Nothing To See Hear, Adam Kuykendall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nothing to See/Hear is a research experiment into minimalist visual narrative via the short film Not the Boss of Me, in which the criteria for production mandated only the bare essential elements required to construct and convey a plot and its characters be used while filming within a nondescript space - in this case, a mostly empty soundstage. How does one tell a story and define its characters without direct expository dialogue? What is needed to establish and define locations and/or environments when limited to only one or two items? Can an audience engage their imagination to fill in the …

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.

A How-To Guide For Expressing Emotions: A Play, Allison Burns Sahargun

Senior Projects Spring 2023

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

"Possessed": The Phenomenology Of Immersive Theatre, Shannon M. Flynn

Theatre & Dance ETDs

Using phenomenology as a lens of analysis, I investigate how immersive theatre engages audiences in a more direct and sensory way than traditional theatre. In a proscenium theatre the action is seen from the same angle. The theatre itself becomes a phenomenon in audience’s minds, each performance subtly influencing how the audience perceives the next. I investigate how relationships between audience and performers are altered in immersive experiences with no delineation between the space audience and actors occupy. The phenomenological idea of frontality places immersed audiences in positions where they are able to explore a constantly changing perspective of the …

Cut Song Cabaret: Performing The Replaced, Rewritten, And Recycled Songs Of Musical Theatre, Claire Wilson

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

In musical theatre, “cut songs” are the pieces of music that are removed from a show, whether the cut occur in the early creative stages, a pre-Broadway run, minutes before opening night, or even for a major revival years after its initial debut. These songs easily go unnoticed, as some are never made public while some are sneakily recycled for other musicals. Cut songs, though greatly varying in quality, are still works of art that at one time fulfilled their sacred duty of entertaining an audience and required just as much artistic effort to produce as the songs that survived …

Our Grandparents/旧识, Yibin Wang

Senior Projects Spring 2020

A Theater and Performance senior project centering on the question of "how can we be more connected to our grandparents through playing them in front of a camera on stage?" Through exploring this question, the actor would present real stories about their grandparents on stage.

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 …

Should Theatre Disappear Like Soap Bubbles?, Erin Lee

Proceedings from the Document Academy

I recently read an excerpt from a 2004 interview with Peter Hall where he claims that he was happy for his materials to disappear "like soap bubbles" (Reason, 2006). One of the fundamentally difficult things about archiving theatre, aside from its ephemeral nature, is the approach that creatives take to their work. Not only do we need to battle the format of live performance but we also need to convince many creatives, not all I must add, that their work can and should remain in the Archive for use in the future. There are glimmers of potential in the area …

The Art Of Adaptation, Katharine E. Jordan

Honors Theses and Capstones

My honors thesis The Art of Adaptation discusses the process of adapting old stories and theatrical pieces for modern audiences through the exploration of various adaptations (theatrical, operatic, dance and film) of Euripides' Medea. It also touches on my own short, modern, adaptation; FURY: A Rock Musical Inspired by Medea. All of this research was important in making the performance aspect of my capstone the best it could be.