Playwriting Commons^™

Regulars, Michael Sieburt Wiener

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

My thesis play unfolds in the wake of the pandemic we’ve collectively faced, which hovers over its dramatic landscape, but is rarely directly addressed, a narrative penumbra subtle enough to be merely suggestive, almost subliminal, even as today, in America and around the world, we navigate the pandemic’s lingering aftermath by way of our quiet struggles, individual and collective, with mental health—an insidious, one might say endemic, pandemic of its own— that we ignore at our societal peril. My mother struggled with manic depression, which inflected our fraught bond in sometimes volatile ways and may have contributed to her early …

Zeus Iv, Lauren Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

How do you survive a pandemic? When you’re trapped inside for weeks? When society’s rules are revealed as largely arbitrary?

You get a dog and bring it to the park.

This play is about a group of devoted dog owners in Boston who stumble on an unexpected community. It's a dog park ballet about the close care of strangers.

Maya Lavender's Senior Project In Theater And Performance (Part 3): Reflections From Playtime, Maya E. Lavender

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This project is an exploration of metatheatre in an attempt to understand and portray the feelings surrounding coming of age. Part one was A Play, performed in LUMA theater in fall of 2022. Part two was More Play, performed in the Old Gym in spring of 2023. This is part three, a reflection on my time playing.

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.

They Wouldn’T Let Me Perform An Orchiectomy Live On Stage So I Figure This Is The Next Best Thing, Angus I. Kanelong

Senior Projects Spring 2023

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

Beneath The Surface: A Memory Play On Asperger's Syndrome, Conner Case

Senior Honors Theses

While academic, formal research proves to give readers an intellectual understanding of Asperger’s syndrome, this thesis serves as an approach to understanding the psychology of an Aspie on an emotional level. Through both research from peer-reviewed studies and the personal perception of an Aspie writer, a playwright develops a script inspired by the psychological aspects of Tennessee Williams’ memory play, The Glass Menagerie, to create an informative, yet engaging story about an Aspie protagonist. The playwright seeks to express that Aspies, despite their stereotypically cold exteriors, are emotionally complex individuals beneath the surface.

Samuel Beckett's Theory Of Repetition, Kennedy Carpenter

Online Theses and Dissertations

The thesis explores playwright, Samuel Beckett, and his use of repetition within four of his plays. The way in which repetition is discussed and shown in his plays displays Beckett’s own theories about repetition such as the futility and meaningless of life that repetition brings about, how repetition causes stagnation, repetition is something people are both trapped in and willing go towards for comfort, and the only way to break out of repetition is by involving others in one’s life. After literary analysis of repetition in Beckett’s works, his theories are then applied to Beckett’s personal life as a director …

"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 …

New Play Collaborations, Kathleen Potts

Open Educational Resources

This is a syllabus for a New Play Collaborations course, which explores the creative, collaborative process of creating a new play. It is comprised of sets of actors, directors, and playwrights, who will team up to create a number of original works for the stage.

Roomies, Hunter Lucian Lustberg

Senior Projects Spring 2021

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

We're Just Soldiers, Adrian S. Costa

Senior Projects Spring 2021

WE’RE JUST SOLDIERS is an original play that follows four white gamers caught during a rare moment of respite as they struggle for survival through the dense forest of a virtual Vietnam-esque battlefield. This moment quickly descends into chaos as the soldiers maneuver questions of identity, agency, and the charge of whiteness in a world surrounded by violence.

Directing Whitewashed And Dismantling Hierarchy, Dmitri Ades-Laurent

Senior Projects Spring 2021

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

Suburban Panic: Chaotic Contradictions In Girlhood, Ella Ania Baldwin

Senior Projects Spring 2021

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

...And Other Drugs I Haven't Told You About, Tatyana M. Rozetta

Senior Projects Spring 2021

...and other drugs i haven't told you about is an exploration of friendships, family, and the self while blurring the line between the past and the present. Although it is very specific to my own life and stories from my past, it manages to constantly hold a mirror to the audience leaving them feeling full and nostalgic for a time they may have never known.

Give Daddy A Sprinkle Of Peppa: The Untold Truth Of Peppa Pig, Avis Macguffie Zane

Senior Projects Spring 2021

In 1996, six-year-old JonBenèt Ramsey was found strangled to death by a garrot in her family’s Tudor-style mansion. Though suspicion followed the family for years, a perpetrator was never charged. After years of developing DNA sequencing, advanced crime technology, and the relentless court of public opinion that is social media, one might assume that a crime like this could never be covered up in modern day. However in 2020, Peppa Pig was pronounced dead under similarly suspicious circumstances. Her family was exonerated by the Scotland Yard, and yet their story is riddled with inconsistencies. For my senior project, I wrote …

Rained In: An Original Musical, Naomi Krizner

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

This musical confronts the perception of mental illness in an allegorical story that recounts an encounter between Tate, an estranged man inhabiting a cave who is taunted by two demons, and Emsley, a young girl brimming with innocence and curiosity.

Surrogate Memories In Animation And Sound, Jared Duesterhaus

Theses and Dissertations

A document in support of my exploration into memory in relation to the mediums of animation, sound, and theater. A reflection on remembering as a creative act.

This Is The Knot In My Stomach, Macey Clarice Downs

Senior Projects Spring 2020

This is a story about two young women who think they will be friends forever. They learn that forever comes and goes in the blink of an eye. They are not particularly exceptional--they don't shatter any glass ceilings, they make silly mistakes, they never know what to wear to school tomorrow. But we get to watch them do the most exceptional thing any of us will ever do: grow.

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.

Have A Good One: A Writer’S Search For Place, Rafael Gallegos

Theatre & Dance ETDs

In this personal essay I will summarize my creative journey as a writer throughout my time in the Dramatic Writing program at the University of New Mexico. I will explore how the notion of home has shaped me and my work, focusing on my childhood in Lubbock, Texas, my theatrical coming of age in New York City, and my return to Albuquerque in search of my personal voice. I will present two works that illustrate my maturation as a dramatist and my focus on community and place as thematic throughlines. Have a Good One is a play set in a …

Mimicry: A Short Play, Diana M. Pho

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

This short play is inspired by the author’s lived experience as a queer Vietnamese-American woman in academia and in US society. This theatrical piece, centered around two young women meeting for the first time after several years, reflects upon the mutable divergence of shared memory, while also exploring intersectional feminist theory and the Vietnamese-American community. This is also a critique of US-based stereotypes about young Asian-American women, and how social prejudices and microaggressions can result in internalized anti-Asian misogyny. Like the range of identities and life experiences that characters Laurel and Mattie have, the Asian diasporic experience in the United …

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.

Giau Minh Truong Interview, Gin To

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Bio: Giau Minh Truong is a company member of A-Squared Theatre Workshop and an at- large artist for various performing arts companies in the Chicago area. For A-Squared, he directed Ching Chong Chinaman, The Other Shore, and short plays for My Asian Mom, acted in Trial By Water, and designed lights for The Wind Cries Mary. Giau’s other directorial credits include Downward Facing, Lights Out, Everybody, and Theatre of Women for Dream Theatre Company. He directed Sister Outlaw, Mr. and Mrs. LaQuesta Go Dancing, My Name is Flor Contemplacion, and I Dream Electric for CIRCA-Pintig, Chicago’s …

The Master And His Master, Kristýna Petišková

Senior Projects Spring 2019

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

The Hidden History Of 'Oklahoma!', Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner explains that contemporary reinterpretations of the classic American musical Oklahoma! may be getting back to its root: it's based on a play by a gay Cherokee man.

The Director's Role In The Development Of A New Play, Andrew Mullins

Honors College Theses

Over the course of May 2017 - February 2018, I examined the role of a theatre director in the development of a new play. The play that I directed was written by Brandon Adam, and is titled Nice Jewish X. We developed the play using three different forms of performances as guideposts and opportunities for feedback. The three forms of performance were a closed cold reading, a rehearsed open reading, and a fully staged and produced production. Over the course of this process, I worked closely with the playwright and helped facilitate his creative process, as well as explored …

Swimming With Shoes On, Juliet Mueller

Honors College Theses

Swimming With Shoes On is a creative writing thesis containing four short stories all revolving around one central character, Lottie. Each story enters the reader into a different chapter of Lottie's life, and we watch as people move in and out of her life, as she learns more about herself and her friends, as she develops certain understandings about the construction of the world she's living in.

Behind Valencia: A Contemporary Play, Emily Charbonneau

Honors Projects in English and Cultural Studies

SYNOPSIS The purpose of this play is to highlight the length that modern females go to in order to maintain a desired appearance, especially across social media. These desired appearances are influenced by the glamorous and unrealistic looks and physiques that are prevalent in the media. Essentially, the primary goal of these characters is to attract the attention of their male counterparts because of the gender roles society promotes. This shallow lifestyle can be completely consuming for impressionable, young females.

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 …

Procedure To Exit An Enclosed Space: A Story In Six Parts, Brigid Nell Boll

Senior Projects Spring 2017

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