Theatre History Commons^™

Coming Out, Letting Go, Getting Naked: A Community Engagement Arts Based Project, Tim Aumiller

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Creating a healthy sexual minority identity remains a challenge in the 21^st century, despite significant advances in social acceptance and civil rights. Sexual minorities are more likely than cis gender heterosexuals to be exposed to traumatic events, and experience shame and mental and physical health symptoms as a result. Despite this, sexual minorities do overcome obstacles to develop resilience. While the coming out process looks different depending on the background of the individual, many gay men find connection and build community through this often difficult process where even rejection may play a part. The author found connection and community …

Intersections Of Glass Art & Digital Art: What Classic Tech Can Teach Us Today, Kayla Helman

Honors Projects

This research documents techniques past and present revolving around the theatre projection technique Pepper's Ghost and how digitally produced artwork can be intertwined with glass art. Documentation consists of review of existing literature and artists in the field developing this intersection.

Time, Place, & Purpose: The Performance Of Creole Identity In Louisiana, Rachel N. Aker

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Though much of the early development of Louisiana Creole culture can be found in New Orleans, the culture spread and continued to grow throughout the rest of South Louisiana in both similar and different ways. Expanding beyond Joseph Roach’s treatment of Creole cultural performances in New Orleans in Cities of the Dead (1996) and journeying across land and water, this project identifies more Creole cultural performance as they emerge across place and time. I present Louisiana and the Gulf South as a kind of inland archipelago, with the currents of culture-creation moving in and around distinct community enclaves. The flow …

Proud Of Your Boy: Toxic Masculinity, Boyhood, And The American Musical, Aaron J. Wood

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project traces the cultural historiography of the phrase "boys will be boys" and examines the pattern of white male excusal it embodies through a case-study based survey of onstage depictions of boyhood in musical theatre. I argue that the generational idea of manhood as aggressive, competitive, and violent is continually reasserted through our passive acceptance of white boy violence. This dissertation looks to the musicals Newsies, West Side Story, Heathers, and Dear Evan Hansen as case studies for exploring the cultural lineage of the phrase “boys will be boys.” Like the works of Aaron Thomas, Raymond …

"Voices In My Head:" Representations Of Mental Illness In Contemporary American Musical Theater, Mckay Perry

Masters Theses

In the years since 2010, themes of mental illness on the musical theater stage have increased dramatically, most notably with the Broadway premiere of Dear Evan Hansen in 2016, which quickly became a popular and critical success, winning six Tony Awards the following season. Despite scope and reach of the modern American musical, relatively little musicological scholarship has explored this area, and of that literature, even less has examined contemporary musicals. In this thesis, I will begin to fill this gap in the literature through the application of emerging critical musicological lenses to modern musical theater, both on and off …

Palestine Without Borders: A Study Of Arab And Western Voices In Theater, Bassem Mohsen Ahmed El-Sayed Ahmed Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

Theater has always been perceived as a way to link different cultures together and bring them under one large domain. Regardless, the genre does not give the needed attention to works written in certain regions that may otherwise fall outside the consensus. One good example is Palestine and any works that deal with it as a setting. The first thing that comes to mind whenever the word “Palestine” is brought up is almost always of a political nature, having to do with the Palestinians’ national conflict with Israel. This thesis undertakes to amend this by probing into plays written by …

Smokebox: Writing Into Embarrassment, Julia Storch

Theatre & Dance ETDs

Engaging with theoretical concepts and dramaturgical tools, this essay follows my journey through The Dramatic Writing MFA program at the University of New Mexico, focusing on the production of my thesis play, Smokebox. In Part I, I give the background and development of my journey as a playwright, exploring the obstacles I faced and overcame through my engagement with coursework and staged readings. I map out the development of Smokebox, from its humble beginnings as a class assignment, to its transformation through workshop, and finally its realization through an intense rehearsal and production process. In Part II, I …

Royal Authority And Erotic Desires: Marlowe's Views On Kingship In Dido, Queen Of Carthage, And Edward Ii, Jared Lambert

Honors Theses

Royal authority and erotic desires: Marlowe's views on kingship in Dido, Queen of Carthage, and Edward II focuses on the works of Christopher Marlowe and how they correlate to his perceptions of the Elizabethan court. This essay is meant to serve as one potential interpretation of both the public and personal life of Christopher Marlowe. Though there is little concrete information on Marlowe's life, it is a fact that he was working for the Elizabethan court in some capacity as an informant and potential provocateur against Catholics in England.

The Abolitionist Spectator: Resistant Readings Of Punishment, Rehabilitation, And Reform At The Louisiana State Penitentiary, Kathryn Marie Morris

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

For the majority of the twenty-first century, Louisiana has been the global leader in rates of incarceration. Despite its prevalence, many people encounter prisons and punishment only through representations in movies, television, and the news, remaining distant from the actual processes of punishment and prisons built in remote areas. The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, however, is unique in the number of opportunities it presents for the public to enter the prison for large-scale events like the famous Angola Prison Rodeo, select drama club performances, or to visit the Angola Prison Museum. These opportunities are often read cynically, as moments …

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.

Ya Llegamos | We Are Here, Audrey Hermila Salgado

Senior Projects Spring 2023

ya llegamos | we are here, a Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College, is piece on gender and migration. It is a play that explores how family dynamics, class issues, education, and gender play a role in why people leave their home country. It explores the journey and relationship of Saturnina and Francisco as they travel across the Mexico/U.S. border.

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 Methodology Of Paradoxes: Investigating Authenticity In The Representation Of Queerness On The Contemporary Stage, Kendall C. Walker

Theses and Dissertations

In my experience as a queer theatre practitioner, performer, and student, I have always had questions of ownership and authenticity when it comes to LGBTQIA+ narratives on the contemporary theatre stage. The question of: “Who is allowed to tell what story?” and the many complex ideas that this leads to, is what has inspired this thesis and my own pedagogy of intersectionality and inclusivity.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between authenticity and queerness on the contemporary stage in order to develop a methodology for how all theatre practitioners—no matter their identity—can effectively tell queer-identifying stories …

Generational Theory As A Lens For Approaching Musical Theatre History, 1943-2023, Or A Strange Loop, Ben J. Lundy

Theses and Dissertations

In 1991, William Strauss and Neil Howe published generational theory in Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584-2069. Though critiqued, Strauss and Howe’s generational theory suggests that American history occurs in cycles characterized by four distinct generational turnings or moods that occur approximately every eighty years, roughly the span of a human life. Though the theory has been applied to American history, usually through a political and economic lens, this thesis will focus on the most recent Millennial Cycle and apply the theory to the development of Broadway musical theatre history. Innovative musicals such as Oklahoma! (1943), Hair (1968), Rent …

Wilde Bühne: An Exploration Into The Revolutionary Potential Of Art, Antonia Salathe

Senior Projects Spring 2023

You will often hear it said that art does not belong in the space of the political.

Politics is practical, and yet we cry over legislative losses and march in the streets when we are seared by flames of indignation. We paint murals over boarded-up windows, film history as it happens, and go to the club after a long day at work. We sketch lovingly the faces of those lost senselessly, we sing to the rooftops when all hope seems lost, and we speak poems like pounding hammers when no one is willing to listen. We scratch verses into foam …

Asexual Dramaturgies: Reading For Asexuality In The Western Theatrical Canon, Anna Maria Ruffino Broussard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Asexuality has recently gained recognition and visibility as a legitimate sexual orientation and identity standpoint that is usually defined as lacking sexual desire for any gender. Popular culture and the academy have both seen the emergence of a robust conversation about the definition and import of asexuality, recognizing the term as an umbrella concept covering an ever-diversifying array of identities. Within the nascent critical discourse on asexuality, theorists have sought to identify asexuality as a sexual orientation, to rethink our society’s sexual normativity, and to question compulsory sexuality, or the assumption that sexual desire is intrinsic to all people, thus …

Rendering Documentary Portraiture: An Interrogation Of Archival Discourse Through A Critical Exploration Of Nineteenth Century Stage Actress Charlotte Cushman’S Material Memory, Skyler Sunday

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Visual depictions of nineteenth century stage actress Charlotte Cushman, such as photographs, engravings, and painted portraits assist researchers in re-envisioning her both as an actress and as a person, but what do her remaining archival possessions further reveal to researchers about her memory? How do different objects operate as portraits that allow the researcher to tap into and remember specific moments and memory? How does the effort to preserve memory take different forms? This project argues that, when viewing the archive through its stored objects, our collective notion of portraiture can be expanded and used to interrogate existing methods of …

Using Laughter To Inspire Change: Absurdist Theatre In Oppressive Societies, Mia Villeneuve

Honors Theses

The 1959 play Rhinoceros by French playwright Eugène Ionesco is one of many plays considered by Martin Esslin to be a part of "Theatre of the Absurd" a genre of plays written by mostly European playwrights in the late 1950's. These plays typically center around ideas of existentialism, and seem to lack any type of logical consistency. Rhinoceros centers around a small French town in which all the inhabitants slowly turn into rhinoceroses, and was a response to the uprising of fascism in Nazi Germany and a commentary on how social ideas spread.

This thesis will discuss the use of …

Meet And Run, Gia M. Binner

Theses and Dissertations

A defense for Gia Binner’s MFA Thesis, Meet and Run, argues that accessible art, known in this paper as commercial dance, is a meaningful vehicle for social change and that it has the ability to dismantle the outdated, European concert dance dominance by modeling the interdependency of both worlds.

Spaces Of The Tragic: Modern Dramatic Tragedy And Contemporary Memorial Design, Shiloh Bemis

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Humans use narrative to understand the world around us. At early ages we are exposed to storytelling with variable intent, from cautionary tales to the inspirational and everything in between. The dialectic strength of narrative mediums is well-known and well-studied. Theatre is one of the world’s oldest enduring forms of storytelling and has a strong ability to reflect and adapt with cultures as they develop, as a means of commentary and cultural reflection.

Architecture shares theatre’s ancient roots and has always been an important method of communication and expression. However, its tactics have historically been less narrative-centric than theatre and …

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 …

The World Is Your Pulpit: A Research-Based Performance On The Broder Singers, Amanda Seigel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My capstone project is a research-based performance about the Broder Singers, the first Yiddish actors. They performed primitive musical and theatrical pieces in Yiddish beginning in the mid-19th century in non-theatrical spaces such as taverns and gardens, in Eastern Europe. They were part of a larger movement creating secular Yiddish culture beyond the religiously proscribed expressions of traditional Jewish life. Largely born and raised in traditional communities themselves, they mocked wealthy religious community leaders, utilized gender drag, and compassionately portrayed impoverished people. This white paper explores the context of their work and draws on primary sources such as memoirs, published …

Gay Boy And Playboy Revues: Constructing U.S. Queer Collectivities In Networks Of Peripatetic Burlesque And Nightclub Drag Performers, 1933–1939, Kalle Westerling

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Across the United States, in the mid-1930s, drag made a transition, along with much other entertainment, from vaudeville into night clubs. There, concomitant with developing notions of gender and sexuality, it became increasingly associated with the contemporary expressions of drag that we see today in popular television shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race and in gay nightclubs across the country. In short, it became the queer form of entertainment. But in the 1930s, with such developing notions of gender and sexuality, it was not as easy as saying that it was a gay art form. Rather, as heterosexuality and heteronormativity took …

Go Off: The Geography And Labor Of Off- And Off-Off-Broadway, Sean C. Mellott

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Off- and Off-Off-Broadway remain ill-defined and misunderstood sectors of New York City’s theatre industry, at least when compared with Broadway. This capstone project examines these dual sociocultural spaces and defines some of their contours through a primary analytical lens of geography (the physical locations where Off- and Off-Off-Broadway are produced) and a secondary lens of labor (the professional contexts in which Off- and Off-Off-Broadway are produced). Both elements speak to the material conditions of theatrical production in New York City, offering clues as to Off- and Off-Off-Broadway’s position within the entertainment industry and their relationship to the larger social structure …

Accommodation And Coping In Medieval Catholic England: A Historical Dramaturgy Casebook For The Chester Mystery Cycle’S Play 14: Christ At The House Of Simon The Leper, Christ And The Moneylenders, And Judas’ Plot, Andrew J. Roberge

Senior Projects Spring 2022

In this historically focused dramaturgy casebook for the medieval Catholic Chester Mystery Cycle's Play 14, Christ at the House of Simon the Leper, Christ and the Moneylenders, and Judas’ Plot, I offer suggestions for Play 14's production as it might have appeared in the cycle's final year of performance, 1575. I contextualize and grapple with the play's antisemitisms, and also offer a brief history of antisemitism in medieval Europe. I also analyze Play 14 and the Chester Mystery Cycle for their rhetorical appeals to the medieval vernacular language, contexts, and events, as well as their anachronistic temporal and geographic …

Fidelity Afire: British Observations & Theatrical Interpretations Of Sati, 1650-1830, Abigail Fer

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

What can the shifting British interpretations of sati in the period between 1650 and 1830 tell us about the changes in how the British saw themselves as colonizers? This is the central question that this thesis seeks to resolve. From 1650 to about 1750, British interests in the Indian subcontinent were similar to other Europeans traveling in the area, characterized by the establishment of trading posts and dependence on the governing Mughals. From the beginning of this time period, European travelers were grappling with making sense of the Hindu practice of widow immolation, or sati. Early accounts by French and …

The Sound Design For H.M.S. Pinafore, Kyle W. Jensen

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of a Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre Arts: Sound Design at Minnesota State University, Mankato. This thesis contains a detailed account of Kyle W. Jensen’s sound design process and research for H.M.S. Pinafore. The thesis gives a chronological overview of the designer’s process in four chapters; a pre-production analysis, a historical and critical perspective, a journal detailing the process, and a post-production analysis. The fifth and final chapter provides the process development of the designer’s career before and during his time in graduate school. Appendices feature the paperwork, a list of …