Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Public Projection | What Is Projection?, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

Public Projection | Wintersession 2025 Syllabus, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Course Materials

In this course, we will create site-specific projections that breathe new life onto the built environment. Working in the lineage of street art and guerrilla performance, we will explore the relationship between art, public space and the communities we inhabit. How is projection a tool of public communication? How can light and movement reshape architecture and human behavior? We will research sites, understand their stories, develop creative interventions, build prototypes and work collaboratively to design ephemeral public installations.

Telegraph Valley Performance, Installation, And Animation, La Samuelson, Movement Lab

Personal Work

"My fellowship project culminated in a 10 month exhibition and a series of 5 performances in Miami, presented by Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, the National Performance Network, with support from the RISD Movement Lab and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. The work was also included in Miami Art Week - 2025." – LA Samuelson

What Year Is It?, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Surveillance Studies, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Stereoscope Studies, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Public Projection | Found Footage, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

Public Projection | Typography, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

Rheology, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Black Bodies On American Stages, Gabrielle Burton

Honors College Theses

The following study explores the character types that have been historically available to Black actors in American theatre and how that representation enforced, resisted, or ignored stereotypes. To examine the impact of those roles on the performers who played them, I examine the documented approaches Black actors have taken to embody their characters, as well as my own evolving process used to portray the eight characters I have inhabited in my personal college performance career at Georgia Southern University. This research and retrospective analysis reveal that while a lazy or performative indifference leads to harm, color-conscious inclusion, challenging conversations, and …

Unveiling The Wilis: Exploring Giselle's Slavic Folkloric Origins And The Ramifications Of Essentialized Femininity, Antonia R. Dougherty

Dance (MFA) Theses

Jules Perrot and Jean Coralli’s choreography of Giselle’s wilis continues to influence the essentialized femininity in Ballet Blanc. The folkloric víla origins of the wilis create a direct contradiction to the archetypal ballet woman. The celebrated story of Ballet Blanc’s Giselle conflates the Slavic origins and wili characteristics, while simultaneously abandoning key characteristics of the Slavic víla. Antonia Dougherty’s thesis endeavors to unify these distinct components of the víla and their symbology so that a gender critical analysis of the essentialized femininity of Ballet Blanc’s Giselle may be explored. Perrot and Coralli used the Slavic folkloric víla origins …

Mapping Entanglements: Un-Nesting The Myths Of My White Identity, Kayla C. Brown

Dance (MFA) Theses

This braided research-performance thesis uses personal narrative, critical theory, and live performance to investigate how whiteness is sustained and embodied. Grounded in the work of bell hooks, Ibram X. Kendi, Tema Okun, Diana Taylor, Catrice M. Jackson, Miguel Gutierrez, and Narcissister, I interrogate whiteness not as a static identity, but as a system of power that shapes perception, behavior, and social value. As a cisgender white woman, I move through the world with unearned ease—my presence normalized, my advantages often unquestioned.

Identity is performance—layered, like the Russian nesting dolls I once played with at my grandmother’s house. Peeling back these …

Echoes Before Language: A Written Thesis On Movement, Origin, And Becoming, Shadidja Parker

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis presents a body-based, lineage-informed approach to movement development into dance, honoring both scientific and spiritual knowledge systems. It engages in a blend of qualitative, embodied, and autoethnographic methods—including dance studies, developmental science, phenomenology, and cultural analysis—to examine how movement emerges, evolves, and carries meaning. Grounded in my lived experience as a dancer, mother, and Black woman, this research frames the body as both a site and source of knowledge. I use my own body as an instrument of movement, memory, and identity, positioning my embodiment as a form of inquiry. The thesis is organized in two parts: a …

Raíces De Esperanza: The Omnipresence Of Female Ancestors As Guides Through Nepantla, Fabiola Sanchez Huidobro

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis investigates the intertwined threads of generational rage and grief experienced by a first-generation individual navigating the emotional and spiritual landscape shaped by their ancestry and migration. Furthermore, this work examines how emotional and spiritual inheritances intersect with the author’s cultural subconscious, facilitating a deeper understanding of the complexities of being caught between two worlds: Mexico, the origin of their roots, and the United States, the land of their birth. Through personal stories and cultural reflections, this piece aims to investigate the profound ways in which matrilineal inheritances help guide the author through the transitional space of Nepantla. Nepantla …

Stage Exit, Grady Munroe

LMU Theatre Arts Annual New Works Festival

An acting class struggles to free themselves from the room they are trapped in. Stage Exit is about the absurdity and horrors of being a student of theatre.

The Shifting Power Dynamic: How The Director’S Role Redefined Collaboration With Playwrights, Riley K. Mcconnell

SPARK Symposium Presentations

The Shifting Power Dynamic: How the Director’s Role Redefined Collaboration with Playwrights

Riley McConnell

For much of theatre history, playwrights held primary authority over productions, shaping not only the script but also the staging and interpretation of their work. As theatrical production became more complex during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, the role of the director emerged as a central creative force. This essay explores how the development of the modern director transformed the collaborative relationship between playwrights and directors.  By examining the historical rise of directing, influential collaborations such as that between Anton Chekhov and Konstantin Stanislavski, and …

The Right Way To Go Wrong: A Reflection, Peter A. Graham

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis documents my personal experience acting in Pomona College’s Fall 2024 production of The Play That Goes Wrong. I begin with an artist statement – a poem explaining the reasons why I act. The paper then moves into a general overview of the project, including my past training and future goals. The next section, which is the bulk of the material, contains chronological evidence of the production from start to finish and focuses on my attempt to find precise physicality. I finish with thoughts about the result as well as general reflections on how the process has shaped …

เพี้ยวโลกกับอุ๊ยมอมแมม : การพัฒนาการแสดงละครเล่าเรื่องเพื่อนําเสนอประเด็นปัญหาสิ่งแวดล้อมสําหรับผู้ชมปฐมวัย, พรธิดา ผลดี

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

วิจัยชิ้นนี้เป็นงานวิจัยเชิงสร้างสรรค์ในแบบวิจัยปฏิบัติการ (Practice Research) ทางศิลปะการละคร มีวัตถุประสงค์ คือ (1) เพื่อศึกษาหลักและเทคนิคในการแสดงละครเล่าเรื่อง ของพอล ซิลส์ และเกมละคร ของไวโอลา สโปลิน และ (2) เพื่อสร้างสรรค์การแสดงละครเล่าเรื่องเพื่อนำเสนอประเด็นปัญหาสิ่งแวดล้อมสำหรับผู้ชมปฐมวัยเรื่อง เพี้ยวโลกกับอุ๊ยมอมแมม ผู้วิจัยออกแบบการแสดงและเป็นนักแสดง ศึกษาแนวคิดละครเล่าเรื่อง นิทานภาพเกี่ยวกับภาวะโลกร้อน เพื่อออกแบบการแสดงละครสำหรับเด็กปฐมวัยอายุ 4-6 ปี เน้นการมีส่วนร่วมของผู้ชม ฝึกฝนการแสดงด้นสดและเกมละคร เพื่อพัฒนาทักษะการด้นสด การมีสมาธิ และการทำงานร่วมกันเป็นกลุ่ม ผู้วิจัยจัดการแสดง 2 รอบในห้องเรียน และจัดการสนทนากลุ่มกับผู้เชี่ยวชาญและครูเพื่อประเมินผล ผู้วิจัยค้นพบรูปแบบการแสดงที่มีลักษณะเฉพาะ คือ “เล่า-นำ-เล่น-เป็นตัวละคร สะท้อนประเด็นสิ่งแวดล้อม” รวมถึงพบว่าระหว่างการแสดงต้องพัฒนาทักษะการฟัง การสังเกต และด้นสด เนื่องจากละครเล่าเรื่องแบบมีส่วนร่วม ดึงดูดความสนใจของผู้ชมปฐมวัยผ่านอุปกรณ์การแสดง เพื่อให้ผู้ชมเรียนรู้ผ่านการลงมือทำ ทั้งยังได้องค์ความรู้ว่า การสื่อสารประเด็นสิ่งแวดล้อมแก่เด็กปฐมวัยให้สัมฤทธิผล โครงเรื่องต้องเข้าใจง่าย เชื่อมโยงกับประสบการณ์ตรง และนักแสดงต้องมีสมาธิ ไหวพริบ และความเป็นมิตร เพื่อสร้างบรรยากาศการเรียนรู้ที่สนุกสนานและเป็นธรรมชาติ

In The Wake Of Change, Kelly Nichole Clair

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

My senior project, In the Wake of Change, is a creative work which I choreographed and presented at the American College Dance Association, the EMU Undergraduate Research Symposium, and the EMU Dance Program student concert, “Crossroads.” The goal for this work was to present my explorations with choreographic methods such as repetition, movement based off the letters of words, and matching musical phrases with movement phrases, on as many stages as possible. I will dive into detail regarding my process, choices, and the piece’s narrative. I will describe the choreography process of the piece and the symbolism behind certain sections, …

Performance Assemblages | Wintersession 2025 Syllabus, La Samuelson, Movement Lab

Course Materials & Research

In this course, we will make solo and collaborative performance works. We will approach performance as the project of creating new contexts for interrelation–between beings, material, matter, the known, and the unknown–that allow both the performer and the viewer to learn and/or experience something we otherwise would not have access to. In other words, the work of this class is the work of listening in the direction of something you can’t quite yet hear, and taking the time to figure out: where you might stand, what device you might invent, what you might wear, and how you might work with …