Playwriting Commons^™

The Bald Soprano

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2010 performance of The Bald Soprano by Eugène Ionesco.

The Bald Soprano: An Anti-Play follows the events of a traditional couple who invite over another couple, and are later joined by their maid and the maid’s lover. The characters engage in meaningless banter that becomes even more nonsensical as time goes on.

In this adaptation the actors play the actresses’ roles and the actresses play the actor’s roles.

The Lab Report, Volume 04, Issue 04, Todd Ristau

Lab Reports

• Her Mother Was Imagination by Elizabeth Heffron given world premiere at Annex Theatre in Seattle
• Student Spotlight: Elizabeth Heffron
• Guest Profile: Performers Exchange Project
• Flower Duet by Maura Campbell
• Living Between the Lines, by Todd Ristau and Joan Ruelle
• From the Director: The Importance of Keeping a Portfolio

Doubt

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2010 performance of Doubt by John Patrick Shanley.

Doubt: A Parable is the story of a fictional Catholic school in Bronx and the clash between the parish priest, Father Flynn, and school’s principal, Sister Aloysius, over the suspicion that Flynn molested an alter boy.

This play is performed by the faculty and staff of Taylor University.

The Lab Report, Volume 04, Issue 03, Todd Ristau

Lab Reports

• ·Up From the Lunar Surface by Nicole B. Adkins
• ·Student Spotlight: Anna Gardner
• Guest Profile: Joe Gilford
• Student readings in New York (David Schwingle, Sean Engard, Royal Shiree)
• Kenley Smith and Sunny da Silva featured at Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights
• A Christmas Carol, by Clinton Johnston, Read at Hamner Theatre
• From the Director: Actor and Director Database

The Lab Report, Volume 04, Issue 02, Todd Ristau

Lab Reports

• Guest Faculty Profile: Kate Bredeson
• Robert Plowman’s The Common: for as long as you have so far
• Overnight Sensations at Mill Mountain Theatre
• Festival of Student Readings
• Guest Profile: Naomi Wallace
• From the Director: Summer Session Recap

The Lab Report, Volume 04, Issue 01, Todd Ristau

Lab Reports

• Feeback Loop, by Adam Hahn at Studio Roanoke
• No Shame Returns to Mill Mountain Theatre
• New Submission Opportunities at Studio Roanoke
• Devil Sedan, by Kenley Smith
• From the Director: Welcoming the summer students

Hole In The Head: A Play, Accompanied By A Conspectus Of Knowledge, Both Repressed And Researched, That Directly Influenced The Playwright In Her Development Of A New Work, Margaret Hunter Cook

Honors Scholar Theses

"Hole in the Head" is a play about a woman who wakes up. Maude wakes up in the first act, and in every subsequent scene she undergoes some form of physical or emotional awakening as characters walk in and out of her front door."Hole in the Head" is accompanied by an introduction that attempts to understand the interplay between creativity and academia through an analysis of theatre, feminist and queer theory, and science.

The Lab Report, Volume 03, Issue 12, Todd Ristau

Lab Reports

• 2010 Guest Speaker Series
• Course Listings for Summer 2010
• Neeley Gossett Breadcrumb Sins at Coastal Empire New Plays Festival
• Under a Banner of Shadow, by Todd Ristau at Studio Roanoke
• From the Director: Leaving Studio Roanoke

Theatre For A New Theater: A Play On Architecture, Alex Coulombe

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The project entails transforming a former military fort into a theater. The scopic parameters native to both fort and theater can provide a field of operation for an architecture that simultaneously mobilizes and exposes the machinery of spectacle. In tandem, amplifying and distorting existing conditions of the fort and repurposing them for a theatrical program can provide catalytic parameters for design that are typically absent when designing from a clean slate.

"Persona Non Grata" A Tragicomic One-Act, Maria K. Genovese

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Theatre For A New Theater: A Play On Architecture, Alexander Coulombe

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Not Included

Red Rock: An Original Dramatic Tv Series, Jared Shalek

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The concept of my Capstone Project is a screenplay for an original, dramatic television series. The idea was conceived during the summer going into my senior year, as I examined the script I had just written for TRF 400: Dramatic Writing for Television, a class I took in spring 2009 with Tom Seeley. I had labored over the script for the second half of that semester, and Professor Seeley really liked the idea from the start, but ultimately I did not fare as well I wanted to in terms of the final grade. Thus, I decided that I would redraft …

Amanda Green, Alex Piliouras

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

I have submitted for my Capstone Project three interactive scripts for the series Amanda Green. The series features a fourteen-year-old girl, Amanda Green, who solves mysteries with her friend Jerome relating to school and social life. In the pilot episode, submitted here, Amanda hopes to ask the school heartthrob to the dance, but is robbed of the opportunity when the principal announces that the dance is canceled due to an act of vandalism. After her grandmother regales her with an inspirational story, Amanda decides to head an investigation of the crime scene in the hopes of solving the mystery …

Beneath The Waves, Allison Nast

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Beneath the Waves is an original, feature-length screenplay. It is a fairy tale set in Ireland, where a woman dives to the bottom of the ocean to reclaim her husband, who had been taken by mermaids. She succeeds in rescuing her husband, and in doing so discovers that mermaids are not the beautiful women of legend, but rather man-eating deep-sea creatures. I wrote the short story Brigid and the Mermaids in my junior year in order to get the basic storyline down in an understandable form. In writing the screenplay I used the free screenwriting program Celtx, which formats easily …

Crimes Of The Heart

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s Spring 2010 performance of Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley.

Crimes of the Heart tells the story of the three Magrath sisters, Meg, Babe, and Lenny, who reunite at their grand father’s home in Mississippi after Babe shoots her abusive husband.

The Lab Report, Volume 03, Issue 11, Todd Ristau

Lab Reports

• Student Spotlight: David Schwingle
• Best of No Shame Marks One Full Year of Programming at Studio Roanoke
• Ich Libe Dich by Samantha Macher in Lunchbox Reading Series
• Maura Campbell's Wild Geese produced in Vermont and Flower Duet read in New York
• From the Director: Aspiration or Ambition?

The World In Chaos: A Paragon For Comedic Plays, Lisa Akintilo '11

2010 Spring Semester

When Samuel Beckett wrote his tragicomedy Waiting for Godot in France, the French nation was in turmoil due to the destructiveness of World War II. One generation later, an American named Tom Stoppard also wrote a play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, during a time of crisis; the United States was in utter confusion because of the Vietnam War. Both of these plays, as a result of the tumultuous times in which they were created, demonstrated how confusion in one’s surroundings can cause a loss of certainty and identity.

Sobre Lo Visible Y Lo Invisible: Barcelona Y El Teatro, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Durante el invierno del año 2000, el director catalán Lluís Pasqual llevó a la escena del Teatre Lliure, la casa histórica de una de las compañías de repertorio más estable, consolidada y distinguida de Barcelona, una versión catalana de El jardín de los cerezos de Antón Chekov. En la obra de Chekov, Madame Ranyévskaya, emblema de la elegancia marchita y de la ya desvanecida supremacía de la aristocracia rusa, se ve obligada, por su situación de desesperanza económica, a vender su finca y su jardín de cerezos al nuevo-rico Lopatkhin y, después, a volver a París, cuando Rusia se encuentra …

The Lab Report, Volume 03, Issue 10, Todd Ristau

Lab Reports

• Jayne Benjulian Named Head of New Play Development at Magic Theatre
• Student Spotlight: Jonathan Galvez
• Dear Abe by Adam Hahn at Studio Roanoke
• The Prom by Adam Hahn in Lunchbox Reading Series
• Guest Profile: Joe Banno
• From the Director: What You've Taken, You Can Teach

Hippolytus

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s Spring 2010 performance of Hippolytus by Euripides.

Hippolytus is the illegitimate son of Theseus, the king of Athens. The play tells how the goddess of love, Aphrodite, maliciously enacts vengeance on Hippolytus for his oath to chastity and service to the goddess of the hunt, Artemis.