Theatre History Commons^™

Who Tells Your Story? The Good, The Bad, And The Political Of Hamilton’S Cultural Revolution, Sophie K. Eastone

SPARK Symposium Presentations

When Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton premiered on Broadway in 2015, it quickly became one of the most celebrated and influential musicals of the twenty-first century. By blending hip-hop with traditional musical theatre and casting actors of color as the Founding Fathers, the production reshaped how American history could be represented on stage. This essay explores how Hamilton functions as both a cultural breakthrough and a source of political controversy. While the musical has been praised for expanding representation in theatre and making history feel accessible to modern audiences, scholars have also criticized it for simplifying the realities of America’s past, particularly …

The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University's performance of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.

Performed September 25-28, 2025 in the Mitchell Theatre at Taylor University.

At its heart, The Glass Menagerie is a story about the grace that vulnerability makes possible. The Wingfield family—Tom, Amanda, and Laura—are fragile, flawed, and fiercely human. Their lives are marked by disappointment and desire, yet Williams invites us to approach them with tenderness. Laura’s glass animals, so delicate and beautiful, are not just a metaphor for her own inner world but for the human spirit itself—easily broken, but capable of reflecting light in ways that …

The Onnagata: A Note Regarding The Male Actor Of Female Roles In Japanese Theatre, John M. Metcalf

The Ozark Historical Review

This paper discusses the influence of the Kabuki onnagata, male actors portraying female characters, on Japanese culture.

Interspecies Responsivity In Early Modern Drama And Animal Performances, Taylor C. Culbert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation proposes an expansive, interspecies definition of performance that uses behavior rather than cognition as the decisive feature and illustrates how such a definition can reshape our approach to theatre and performance history. Using the concept of responsivity, which refers to the embodied and affective ways that humans and non-human animals acknowledge and react to one another, I trace human–animal interactions across a variety of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century performance genres, from the aristocratic stag hunt and entertainments involving trained animals to the plays of Molière and Shakespeare. Drawing on my experience training animals, I offer a new perspective on …

A New Exit: The Impact Of Historical Play Adaptations On Modern Audiences, Karli Jean Lonnquist

SURF Posters and Papers

Contemporary theatrical adaptation involves deconstructing, reimagining, and rewriting historical plays for modern audiences. Adaptation appropriates theatrical conventions, changes the lens through which the audience may view the play, and offers new entry points into thinking and practice. Adaptation asks, “why this source as theatre now?” and proposes that history provides tools for engagement with contemporary issues. By employing a Practice as Research (PaR) methodology, I will investigate the art of historical adaptation and adapt No Exit, a 1945 existentialist play by Jean-Paul Sartre, through the lenses of constructivism and performance studies. I will develop my script through collaborative workshops, stage …

Class Act

DePaul Magazine

As The Theatre School at DePaul University turns 100, past and present administrators and faculty and illustrious alumni comment on the school's enduring legacy of hands-on learning, collaboration and critical dialogue.

Selected Projects In Scenic Design And Technical Direction, Ky Trupp

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

A selection of projects in scenic design and technical direction produced by Utah State Theater involving Ky Trupp and others. Each chapter studies the design process and production process of three individual shows where Ky was the Scenic Designer or Technical Director.

Right To Work Laws – The Effects On Unionization With A Theatrical Emphasis, Jade A. Randle

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

A look at the impacts that right to work laws may have on theatrical unions.

An Exploration Of Elderly Representation & Stereotypes In Animation, Tyler Kidd

All Theses

In the world of animated features, supporting cast members are often reduced down to simple character traits in order to give the audience a simple idea of their personality or role in the story, or to support the creation of a work that is easier to understand for people of all ages. However, this can often result in the application of negative tropes that do not reflect kindly on those being depicted. The elderly are a group that often get caught in these stereotypes, being depicted as wrinkly, clumsy, overweight villains. While you can still find many positive portrayals in …

Hamete Y Su Viaje Transformador, Matthew J. Dean

Homage to Alexander von Humboldt: Travels to and from Spain Throughout the Centuries / Homenaje a Alexander von Humboldt: Viajes hacia y desde España de todos los siglos

El Hamete de Toledo es un drama escrito por Lope de Vega. Cuenta la historia de un noble musulmán del norte de África que es capturado y esclavizado en España. Este artículo sitúa la acción en el contexto histórico, destacando las técnicas dramáticas a través de las cuales se revelara el viaje de transformación del protagonista.

"You Know The Rules": A Dramatic Experiment In Aromantic Literary Theory, April Chronowski

English

This paper proposes a new literary theory framework based on the zine "an aromantic manifesto" by yingchen and yingtong, as well as the work of Erving Goffman, using theater as a device to examine romantic relationships. Blending English and sociology, I focus each chapter on a different literary period and examine two plays each: early modern (Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing), modern (Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Djuna Barnes' "To The Dogs"), and contemporary (Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9 and Margaret Edson's W;t). In tandem with analysis of formal elements---like …

Creating New Points Of Access: How Integrating Black Acting Methods Strengthens The Western Theatre Canon., Darrin Edward Dispenza-Mosley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Western acting techniques have historically disregarded the contributions and techniques of black and non-Western performance to the detriment of black actors. This disregard has created barriers for black actors when engaging in what has now become standard theatre training. This training is enforced by implementation of acting techniques in academia that favor codified techniques of Eurocentric acting. Despite black acting techniques being codified and taught within the black community and academia, outside of a few historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), predominately white academia has implemented valuable training methods that black/African American Acting techniques can offer. By looking at American …

Bars, Barristers, And Bias: A Content Analysis Of Legal Plays, Evan Chartock

Media and Communication Studies Honors Papers

This content analysis paper investigates the portrayal of the legal profession onstage within legal dramas first performed in the twenty-first century. There has been no previous research that has focused on a comprehensive analysis of the specific content of legal dramas, so this study is exploratory in nature. This study emphasizes the importance of learning about the content characteristics of legal plays and legal characters. This content analysis seeks to answer two research questions. First, do playwrights of legal plays first performed between 2000-2024 belong to similar identity demographics, write about similar content, and/or have similar messaging regarding the notion …

Guys & Dolls: A Musical Fable Of Broadway, Damon Runyon, Jo Swerling, Abe Burrows

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University's performance of Guys & Dolls: A Musical Fable of Broadway based on a story amd characters of Damon Runyan and a book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser.

Performed April 25, 2025 at 8:00pm, April 26 & May 2-3, 2025 at 7:30pm and April 27 & May 4, 2025 at 2:00pm in the Mitchell Theatre at Taylor University.

Set in the colorful, fictional world of Damon Runyon's New York City, Guys and Dolls is a musical comedy that intertwines two distinct love stories among the city's gamblers and …

The Space Defines The Phrase: An Analysis Of How Performance Venues Helped Shape Classic Play Texts, Carl Sage

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

Within the world of scenography there is an axiom that states:

“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with the playwright.” That is to say that designers need to derive their worlds from what the authors present. Scenographers do, of course, engage in research, segments of which include such questions as: What was occurring in the world at the time the piece was written? What stories might the author have been exposed to as inspiration? How have other scenographers interpreted this particular text? Such dramaturgical questions – and others – have a reasonable scenographic utility. However, no …

Tartans: Weaving A Warped History With Myths, Heritage And A Whole Lot Of Heather., Bethany Sassen

LSU Master's Theses

Scotland has many tartans throughout the whole of the country. Each has a different meaning and is used for different clans and purposes. Tartans are the plaids that are seen throughout the Highlands and the patterns and colors have a wide range depending on where and when the tartan was created. The purpose of this research is to investigate the history of the tartans and how they interact with our current culture. I also built two outfits to show how tartan is still being used. One a more traditional outfit and the other more avant garde. Tartans have a long …

Sense And Sensibility, Kate Hamill, Jane Austen

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University's performance of Kate Hamill's Sense and Sensibility based on the book by Jane Austen.

Performed on February 20-22, 2025 at 7:30pm and February 22-23 2025 at 2:00pm in the Mitchell Theatre at Taylor University.

Kate Hamill's adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility is a witty and fast-paced theatrical production that condenses the original novel's plot while emphasizing its comedic and satirical elements. The play follows the Dashwood sisters, the pragmatic Elinor and the romantic Marianne, as they navigate the challenges of love, loss, and societal expectations after their family is left in poverty. Hamill's …

Deuce Redemption: Grindhouse Cinema, Moral Panic, And Urban Renewal, Robert Brenner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

If you consult standard histories of the “redevelopment” of 42^nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, AKA “the Deuce,” you will read that it was filled with nothing but criminals and pornographers, that decent people avoided it at all costs, and the only way the block could be “saved” was by seizing it via eminent domain, evicting all the current tenants, and replacing them with Disney and its fellow entertainment corporations.

The purpose of this thesis is to offer a more nuanced alternative to these standard histories. I will argue that the Deuce was a lower-class, multiracial, queer entertainment …

Rainbow Road To Prismatic Playwriting: Black Women's Dramatic Praxis In Practice, Taren Wilson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the lived experiences of Black women in academia, uplifting those interested in non-traditional or creative scholarship. Underrepresentation and attrition due to exclusionary academic practices is a systemic problem. What can Black feminist playwriting as research do for Black women in academia hoping to resist and connect to themselves and their community? What can playwriting as a Black woman doctoral student elucidate about the utility of playwriting as research, culturally informed epistemologies, and African American women's drama? By merging African American women's drama, Black feminist epistemologies, Practice as Research, and playwriting as research, I developed an onto-epistemological method …

The Wild Dark Or, La Oscuridad Salvaje: Illuminating Identity Through Failure, Worley B. Gierhart

Undergraduate Theses

This thesis, "The Wild Dark or, La oscuridad salvaje: Illuminating Identity Through Failure," explores how the narrative power of darkness can serve as a catalyst for profound self-discovery, particularly in the aftermath of significant failure. Drawing upon literary analysis and the author's personal experience of shifting academic paths, the study examines how confronting metaphorical darkness allows for a critical rebuilding of identity and self-concept. The play referenced in the title, "The Wild Dark or, La oscuridad salvaje," serves as a central point of analysis, investigating the interplay of theme, setting, and scenario in depicting this transformative process. By engaging with …