Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Drama And Sermon In Late Medieval England: Performance, Authority, Devotion, Charlotte Steenbrugge

Early Drama, Art, and Music

This is the first full-length study of the interrelation between sermons and vernacular religious drama in late medieval England. It investigates how these genres worked as media for public learning, how they combined this didactic aim with literary exigencies, and how the plays in particular acquired and reflected a position of authority. The interrelation between sermons and vernacular drama, formerly assumed relatively uncritically to be a close one, is addressed from a variety of angles, including historical connections, performative aspects, and the portrayal of the sacrament of penance. The analysis challenges the common assumption that Middle English religious drama is …

Precarious Democracy: "It Can't Happen Here" As The Federal Theatre's Site Of Mass Resistance, Macy Donyce Jones

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The scholarly consensus of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) is that it was a massive undertaking set to employ theatre professionals during the Great Depression. That undertaking resulted in vibrant, relevant theatre that helped to build a theatre audience across the nation. Outside of the overview-style scholarship, specialized studies have delved into the FTP as a community-building enterprise, a site of racial/ethnic study, and an essential new play creator.

My scholarship fills a hole that previous FTP scholarship has left open. The FTP was a political machine engaged in producing pro-American propaganda. That aspect of production has been largely left …

Book Review Of Emma Creedon, Sam Shepard And The Aesthetics Of Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Katherine Weiss

ETSU Faculty Works

Review of Emma Creedon, Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, xi + 199 pp., $90.00.

The Irishtheatre As Imaginative Space: A Vehicle And Venue For The Reconstruction Of The Irish Identity, Rania M Rafik Khalil

English Language and Literature

Current cultural and political changes have prompted the theatre to play a significant role in staging the transformations of the Irish identity. Over time, it has provided an impetus for expressions of the collective new self-image of the Irish. Re-inventing the self requires a manifestation of space and the production of space whether geographical, metaphorical or a physical stage representation. ‘Space’has been utilisedin Irish drama in terms ofgeographical location, cartography, socialmedia, technology, immigration, and the theatre stage. Globalisation has also played a crucial role in terms of creating overlapping spacesand multiple belongings.This study will examinethrough Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space, …

Percy Bysshe Shelley’S The Cenci And The “Pernicious Mistake” Of The Regency-Era Melodrama, Derek Leuenberger

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Review Of Laura Engel And Elaine Mcgirr, Eds., Stage Mothers: Women, Work, And The Theater, 1660-1830, Kristina Straub

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Stage Mothers is a collection of essays that complicate the binary between female professional and domestic mother, contributing to theater history and the history of female professionalization and maternity.

Review Of Kathryn E. Davis, Liberty In Jane Austen's Persuasion, Stephanie Russo

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Review Of Heteronormativity In Eighteenth-Century Literature And Culture, Kevin Bourque

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Highest Form Of Public Scholarship, Cynthia Richards

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Women, Gender And The Arts: Intersections, Differences And Connections, Mona Narain

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

What's In A Name? New Vision For Abo, Laura Runge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Introduction to the new vision statements for the journal.

2017 Cave Run Storytelling Festival Poster, Cave Run Storytelling Festival Committee (Morehead, Ky.), Morehead Tourism Commission (Morehead, Ky.)

Cave Run Storytelling Festival Posters

Promotional development poster for the Cave Run Storytelling Festival held on September 29 to September 30, 2017. Those performing included: Donald Davis, Antonio Rocha, Barbara McBride-Smith, Ed Stivender, Linda Gorham, Bill Harley, and Motoko.

Liturgical Drama And The Reimagining Of Medieval Theater, Michael Norton

Early Drama, Art, and Music

The expression "liturgical drama" was formulated in 1834 as a metaphor and hardened into formal category only later in the nineteenth century. Prior to this invention, the medieval rites and representations that would forge the category were understood as distinct and unrelated classes: as liturgical rites no longer celebrated or as theatrical works of dubious quality. If this distinction between liturgical rites and non-liturgical representations holds, should we not examine the works called "liturgical drama" according to the contexts of their presentations within the manuscripts and books that preserve them? Given the ways that the words "liturgy" and "drama" have …

Theatre For Social Change: Histories & Applications, Samantha J. Hageman

Theater Summer Fellows

Theater is not only an art form, but also a method of communication and community-building. My research investigates how theater can be used to create social change. I study approaches to using theater as a vehicle for social change and a tool to communicate diverse perspectives and cultivate empathy. My work focuses on a history of theater for social change, examples of theater for social change including plays and performance pieces, and ways of both creating and teaching theater for social change. My project culminates in an annotated bibliography, a research paper, an original theater for social change monologue, and …

From Humiliation To Epiphany: The Role Of Onstage Spaces In T. S. Eliot’S Middle Plays, Ria Banerjee

Publications and Research

This essay looks at T. S. Eliot's major dramatic productions from the 1930s-40s: Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party as a series of investigations into spatial expressions of faith. By using onstage space in unique ways, Eliot encourages audiences to consider the connections between performance and belief, the knowable and unknowable.

Arabella’S Valentines And Literary Connections [Dot] Com: Playing With Eighteenth-Century Gender Online, Melanie D. Holm

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This article describes two digital assignments that ask students to imaginatively embody characters from eighteenth-century texts written by women in order to cultivate a greater awareness of the critical role of gender and gender critique in these works. The first of these assignments, “Arabella’s Valentines,” asks students to translate dialogue from Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote as humorous Internet memes. The second assignment, “Literary Connections [dot] com,” asks students to imagine how characters from the course archive might represent themselves on an internet dating site. Through creative role-play facilitated by these digital genres, students engage with the texts in stimulating …

Review Of Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, And Belief In Early Modern England, Amy Mallory-Kani

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

General Editor's Note, Laura Runge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Acts Of Provocation: Popular Antiracisms On/Through The Twenty-First Century New York Commercial Stage, Stefanie A. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an abolitionist feminist study of the role of liberalism in the twenty-first century political economy. It takes as its object New York City bourgeois cultural productions (in particular Broadway theatre and the New York Times) from approximately 1984 to 2009. It offers insights into important yet widely-misunderstood features of turn-of-millennium US society: class, art, political practice, and war. In order to understand liberalism’s political and economic agenda, I look at how these objects are pitched in the struggle over racism. Sometimes when we say “liberal” we mean it in the philosophical sense, with particular attention to liberal …

Theatre Translation As Historiography: Projections Of Greek Self-Identity Through English Translations During The European Crisis, Maria Mytilinaki

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project focuses on theatre translation from Modern Greek into English through the examination of three plays translated in the early years of the ongoing Greek crisis (2012-2014). Currently Greek culture is received internationally through two important frames of reference: Hellenism, the admiration for the ancient Greek spirit, and the more recent negative associations with modern Greece provoked by the Eurozone crisis. The three translations I examine challenge these dual external projections onto Greek culture by promoting a more nuanced image that recontextualizes the Greek past. In their capacity to travel between cultures, often in bilingual iterations, these theatrical translations …

Twenty-First-Century Transnational Theatre Development In The Cases Of Théâtre Du Soleil/Aftaab And Sundance Institute East Africa: Cultural Politics, Performance Aesthetics, And Global Circulation, Julia Goldstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines two case studies of twenty-first-century transnational theatre development programs in which arts organizations from wealthy countries in the Global North extend resources and support for the professional development of theatre artists in regions in the Global South. The first case study takes up the French theatre company Théâtre du Soleil’s work in Afghanistan, starting in 2005, leading to the formation of the Afghan theatre company Aftaab and the next ten years of Soleil’s support of and collaboration with Aftaab, transpiring both in Kabul and Paris. The second case study examines the Sundance Institute East Africa Theatre Lab …

The Killing Noise Of The Out Of Style, Bryon E. Reiger

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

N/A

The Force Of Seduction: The Use Of Rape Narratives In The Plays Of Aphra Behn, Caitlyn Piccirillo

Theses and Dissertations

The English Restoration’s heightened interest in sexuality promoted the use of rape narratives on the stage. Aphra Behn, the first woman to earn her living as a playwright, used these narratives in her work (specifically in The Rover and The City Heiress) as a means of social critique.

4000 Matches On Fire At Once: Studies In Memory And Performance, Lauren Chapman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

In examining the journey that has brought me to the position I am in as a dramaturg, artist, and person, it would be at best rude and at worst irresponsible not to acknowledge the universe of people, productions, and ideas that have molded me. Just as plays are composites and amalgams of ideas, emotions, styles, and themes, so is an emerging dramaturg. My experience is both entirely my own, and not my own at all. In reflecting this experience for my thesis exhibit, I feel it’s important to isolate those individuals and ideas that have molded me.

By presenting their …

The Unkindness Of Strangers: Exploring Success And Isolation In The Dramatic Works Of Tennessee Williams, Chelsea Nicole Gilbert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to explore the theme of isolation in the dramatic works of Tennessee Williams using his essay “The Catastrophe of Success” as the base theory text. The essay attacks the American idea of success though an in-depth examination of the “Cinderella myth” that Williams claims is so prevalent in both Hollywood and American Democracy. Williams’ deconstruction of this myth reveals that America’s love for stories like it results the isolation of three groups: homosexuals, women and the physically disabled and terminally ill. Williams passes no judgment on his characters, instead showing their lives as they truly are. Through …

Expressions Of Madness In Coloratura Mad Scenes Of Bel Canto Operas, Rachel G. Christenson

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis will explore the musical innovations in the mad scenes of the bel canto composers in the 1800s. It will analyze Gaetano Donizetti’s mad scenes in Anna Bolena (1830) and Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), and Vincezzo Bellini’s mad scenes in I Puritani (1835) to discover how each composer expresses madness through the high and virtuosic voice of the coloratura soprano. The subject of madness is not a new idea in opera. However, the mad scenes of Donizetti and Bellini are the most successful and are often performed in opera houses around the world. Specific attention is given to the …

"We Are Family": The Influences Of American Culture On The Representation Of Family In Modern American Drama, Deandre C. Short

Student Scholar Showcase

The dramatic works that subject usually deals with the family unit reflect a particular issue in American culture—politically or socially. American playwrights often use their work to challenge popular ideologies and values embedded into American society. Often modern American drama incorporates political, social, and cultural issues as a means to develop the relationship between the family unit. The familial relationship(s) in modern American drama are influenced by the political, social, and cultural environments in the United States.

Sibling Affection And Domestic Heterosexuality In Lodovick Carlell’S The Deserving Favorite, Mario Digangi

Publications and Research

Lodowick Carlell’s play The Deserving Favorite (1629) deploys the ideological strategy of using erotic “likeness” to validate marital unions as consensual and erotically compatible. In an era before the normalization of heterosexuality, the play suggests that sexually passionate marital relations earn legitimacy to the degree that they emulate the affectionate relations between women and between siblings. Although eroticized female friendship approaches the ideal of a consensual and sensual partnership, intimate relations between women seem best to thrive in a separatist environment removed from courtly social and economic exchanges, including the marital negotiations crucial to cementing dynastic and political alliances. Brothers …

The Shadow Puppets Of Elsinore: Edward Gordon Craig And The Cranach Press Hamlet, James P. Taylor

Mime Journal

Taylor considers the role that book arts may play in Craig’s theories of the new theatre, or the Art of the Future. He expands our understanding of Craig’s design work to include print culture, examining his engravings for the monumental editions of Hamlet published by Count Harry Kessler’s Cranach Press in 1929–30. Taylor explores the relationship of Craig’s designs for the 1912 Moscow Art Theatre production of Hamlet to his engravings for the German and English-language Cranach Press editions of the play. He suggests that it was only with this print publication that Craig finally achieved the absolute artistic control …

A Love Untaught By Law, Emma Oliver

VA Engage Journal

A self-proclaimed “live and let live” society, Laramie, Wyoming quickly became everything but when studied by the Tectonic Theater Company following the murder of Matthew Shepard. By drawing attention to disturbingly inherent elements of Laramie’s culture including verbal distancing, an elitist sentiment, and the belief that apathy is acceptable, the theater company exposes the hostile climate that has made this Wyoming city nearly unlivable for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning community. In analyzing the language and attitudes of the residents of Wyoming as brought to light in the play The Laramie Project, this paper confirms the danger in …