Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Wow Cafe Theater Unveils 30th Anniversary Festival After Three Decades, Fierce Performers Prove The Show Will Go On, Esther Zinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

WOW Cafe Theater, a collective for female and and trans performance artists, strutted its stuff during its Pearl festival in May by celebrating thirty years of producing risk-taking, genre-defying theatre during the entire month of May 2010. Featuring more than twenty performances and fifty artists spanning a broad spectrum of music, dance, and multi-media, the Pearl festival was arguably the biggest and longest running theatrical event for women in New York during this summer, made possible by a generous grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Design Collaboration As A Tool For Developing Diversity In The Work Place, Rees E. E. Shad

Publications and Research

Without a doubt the modern workplace is one made up of numerous working professionals graced with an array of varied abilities who work in tandem to meet a common goal. In this article the author recounts his personal journey to embracing the collaborative process and how he has honed and developed the skill set into an important element of design curriculum in order to prepare students for this fundamental market paradigm.

Dramatophobia To Theatrophilia, Dennis Bates

Touchstone

No abstract provided.

Synesthetic Landscapes In Harold Pinter’S Theatre: A Symbolist Legacy, Graça Corrêa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the light of recent interdisciplinary critical approaches to landscape and space, and adopting phenomenological methods of sensory analysis, this dissertation explores interconnected or synesthetic sensory "scapes" in contemporary British playwright Harold Pinter's theatre. By studying its dramatic landscapes and probing into their multi-sensory manifestations in line with Symbolist theory and aesthetics, I argue that Pinter's theatre articulates an ecocritical stance and a micropolitical critique.

Chapter One explains the dissertation's theoretical framework (landscape theory, Symbolist theory, ecocriticism, phenomenology, and sensory analysis), while arguing for an ecophilosophical reading of Pinter's landscapes that engages not only with spatial patterns but …

Radical Theatricality: Jongleuresque Performance On The Early Spanish Stage, Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

Radical Theatricality describes medieval and early modern oral traditions through the culture of “jongleuresque” performers: juglares, trovadores, and other itinerant players, who have been relegated to the fringes of theatre history.

Road Show (Review), Alisa Roost

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Elisabeth, Alisa Roost

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Female Agency And Oppression In Caribbean Bacchanalian Culture: Soca, Carnival, And Dancehall, Kevin Frank

Publications and Research

In this essay Kevin Frank discerningly analyzes agency and gender in public sexual performances emanating out of what Paul Gilroy identifies as part of the compensatory politics of the subordinated within Black Atlantic culture, Jamaican dancehall (dancehall reggae/ dancehall queens).

Strokes Of Existence: The Connection Of All Things, Mari Gorman

Graduate Student Publications and Research

Acted or real—and all life is real whether one is acting or not—the common denominator and consistent, ubiquitous reality of life and all behavior is that it manifests in the form of relationships on all scales. But what is a relationship? Until now, the answer to this question has not been sufficiently known. As a result of many years of empirical research that began with the aim of discovering what is going on in a gifted actor when s/he is playing a character that can be observed and experienced as a living, intuitive being, and based on the knowledge that …

The Sacred Performative: Holy Wednesday And Colonial Ritual/Theatre, Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

"Holy Wednesday" is a late sixteenth century adaptation of a Spanish auto sacramental (sacred play) written in alphabetized Nahuatl, the predominant pre-Columbian language spoken on the High Central Plateau of Mexico. The author remains unknown, however he was likely a Nahua amanuensis educated by Franciscans at Colegio de Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco. Religious drama was one of the important evangelizing tools of the Catholic brotherhoods in colonial Mexico and although a record of performance of Holy Wednesday does not exist, this dramatic depiction of the final meeting of Christ and Mary prior to the crucifixion was almost certainly performed as …

Unshap'd Monsters: Political Farce On The London Stage, 1717-1737, Melissa Ann Bloom

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation reexamines the role of John Gay's and Henry Fielding's anti-government satirical farces during the politically contentious 1720s and 1730s in London. Although their plays were and still are considered, variously, burlesques, entertainments, farces, and satires, I call them satirical farce for two reasons. First, contemporaries used the term farce as much to signify political and social stances as dramatic type or function. Those political and social stances are the central focus of this dissertation. Second, I see in this collection of plays—Gay's Three Hours After Marriage (1717) and The Beggar's Opera (1728), Fielding's The Author's Farce (1730), The …

Towards A New Form Of Opera Production, David Smith, Frederick Bianchi

Publications and Research

Opera has historically been one of the most expensive and complex art forms to produce, limiting its accessibility and viability, especially for smaller companies and touring productions. This paper proposes a new model for opera production that utilizes emerging technologies—such as synchronized digital music systems, real-time projection, and programmable lighting—to create high-quality operatic experiences at significantly reduced cost. By leveraging tools like the Sinfonia system for musical timing and dynamic visual elements controlled by digital protocols, opera can be made portable, repeatable, and customizable. The model aims not to replace traditional opera but to supplement it with efficient, flexible systems …

Writing Intensive Courses In Theatre, Alisa Roost

Publications and Research

Most professors believe writing matters. Through writing our students are better able to synthesize ideas, communicate those ideas, and make connections across fields. While it can take significant time to grade all the assignments, it can threaten coverage of material, and our students rarely appreciate it, writing assignments can be crafted to reduce grading, add depth to coverage, and spark interest. What follows is an overview of how I incorporate writing into my theatre courses and some ways of crafting engaging writing-intensive courses.

Constant Star (Review), Alisa Roost

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Sexual Slander And Working Women In "The Roaring Girl", Mario Digangi

Publications and Research

Though scholarship of the early modern era focuses on the character of Moll Frith when considering the gender ideology contained in Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker's "The Roaring Girl," the play's other female characters are also of interest. The "citizen wives" of the play are women who, though married, work outside the home. Their special status in the emerging capitalist marketplace of the early modern era gave rise to unique anxieties about their economic power and sexual availability. These anxieties in turn made these women especially susceptible to slander against their sexual reputation and thus respectability in the community. An …

Art Or Propaganda: A Historical And Critical Analysis Of African-American Approaches To Dramatic Theory, 1900–1965, Henry D. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation surveys African American approaches to dramatic theory from 1900 to 1965, demonstrating that in the period the issue dominating the field was a great debate that defined black drama as art on the one hand and as propaganda on the other. In an African American cultural history replete with covert and overt struggles for social and political equality, the art or propaganda question necessarily reached a magnitude and importance found in no other area of twentieth-century dramatic theory. The comprehensiveness of the debate that interrogated this question and its historical and cultural depth has largely gone untreated. Moreover, …

Dalí'S Musical Roundabouts, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Those familiar with Salvador Dalí's contradictory nature as well as his propensity to mask his own thoughts will not be surprised to learn that, publicly, he despised music, though obviously that was not the case at all. In fact, many witnesses say – Amanda Lear, for one – he was actually quite musical and, time and again, he could be caught off guard singing or humming Catalan folk songs, sardanas, zarzuelas, and cuplés – all folksy, kitschy, and, by most accounts, tacky popular songs. Dalí, however, went to a great length to conceal this spontaneous love for the simple, uncomplicated …

Broadway And The Paycock: The Broadway Musical Adaptation Of Sean O'Casey's Juno And The Paycock, Julia M. Furay

Publications and Research

The 1959 Broadway musical Juno, based on Sean O'Casey's 1924 classic Juno and the Paycock, is notable despite its ultimate artistic and financial failure. Musical adaptors Joseph Stein and Marc Blitzstein were inspired by the inherent musicality of O'Casey's play. However, O'Casey's linguistic complexity, profound characterization and political commentary were impossible to translate onto the Broadway stage. Instead, Stein, Blitzstein and de Mille emphasized ritualism and psychology within the story of the Boyle family, and were careful to conform O'Casey's world to that of 1950s Broadway. In doing so, however, the adaptation became different thematically from its predecessor. …

Remembering Beyond The Self: Crossing Borders 2001, Jill Dolan

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

In a passionate keynote address at the third in CLAGS's series of "Crossing Borders" conferences, Cherríe Moraga called on conference participants to "hold the pussy in public," to join otherwise isolated Latina/o artists in bringing racialized queerness into public debate. Presented at the University of Texas at Austin in February, "Crossing Borders 2001: U.S. Latina/o Queer Performance" was linked by its coalitional politics around race and ethnicity—broadly figured as latinidad—and gender and sexuality. This three-day gathering was sponsored by CLAGS through a generous gift from the Michael C.P. Ryan Estate and co-sponsored by the Center for Dramatic and Performance Studies …

Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals, And The Mass-Marketing Of Amusement, 1895-1915, Andrew L. Erdman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Vaudeville was the most popular form of entertainment in the United States, from roughly the 1890s through World War I. In fact, it can reasonably be called the first truly mass form of entertainment in the United States, and perhaps the world. This dissertation examines how vaudeville grew as the first national, large-scale form of amusement in America. It attempts to locate the rise of this first form of mass entertainment within an era when powerful businessmen in many industries were beginning to market products and services to a national market as well.

Furthermore, this dissertation examines some of the …

Passing Performances: Conference Opens Closet Of American Theatre, James Wilson

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Coincidentally, CLAGS's one-day symposium "Passing Performances: History, Evidence, Identification" occurred just as Hollywood's biggest film star publicly rejected the long-standing and wide-spread claims that he is gay. In a high-profile legal battle that concluded this past fall, Tom Cruise and his wife Nicole Kidman settled their libel suit against a London tabloid, which asserted that their eight-year marriage is actually a ruse constructed to conceal Cruise's alleged homosexuality. The couple reportedly settled for more than $500,000, and they hoped to quash rumors once and for all that their marriage is a sham. Even in this "post-Ellen" era, the suit reflects …

John Brougham: The American Performance Career Of An Irish Comedian, 1842–1880, Dana Rahm Sutton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Reports during the nineteenth century indicate that John Brougham was one of the best known actors of his day, but little study during the twentieth century has been made of his performance career. Today he is sometimes recognized as a playwright, probably because two of his plays have been included in anthologies of nineteenth-century plays, but he considered himself primarily an actor rather than playwright. While it has been acknowledged that he was never very successful financially in his repeated attempts at theatre managements, reasons for his lack of success have not been fully explored. His artistic triumphs as a …

Contemporary Romanian Theatre: Artistry, Honesty, And Adaptation In The Plays Of Iosif Naghiu, Dumitru Radu Popescu And Marin Sorescu, Eric Pourchot

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the plays and productions of three contemporary Romanian playwrights—Iosif Naghiu, Dumitru Radu Popescu, and Marin Sorescu—as they reflect the changing cultural policies and climate of Romania from 1968 to 1998. The three case studies demonstrate that, faced with harsh political censorship during the Ceausescu years and economic difficulties since the overthrow of communism in 1989, contemporary Romanian drama and theatre has nevertheless maintained an artistic merit and integrity deserving of wider acknowledgment. Romanian directors are well-known internationally but, paradoxically, the drama of Romania, despite close linguistic connections to Western Europe, has received far less attention than has …

The Women Of The Ten, Twent', Thirt': Popular Melodrama Theatre In Turn-Of-The-Century New York, Barbara Meredith Waldinger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the first decade of the twentieth century, when the population of New York City was growing by leaps and bounds because of immigration, urbanization, and industrialization, a short-lived theatre movement known as the "ten-twenty-thirty," or, more familiarly, the "ten, twent', thirt," was born. Originally named for the low prices of the tickets, the term came to encompass various types of touring companies that travelled throughout the country, resident stock companies, and hundreds of plays, mostly melodramas, written expressly for this movement. Created by enterprising producers, managers, and playwrights, the ten, twent', thirt' catered to the needs of the working-class …

A Message From The New Executive Director, Jill Dolan

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

I'm honored and pleased to be succeeding Marty Duberman as Executive Director of CLAGS. I taught in theatre and drama and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before I accepted my present position in the PhD Program in Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. At Madison, teaching and writing in lesbian performance theory, the fact that a national center for lesbian and gay studies had been established in New York gave me a sense that the field in which I worked was arriving, securing its legitimacy and its vibrancy and insisting on its visibility. In my two years at …

Asses And Wits: The Homoerotics Of Mastery In Satiric Comedy, Mario Digangi

Publications and Research

This essay explores master-servant homoeroticism in three seventeenth-century satiric comedies: Ben Jonson's Epicoene and Volpone and George Chapman's The Gentleman Usher. Whereas "sodomy" always signifies social disorder, "homoerotic" useful for describing same-sex relations that are socially normative or orderly. Thus homoerotic master-servant relations become "sodomitical" only when they are perceived to threaten social order. In Epicoene, the character associated with the disorder of "sodomy" is neither Dauphine or Epicoene, but the "unnatural" Morose, even though he has not literally had sex with the boy he marries. The erotic master-servant relationship in Volpone is sodomitical because it transgresses against …

Acting Hysteria: An Analysis Of The Actress And Her Part, Lydia Stryk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the woman's part in dramatic representation as a hysterical construct and explores the hystericizing effect that the playing of this construct has on the actress. Drawing on feminist psychoanalytic analyses of male psychology and on the historical origins of male-invented female hysteria, this study uses dramatic representation as a model and metaphor for woman's hystericization in Western culture.

Charcot's theatricalization of female hysteria through public performances of hysterical acts and the Ophelia as psychological/aesthetic model in British mental asylums are investigated as metaphorical sources for a new definition of female hysteria as a disease of performance, of …

The Changing Face Of Fortune In Six English Versions Of The Tragedy Of Antony And Cleopatra, Mary Aileen Mallery

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study traces the development and changes in the depiction of the goddess Fortune in a selected group of dramas written between 1592 and 1678: the six English versions of the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. The concepts surrounding the goddess Fortune and her place in any culture change with the idea of the individual's ability to shape his own destiny. In the seventeenth century in particular Fortune becomes increasingly connected to questions of personal identity and what Stephen Greenblatt has called "self-fashioning," so that by 1678 the subject of John Dryden's All for Love is not the quest for …

Influences Of The Post-World War Ii Era On The American Political Theater, 1968–1972, Lydia Alix Gerson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From 1968 to 1972, years which many historians have determined as encompassing the most focussed characteristics of the Sixties as a whole, the United States underwent enormous political upheaval which affected every one of its major institutions, including the theater. The political turmoil of the period was reflected in the theater, both mainstream and alternative. Literally hundreds of political theater pieces were produced and acted in the streets, shopping malls, church basements and stages of the United States. Yet little scholarly attention has been paid to the phenomenon. What little work is available concentrates on aesthetics; content is largely ignored. …

Improvisation For Actor Training And Performance In 20th Century America (With Special Emphasis On The Spolin And Sills Tradition), Jeff David Brone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the methods and value of using improvisation to train actors in their craft and to help them perform scripted material more effectively. The period and place covered is primarily America in the 20th century. The dissertation also analyzes the use of improvisation from a theoretical, historical and practical perspective and discusses the work of various acting teachers and companies who use (or used) improv to create theatre and who have been influenced by the basic teachings of Spolin, Sills or, in some significant instances, Stanislavski.

After a brief introductory chapter on the use of improv in the …