Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Keeping Both History And Magic Alive: Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done (2018) At The Museum Of Modern Art, Beatrice M. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the exhibition, historical reconstruction, and museum acquisition and conservation of postmodern dance, with the 2018 MoMA exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done as a case study. This exhibition considered the history and legacy of 1960s postmodern dance through a presentation of artifacts and archives alongside a continuous program of live, in-gallery performances. The Work Is Never Done catalyzed questions in the three areas of dance exhibition, reconstruction, and conservation and, as this thesis argues, represents a unique example of preserving canonical dance history while creating a generative context for spontaneity, experimentation, and reinvention.

Transnational Ritual Poetics Of Blackness In Performance, Nina A. Mercer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I investigate transnational ritual poetics of Blackness through a historical, cultural, and spatial lens, centering my exploration on the recurrence of circles, the crossroads, and waterways. I show how these formal poetics activate Africana cosmologies, cosmogonies, and mythologies dramaturgically by centering contemporary New York City performance works that bring together dance, theatre, and music. I contextualize NYC performance case studies in relation to performance practices in contemporary Salvador da Bahia. I am particularly interested in how the recurrence of circles, the crossroads, and water as formal poetics catalyze interventions along contested water-ways and landscapes marked by Black …

Blacklash: Phenomenological Hermeneutics In Black Dance, Darvejon A. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

The horrors inflicted on Black bodies, souls, and spirits in the United States during the transatlantic slave trade, the Jim Crow era, and the current era (2023) have a lasting legacy of trauma metabolized through the body and transmuted generationally. Jones uses this data to contextualize the work of Black dance artists as hermeneutic phenomena in which the Black dance artist is a hermeneut tasked with delivering a message of the Black body/spirit complex: “I AM HUMAN. DO NOT KILL ME.” This paper examines how Black dance artists frequently petition for their survival — incessantly subjugated to the interpreter’s empathy, …

For What Is A Man?: Towards Languaging Contemporary Dance In A Black, Queer, Male-Presenting Body, Thomas Ford

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines Queering Blackness: Solo on a Theme of Reconciliation, a performance event that invokes movement, spoken text, projections and sound to explore the mechanisms of identity. Engaging performance, Black, queer and dance studies, the paper contextualizes cultural identity markers, towards an understanding of what it means to be Black, queer and male-assigned in Black spaces.

Gloria Rehearsal (Excerpt) A Feminist Mechanism For Metabolization, Eleanor Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Weaving embodied trauma studies with feminist theory, non-hierarchical creative structures, and research in dance improvisation, this thesis paper written by Eleanor Smith contextualizes the dance performance gloria rehearsal (excerpt). The performance piece was choreographed and performed by Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, who have been co-choreographing feminist dances since 2006.

Edward & Sons: An Improvised Opera, Ian Robles

Theses and Dissertations

A hurricane is coming, but at Edward & Sons Hardware and Plumbing the shelves are bare, the gringo debt collectors are calling and the owners is getting high in the back room. An improvised opera about the demise of the very last family-owned hardware store in Puerto Rico.

Zeus Iv, Lauren Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

How do you survive a pandemic? When you’re trapped inside for weeks? When society’s rules are revealed as largely arbitrary?

You get a dog and bring it to the park.

This play is about a group of devoted dog owners in Boston who stumble on an unexpected community. It's a dog park ballet about the close care of strangers.

I Could Never, Chad Kaydo

Theses and Dissertations

Isn’t it horrible? What she did? Can you even *imagine* doing that? Three women reckon with the dark myths we tell ourselves…while their husbands golf.

Walk Away, Anna May, Kim Diana Ly

Theses and Dissertations

Remember how Anna May Wong was passed over for white actors in yellowface? An emerging Asian American screenwriter moves on a kaleidoscopic journey through the entertainment industry -- from Kabuki to Crazy Rich Asians -- in order to understand why she's even trying to make it in Hollywood.

Riverside Drive, Phillip C. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

RIVERSIDE DRIVE: Eugene, a mild-mannered librarian by day and a foul-mouthed comedian by night, uncovers the hidden legacy of his family’s Harlem home which forces him to transform his life.

Stand-Up Comedy Visualized, Berna Yenidogan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Stand-up comedy has become an increasingly popular form of comedy in the recent years and comedians reach audiences beyond the halls they are performing through streaming services, podcasts and social media. While comedic performances are typically judged by how 'funny' they are, which could be proxied by the frequency and intensity of laughs through the performance, comedians also explore untapped social issues and provoke conversation, especially in this age where interaction with artists goes beyond their act. It is easy to see commonalities in the topics addressed in comedians’ work such as relationships, race and politics.This project provides an interactive …

Political Theatre After Occupy: Participation, Interpellation, And The Search For New Subjectivities In The Theatre, Andrew J. Goldberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The use of audience participation in political theatre has become a common feature of many performances. In this dissertation, I consider the dramaturgies of a number of political theatre performances that have premiered since 2011 and demand various forms of embodied audience engagement to elucidate the potential for theatre to produce a criticality about subjectivity and the processes of subjectivation. Drawing on the recent re-engagement with Althusser’s theory of interpellation by contemporary political theorists, I develop a theory of critical aesthetic interpellation, the strategic and self-reflexive play with the theatrical apparatus to defamiliarize the process of political subjectivation. These …

Unsung Heroines In Black And White: Sixties Girl Groups As Sonic Rock Rebellion, Hilarie Ashton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Before the Beatles arrived in America, exploding open the intersection between pop music and the emerging genre of rock and in so doing, drawing heavily on the work of Black music and musicians, girl groups were powerfully enacting a kind of cultural rebellion in both of those genres. In contrast to the historical impulse to privilege a breathlessly incomplete white male lineage, "Unsung Heroines" examines in closer, more connected spotlights the subversive creative work of the Black and working-class teenage girls in the Ronettes, the Chiffons, and the Shangri-Las. Across four chapters, "Unsung Heroines" shows how these singers subversively tucked …

Shakespeare On Zoom, Fandom, And The Uncanny Humor Of Imperfections And Plurality: A Comparative Study Of The Show Must Go Online And Zoom Shakespeare Productions, Hyemin Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis surveys the phenomena of Shakespeare performance on Zoom (‘Shakespeare on Zoom’) that have emerged during the current Covid pandemic in order to illuminate a complex intersection of lockdown culture, fandom, and new media’s techno-social archive, including its affective resonances. As case studies, this study pays attention to The Show Must Go Online (TSMGO) and Zoom Shakespeare Productions (ZSP) to examine countercultural fandom, vernacular creativity, and technologically imperfect aesthetics (or anti-aesthetics) in ‘Shakespeare on Zoom’ performed by underfunded artists or amateur fans. In analyzing TSMGO’s and ZSP’s endeavors of production and dramaturgy, I bring in Sigmund Freud’s …

Indigenous Performances In Contemporary Indian Urban Public Theatres: Coloniality, Globalization, And The State, Mayurakshi Sen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Indigenous Performances in Contemporary Indian Urban Public Theatres: Coloniality, Globalization, and the State examines the aesthetic and political dimensions of contemporary public theatres in the major Indian cities of Kolkata, Mumbai, and Delhi, with a special focus on the utilization of India’s indigenous precolonial (or extra-colonial) classical, regional, and folk performance forms, elements, and repertoires in such urban practice. Through dramaturgical, ethnographic, and archival analyses, this dissertation studies significant contemporary productions from representative urban Indian theatre groups, including Nandikar, Rangakarmee, and Padatik in Kolkata; the Indian People’s Theatre Association, Mumbai, Ekjute, and Rangshila in Mumbai; and Circle Theatre Company and …

“W”: Women In Afropop Entertainment At The Intersection Of Race, Gender, Sexuality, And Culture, Coreen Robledo

Theses and Dissertations

Performing artist uses a personal and historical viewpoint as a catalyst to discuss some women's challenges in the Afropop and African entertainment by offering social, patriarchal, cultural, and sexual contexts that the writer argues construct the images, reputations, decision-making, and circumstances of Brown and Black women in the entertainment industry.

Ritual, Spectacle, And Theatre In Late Medieval Seville (Chapter 1), Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

From the fall of Islamic Išbīliya in 1248 to the conquest of the New World, Seville was a nexus of economic and religious power where interconfessional living among Christians, Jews, and Muslims was negotiated on public stages. From out of seemingly irreconcilable ideologies of faith, hybrid performance culture emerged in spectacles of miraculous transformation, disciplinary processionals, and representations of religious identity. Ritual, Spectacle, and Theatre in Late Medieval Seville reinvigorates the study of medieval Iberian theater by revealing the ways in which public expressions of devotion, penance, and power fostered cultural reciprocity, rehearsed religious difference, and ultimately helped establish Seville …

Grendel's Mother, Zoe M. Lasden-Lyman

Theses and Dissertations

She helps all the humans and animals in her building. Then why won't she answer this strange, new knocking at her apartment door? A bizarre thriller about the world right now... and about cats.

Fighting For The Right To Dance In Nyc’S Public Parks, Caithlin Peña

Capstones

Kanami Kusajima is an ink dancer and street performer who dances and creates art at Washington Square Park. She’s also been clashing with the Park Enforcement Patrol officers, who patrol the area. Her attempts to create a safer space for her fellow performers brings to light the complicated rules and regulations as well as the obstacles street performers face on the daily. Link to capstone project: https://medium.com/@caithlin.pena53/fighting-for-the-right-to-dance-in-nycs-public-parks-2cab922d1a1c

Banarasipan As Revelation: Immanent Utopias In The Performance Of Everyday Life, Bhargav Rani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation locates itself at the intersection of performance theory, South Asian studies and philosophy of history to examine the history of an urban consciousness known as banarasipan (literally, "Banarasi-ness") as performed by the people of Banaras in northern India. Over the course of the twentieth century, banarasipan, as a distinct way of being in everyday life, has been characterized by its valorization of heroic laziness, seditious laughter, subversive obscenities, and by its egalitarian subjectivity that overrides sectarian and class differences. In the context of South Asian history, this dissertation interrogates the theoretical premises of both Marxist and postcolonial modes …

Examining The Linguistic Ideology "Throaty Sounds Are Bad For Performers": The History Of Negative Attitudes Towards Glottal Stops And Laryngealization In English, Dayle M. Towarnicky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis analyzes explicit metadiscourse (Johnstone et al 2006) on throaty sounds, primarily focused on glottal segments and non-modal constricted voice quality in English. Authors contributing to this metadiscourse are argued to be an offshoot of the speech chain network which valorized and circulated the English accent known as RP or Received Pronunciation, studied by Agha (2003). The evaluated texts center on English-speaking elocution, singing training, voice, speech, and voice care. The analysis shows glottal and guttural articulations are framed negatively and often discouraged by appeals to both health and aesthetics. Many authors in this performance speech chain network …

Primitivism, Performance Studies, And Modernist Time: Tracing An Alternative Genealogy Of Performance Studies Through Case Studies In Modernist Cultural Appropriation, Stephanie Vella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces a genealogy of research methodologies for documenting, transmitting, and analyzing embodied, non-textual performance practices from the late-nineteenth through early-twentieth centuries. I uncover intersections between these methods and the conflations of race and temporality that are ubiquitously threaded through modernist cultural practices during this time in the form of primitivism. The researchers whose work I analyze all saw European modernity as fundamentally detached from physical culture, while viewing other cultures—especially those of the people most directly threatened by colonial and capitalist expansion during this time—as having access to a “lost” corporeal knowledge. I argue that primitivism is not …

Operation Lone Star: The Spectacle Of Immigration Federalism, Danielle Puretz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Texas Governor Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in March 2021 to respond to the “crisis” at the United States/Mexico border. While in the US immigration is usually thought of as a federal responsibility, different states have worked to expand their capacity to welcome or exclude immigrants. Operation Lone Star is an example of how one state is working to restrict immigration to the US and build notoriety for its republican governor. Drawing on press releases, executive orders, news articles, opinion pieces, and other sources I highlight the performative politics within this initiative. Operation Lone Star is an example of …

Women And Ventriloquism In Early Modern English Drama, Ja Young Jeon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bringing together feminist and theater-centered readings, this dissertation examines the status of female vessels that foreign voices inhabit and animate in early modern drama, arguing that the Greek model of ventriloquism represented by the Pythia exerted a powerful influence on the period’s ideas about women’s speech. In feminist work on ventriloquism, despite highlighting theatrical performance’s dependence on citationality, ventriloquism has been largely understood as an analogue for exploring male poets’ authorial power to appropriate women’s voices. In these readings, the term ‘ventriloquist’ is mainly identified with the person who throws his voice into human or nonhuman objects, reminding us of …

A Weapon For The People To Wield, Olivia Sonell

Student Theses

This paper describes an applied theatre project facilitated in winter 2022 with an intergenerational group of LGBTQ adults based out of a large advocacy non- profit in the northeastern united states. The purpose of the project was three-fold, to explore LGBTQ intergenerational unity, the efficacy of applied theatre work in non-profit settings, and whether applied theatre has compromised itself ideologically.

Our project team met with participants over a period of four weeks, entirely over the ZOOM app. During these sessions we used applied theatre practices drawn from Augusto Boal and Helen White to explore connection and disconnection, and challenge dominant …

Bells Like Hooves, Elizabeth Mixter

Theses and Dissertations

BELLS LIKE HOOVES is an exploration of grief and love. This play wrestles with what it feels like when someone disappears, or “ghosts”, and the complexities of survivorship. The play delves into what it means to be the one who’s left behind, our need for stories, and the limits of language.

Drift Net: The Social And Political Agency Of The Migratory Text, Chris Campanioni

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through a discursive model I call a “migratory text”—migrant-produced media that includes notebooks, correspondences, self-portraiture, diaristic video, auto-archival installation, and immersive performance—Drift Net gleans connections between world literature, literary translation, academic scholarship, and public policy. Alongside close readings of texts from the interwar period through today and intimate archival fieldwork with refugees and shelter staff across Europe, this study mobilizes queer theory and gender and sexuality studies as well as performance studies and media theory to critique migrant-assimilation techniques by state actors and NGOs. In centering the Cold War throughout its five chapters, Drift Net broaches the different political …

Homage To Eleanora: A Musical Journey Through The Billie Holiday Songbook, Keith A. Dames

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Billie Holiday was a singer, songwriter, vocalist, bandleader and composer in the fields of music, black culture and more specifically the genre of jazz. The primary focus of this study is Billie Holiday’s discography, music, and compositions as treated in relation to the black culture of production. This study will explore a secondary content analysis of Billie Holiday’s music, musicianship, musicality and compositional skills within the American jazz mainstream, broader jazz audience and world at large. This project will take an analytical look at the structure and form of the compositions of Billie Holiday. Billie Holiday is credited with composing …

The Messiness Within: Personal Essays On Peeling Back The Facade, Chava Pearl Lansky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This collection of three interconnected personal essays draws from the genres of memoir and biography to answer the following question: What are the physical, mental, and emotional repercussions of covering up hardship and sickness with a facade of normalcy and perfection? Overlaid by themes of chronic illness, dance, beauty, and control, this project chronicles my own personal battle against this tendency. The first essay explores the complexities of the year and a half I spent working as a ghostwriter for Larry Rhodes, an elderly dancer attempting to rewrite his history in the wake of societal change. The second piece follows …

Staging Retro-Perspectives: Performing Age, Memory/Loss, And Queer Desire In The Later Works Of Split Britches (2009–2020), Benjamin Gillespie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project investigates the later works of the celebrated New York–based lesbian-feminist performance troupe Split Britches made up of founding members Peggy Shaw (b. 1944) and Lois Weaver (b. 1949). Revealing how the duo consciously interlaces aspects of aging and age-based identity into the very fabric of their later performances in both form and content, this project analyzes how Shaw and Weaver integrate an explicitly anti-ageist and overtly queer representation of aging on the experimental stage. Their later performances serve to challenge narratives of decline and debilitation that come with (hetero)normative representations of old age and the life course in …