Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Italian Commedia Dell’Arte And Modern American Performance: Comedy As A Cultural Window, Sofia Craig

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Commedia dell’Arte, a form of improvisational comedy for the stage developed in the Renaissance, is at least half a millennium old, and leaves minimal records of its content. However, its stock characters still seem to appear in modern media, including television, movies, and current theatre. Commedia characters' noticeable persistence in the modern day suggests that our culture continues to enforce social dynamics which have elements in common with sixteenth-century Italy. This thesis compares Commedia stock characters with their counterparts in modern media, to learn what cultural analysis can be made from their similarities and differences. Most retain traits that keep …

The Reckoning: A Mostly Lamentable Tragedy Comedy Of One Christopher Marlowe (...), Mac F. Mitchell

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

The Reckoning is a play by Mac Mitchell in completion of his MFA in Playwriting from Hollins University. It is a farce set in the Elizabethan Era inspired by the life of Christopher Marlowe and his involvement in the complex world of Elizabethan espionage. After investigating a counterfeiting plot designed to bankroll an assassination plot on Queen Elizabeth's life, he unwittingly implicates himself in the plot.

Marlowe will dropkick the fourth wall and, with a team of crackpot actors, attempt to set the record straight. He most certainly did not have anything to do with it and will prove his …

Backward, Benjamin W. Abbott

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

Backward is a solo show about a man who, when he turns forty-five, starts living backward in time. Every day he wakes up, he has traveled back to the day before the one he just lived and there's nothing he can do to stop it. As he relives his life in reverse, he must confront his failures as a husband and father. Even as he learns the lessons necessary to repair them, those relationships get left behind in the future. He continues moving backward and eventually must confront the most difficult relationship of them all: his relationship with his own …

Theater's Need To Pursue Social Flourishing, Alex Voeller

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

There is an established precedent in the theater industry of fighting for its survival and financial stability: through constant grant applications, changes in government and foundational support, and the challenge of maintaining a strong audience base while competing with other forms of entertainment. This financial tug-of-war has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in years when theater could not be produced through traditional practices, effectively increasing the potency of these challenges the theater industry is already facing. The pandemic, along with increased access to on-demand entertainment and further inflation, has seemingly pushed the theater industry further out of …

Rainbows And Shades Of Gray, Lillian I. Savage

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

Rainbows and Shades of Gray is an original musical that explores the complexities of addiction, memory, and grief through a nonlinear, liminal narrative structure. The story follows Aaron, a deceased veteran, father, and musician forced to confront moments from his life as he grapples with the impact of his addiction on his relationships with his wife, Danielle, and daughter, Natalia. Through a series of fragmented scenes spanning past and present, the musical examines the emotional aftermath of trauma and the ways in which love persists despite harm.

Blending dialogue and original music, the piece uses song as a narrative device …

Competitive Dance And The Adolescent’S Body: Considering Pedagogical Approaches To Teaching Competitive Dancers, Catri E. G. Barba

Dance (MFA) Theses

Diving into the past and researching for the future, this thesis explores the development and perpetuation of hyper-sexualized adolescent bodies through the competitive dance scene. Drawing on dance theorists, educational theorists, and embodied research (i.e., the author’s body archive), this thesis explores how the competition gaze is performed for and by a capitalist patriarchy. Specifically, this thesis critically reflects on the author’s career as a young competitive dancer in the greater Los Angeles, California, area during the 1990s and 2000s, as well as a competition dance instructor and K-12 educator for two decades, and how those personal experiences have shaped …

Dancing With Ghosts: Memory And Melancholy In The Subversive Artist, Caley R. Vancil

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis examines how subversive artists use autonomy and memory to imagine new ways of existing beyond systemic violence. Through analysis of theory and performance studies, it highlights the efforts and risks these artists take to challenge representation and the political aspects of embodiment. The interconnected roles of language, power, and imagination are emphasized as essential to creating a more just and liberated world.

Accompanying this research is a dance piece that responds to the sorrows within American society. Developed as an improvisational score, the dance becomes a process of reinvention, employing movement and imagination to seek collective solutions. The …

Ibeji: Screendance As Living Archive, A Manuscript For Live Performance, Quentin W. Sledge

Dance (MFA) Theses

This work is a multimedia live performance that simultaneously moves through a live archival process which captures the essence of the work. It asks: how can dance archives evolve into participatory, user-centered repositories that account for the embodied and ephemeral nature of dance, and how might screendance expand archives into interactive, co-curated spaces that sustain liveness beyond preservation? Grounded in archival theory, Africana Aesthesis over Euro-Western Aesthetics, and auto-ethnographic practice, this project responds to the historic limitations of Euro-Western archival systems, particularly their inability to hold the spiritual, cultural, and embodied dimensions of dance.

The objective of this research is …

Theatre And Dance As Divine Purpose: Liberating The Christian Performer In Pursuit Of Artistic Worship, Abby Owen

Dance (MFA) Theses

This study examines the historical relevance of theatre and dance alongside religious forms of worship, with a particular emphasis on their integration into Christian churches of the Middle Ages, in comparison to the current Western era. Beginning with their origin, this research examines the creation of theatre and dance in Ancient Greece as a means of connecting with spiritual deities, tracing their recorded transition into accepted acts of everyday worship by Christian leadership. At the same time, this research scrutinizes contemporary congregations’ lack of artistic incorporation, denouncing the rise of restricted worship in response to present-day condemnation of the female …

Maternal Becoming: Reimagining Transformation Through Reverse Metamorphosis, Terese M. Cardamon

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis research investigates how pregnancy and early motherhood reshape identity, agency, and one’s relationship with the body and interrogates the narrative that frames motherhood as inherently joyful. Focusing on matrescence, meaning the process of becoming a mother, the project explores this transformation through the myth of Demeter and Persephone, the author's lived experience, and scholarly frameworks that center feminist perspectives, and includes an embodied exploration that integrates literature, poetry, and movement. Central to this inquiry is the unsettling experience of a transforming body and the visceral, horrific sensation of becoming unfamiliar to oneself. The concept of reverse metamorphosis, a …

My Body Is Bad, Daintry Tennapel

Dance (MFA) Theses

my body is bad is an integrative endeavor that critically examines cultural and theological teachings within the Evangelical Church, focusing on the rise of Purity Culture and its connections to a broader history of patriarchy and white supremacy in America. This work investigates the psychological, emotional, sexual, and spiritual impact on women raised within Purity Culture, analyzing its core teachings and the systems that perpetuate them. By exploring the intersection of political, societal, and religious ideologies, this work interrogates how these forces—manifested through Purity Culture narratives—shape women’s identities, self-worth, and sexual agency. This work combines scholarly research, survivor testimonies, and …

Reflecting Their Gaze: Resisting Distorted Perceptions Of Self And Other As Object, Francesca F. Harman

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis is an investigation into ways of seeing, constructions of otherness, objectification, influences on self-perception, and most urgently, how artists can resist objectification through the affirmation of their own subjectivity. Drawing from scholarship in feminist theory, performance studies, visual culture studies, and film theory, this thesis engages the writing of thinkers such John Berger, Jean-Paul Sartre, bell hooks, Rae Langton, Ann Pellegrini, Martha Nussbaum, and Coco Fusco. This thesis critically examines the way in which comparison, perceived lack, and fear of the Other contribute to constructions of identity. Distorted perception is at the root of objectification, and often leads …

Rediscovering The Hidden Nan Yumiao (Mysterious Rain), Katherine E. Nettles

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis explores complex themes of becoming, belonging, and how they shape identity through the perspective of transracial adoption. The investigation draws from personal experiences, cultural texts, and nature vs. nurture research. Combining self-reflection with scholarly sources allows for a broader picture of adoption trauma rather than a fixed bias. The author's research considers the circumstances surrounding adoption, including birth parents giving their child up due to social, economic, legal, or political constraints. This thesis examines finding a place of belonging in public, in community, in family, and in society. This concept of belonging has different meanings based on people's …

Dear Vincent, James H. Stone Iv

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

Dear Vincent is a play written for J. Harvey Stone’s MFA in Playwriting from Hollins University. The play is inspired by the life of Vincent van Gogh and his letters with his brother Theodore. The artist Vincent van Gogh was an avid writer to his brother Theodore. This play is inspired by, but not dictated by, the letters Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother. Connected by hymns in Act I and by the news of the 1980s in Act II, this Vincent lives through his letters as well but ultimately has to make a decision regarding this life in …

Creativity Through Thought Exercises: Developing A Personal Heuristic For Choreographic Decision-Making, Jalisa R. Johnson

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis explores the development of a personal set of heuristics, or accessible thought tools, that can be used in choreographic or creative decision-making. Through an in-depth study of the visual art of Romare Bearden paired with an evaluation of patterns of the author’s personal history, three tools or “dials” emerge: derealization, contextuality and inversion. A close study of Bearden’s work demonstrates a pattern of repurposing and distorting ideas in ways consistent with the three dials. The author found similar patterns emerge in an excavation of her personal narrative, indicative of a cyclical and prophetic re-imagining of previous life experiences. …

The Divine Feminine Reframed: Dogma And Doctrine, Icon And Flesh, And The Sacred Embodiment Of Reclamation, Natasha Keckley

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis interrogates Marian iconography and its role in constructing a moral binary that marks female bodies as either sanctified or sinful. Drawing on feminist and postcolonial theory, iconographic analysis, and historical case studies, the research analyzes how Christian symbology established the Marian Mold: a theological aesthetic apparatus that exalts feminine sanctity through ideals of virginity, obedience, and maternal receptivity while constraining feminine expression. This paradigm, propagated through the British Empire’s colonial regimes, shaped the regulation and reinterpretation of embodied traditions. The thesis investigates these dynamics through two case studies: the Devadasi tradition and Bharatanatyam’s reformulation in South India, and …

Witch, Please: The Campy, Sexually Depraved, And Sacrilegious Anti-Morality Tale, David Veatch

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

There will be no explanation, only reputation.

Sky, the little g god, is in their forest on the first Halloween, scheming on how to ascend to Big G God status, will Sky be able to bop their way to the top, or will a fascist plot, accidental immaculate conception, and their hubris ruin the bitchin'est night of the year?

Fat Feminists, Ami Trowell, Ami C. Trowell

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

This thesis presents the original play "Fat Feminists" alongside a critical reflection exploring the intersection between feminist theory and lived experience. The play depicts two friends confronting their 50th birthdays in a society that has historically valued them primarily for youth and beauty. Through their journey, the work examines how women navigate the terrain of aging in a culture that continues to prioritize female appearance despite decades of feminist progress.

The accompanying critical paper interrogates the disconnection between feminist theoretical ideals and everyday reality, drawing particularly on bell hooks' "Feminism is for Everybody" to frame the discussion. The paper traces …

Unveiling The Wilis: Exploring Giselle's Slavic Folkloric Origins And The Ramifications Of Essentialized Femininity, Antonia R. Dougherty

Dance (MFA) Theses

Jules Perrot and Jean Coralli’s choreography of Giselle’s wilis continues to influence the essentialized femininity in Ballet Blanc. The folkloric víla origins of the wilis create a direct contradiction to the archetypal ballet woman. The celebrated story of Ballet Blanc’s Giselle conflates the Slavic origins and wili characteristics, while simultaneously abandoning key characteristics of the Slavic víla. Antonia Dougherty’s thesis endeavors to unify these distinct components of the víla and their symbology so that a gender critical analysis of the essentialized femininity of Ballet Blanc’s Giselle may be explored. Perrot and Coralli used the Slavic folkloric víla origins …

Mapping Entanglements: Un-Nesting The Myths Of My White Identity, Kayla C. Brown

Dance (MFA) Theses

This braided research-performance thesis uses personal narrative, critical theory, and live performance to investigate how whiteness is sustained and embodied. Grounded in the work of bell hooks, Ibram X. Kendi, Tema Okun, Diana Taylor, Catrice M. Jackson, Miguel Gutierrez, and Narcissister, I interrogate whiteness not as a static identity, but as a system of power that shapes perception, behavior, and social value. As a cisgender white woman, I move through the world with unearned ease—my presence normalized, my advantages often unquestioned.

Identity is performance—layered, like the Russian nesting dolls I once played with at my grandmother’s house. Peeling back these …

Echoes Before Language: A Written Thesis On Movement, Origin, And Becoming, Shadidja Parker

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis presents a body-based, lineage-informed approach to movement development into dance, honoring both scientific and spiritual knowledge systems. It engages in a blend of qualitative, embodied, and autoethnographic methods—including dance studies, developmental science, phenomenology, and cultural analysis—to examine how movement emerges, evolves, and carries meaning. Grounded in my lived experience as a dancer, mother, and Black woman, this research frames the body as both a site and source of knowledge. I use my own body as an instrument of movement, memory, and identity, positioning my embodiment as a form of inquiry. The thesis is organized in two parts: a …

Raíces De Esperanza: The Omnipresence Of Female Ancestors As Guides Through Nepantla, Fabiola Sanchez Huidobro

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis investigates the intertwined threads of generational rage and grief experienced by a first-generation individual navigating the emotional and spiritual landscape shaped by their ancestry and migration. Furthermore, this work examines how emotional and spiritual inheritances intersect with the author’s cultural subconscious, facilitating a deeper understanding of the complexities of being caught between two worlds: Mexico, the origin of their roots, and the United States, the land of their birth. Through personal stories and cultural reflections, this piece aims to investigate the profound ways in which matrilineal inheritances help guide the author through the transitional space of Nepantla. Nepantla …

Essence Of Esther: Finding And Understanding Power Of Voice Through Exploration Of The Archive, Ashley C T Cesiro

Dance (MFA) Theses

Language is how we communicate, but language does not always show up in the literal sense of spoken words. This thesis examines how the human body archives experiences to fuel the voice, enabling it to show up and fulfill a purpose and passion that life has led to. In this thesis, the book of Esther is used as an example of how one can draw on the roots of their past and the challenges of life to discover and understand the source of their inner voice and how to utilize it effectively. This research highlights many artists who lean into …

One Man Show/ Who Am I, Devin Baker

Dance (MFA) Theses

Historically, stereotypes of ideal masculine physiques and attributed qualities have led to discriminatory and exclusionary practices that adversely affect black queer men and how they show up in various performance and social spaces. As a result, black male bodies in these spaces have employed the alter ego as a tool to imagine themselves inside/outside these constructed masculinities. How can the alter ego aid in transcending dated notions of race and gender, beholden to black male bodies within concert dance? Through the intertwining of personal narrative and research rooted in psychology and gender studies, this work examines the alter ego as …

Løvetann/Tvntēli'on/Beàrnan-Brìde/Paardebloem: Decolonization Through Heritage, Brooke Howton

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Through their lifelong passion for genealogy, Brooke “Uisce'' Howton researches a way to dismantle White supremacy and colonization through analyzing and reconnecting to their heritage. This involves learning about the nature of White supremacy, which is ever present in American society, and gaining a better understanding of what the history of racial formations in the United States looked like. Through this new lens, she revisits old traditions that she had been able to experience, mostly through her maternal family; all while learning new traditions that she has been unable to experience due to the adoption of her paternal grandmother, mystery …

Red Curtain Rivalry, Amy Lytle

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

Two community theaters in the same city are accidentally putting on the same musical at the same time due to a publishing company's error. The members of the dueling troupes have to untangle the mess--the show must go on, of course! Between big misunderstandings, a few shenanigans (or hijinks, as some may say), and a lot of lessons learned, watch as each company battles to win the Red Curtain Rivalry and prove themselves the best production of "A Doll's House: The Musical!" that the community theatre community has ever seen.

Applying Girls' Studies To Contemporary Theatre And New Play Development, Sophia Menconi

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

Girls’ Studies is a relatively new academic field characterized by its focus on the complexity of girlhood experiences and understanding girl as a unique social identity separate from the notion of future women. In bringing Girls' Studies theory into the work of theatre scholarship and new play development, I present a framework for the interdisciplinary field of Girls' Theatre Studies. Chapter One is an exploration of girlhood presentations in contemporary theatre through a postfeminist lens. Examining the theatrical manifestations of the "female victim-hero” in contemporary presentations of girlhood, I argue that girl audiences are able to feel with and through …

Hame, Russell Clarke

Dance (MFA) Theses

Researcher Russell Clarke contemplates the need for human belonging, looking into ways that human belonging shows up in the contemporary world. Clarke explores the interconnection between his identity and memories from his childhood along with exploring his life’s journey of searching for belonging. He focuses his research on main themes throughout his life that have influenced his need to belong: family, migration, dance, and his connection to the outdoors. Growing up in Scotland and later migrating to America, Clarke found his relationship with his family and dance as constant threads entangling and influencing his life—the call of his homeland is …

They Smell Of Earth After Rain Exploring The Sacred Space Within Performance: An Examination Of Transcendence, Ritual, And Artistic Expression, Candy Jimenez

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis writing includes research about the intersections of sacred space, rituals, spirituality, artistic expression, and performance. Performance can serve as an event for transcendence, a gateway to the sacred space and the essences. The concept of sacred space and transcendence within performance expands beyond spatial boundaries, encompassing various art forms, particularly dance. Ritual, one artifact of human experience, is redefined in a contemporary context, serving as a vehicle for transformative experiences within performances. This thesis explores the nuanced dynamics between performers, audiences, and performance spaces to uncover transformative journeys for all involved. Sacred space, a central theme, is examined …

Pathways Toward Healing: The Presence Of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome In Black Mother-Daughter Relationships, Rachael Appold

Dance (MFA) Theses

The United States was founded during and built through the use of American chattel slavery, a form of slavery which involved hypodescent, was usually lifelong, and was based on the concept of Black inferiority. Because of the circumstances of this country’s creation, the United States cannot exist separately from the long-term effects and legacy of enslavement, thus resulting in the condition of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). PTSS is a theory founded by psychologist Dr. Joy DeGruy which posits that the long-term suffering of Africans and African-Americans under slavery, as well as ongoing anti-Black oppression has resulted in intergenerational trauma …