Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

William: The Musical, Tyler C. Green

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

William: The Musical is the story of my parents’ struggle, and unfathomable loss while trying to start a family. The work follows the couple through their commitment to start a family together, through a devastating miscarriage, and up to the birth of my older brother, William. The work is still in progress, but is currently structured as a song-cycle including five songs in the style of contemporary musical theater. William: The Musical explores themes of loss and resilience, bringing to light the disturbingly common experience of miscarriage. While the creative goal aims to allow audiences to reflect and mourn their …

The Trojan Women, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2025-2026 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

Mary Victor And The Monster, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2025-2026 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

Urinetown: The Musical, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2025-2026 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

Dames At Sea, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2025 Summer Theatre

No abstract provided.

Always... Patsy Cline, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2025 Summer Theatre

No abstract provided.

The Glass Menagerie, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2025 Summer Theatre

No abstract provided.

Footloose: The Musical, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024-2025 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

The Laramie Project, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024-2025 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

The Launch: A Senior Cabaret, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024-2025 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet Of 1812, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024-2025 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

The Importance Of Being Earnest, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024-2025 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

Beehive: The '60s Musical, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024 Summer Theatre

No abstract provided.

It's A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024 Summer Theatre

No abstract provided.

Forever Plaid, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024 Summer Theatre

No abstract provided.

A Little Night Music, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2022-2023 Season Productions

Sondheim creates a stunning tour de force when he takes Ingmar Bergman's comedy of manners, Smiles of a Summer Night, and turns it into a musical of masterful execution and elegance. Winner of four Tony Awards, this is a musical work that has forever entranced the world of theatre.

Set in 1900 Sweden, A Little Night Music explores the tangled web of affairs centered around actress, Desirée Armfeldt, and the men who love her: a lawyer by the name of Fredrik Egerman and the Count Carl-Magnus Malcom. When the traveling actress performs in Fredrik's town, the estranged lovers' passion …

The 2022 Classroom Project: Land Of Ours, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2021-2022 Season Production

LAND OF OURS is a brand-new play devised in rehearsal by an ensemble of Otterbein University actors, designers, stage managers, and directors. The play explores the centrality of travel and journeying to human experience. Drawing on the ensemble's personal experiences, stories of mythical travel from legend and folklore, and travel explorations invented in rehearsal, LAND OF OURS is a theatrical journey that will transport you beyond the theater walls to a destination of the imagination.

The Heidi Chronicles, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2021-2022 Season Production

A feminist art historian and her friends, male and female, gay and straight, mature from the 1960s to the 1980s as they search for political, professional and personal fulfillment, in Wendy Wasserstein's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play.

Something Rotten!, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2021-2022 Season Production

Something Rotten takes place in 1595 London, England. The Bottom brothers, Nick and Nigel are trying to find success by writing plays, but are outshined by the rock-star playwright of the Renaissance, William Shakespeare. Desperate to find success Nick gets help from a soothsayer for the next big hit.

A Lie Of The Mind, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2021-2022 Season Production

Sam Shepherd, a mastermind of dark humor and powerful drama, out does himself with this story of two dysfunctional families joined by marriage in the American West, each trying to hold on to the ideal picture of stability without ever having experienced it. Jake believes he may have killed his wife, Beth, during a domestic dispute and, to calm his concerns, his brother Frankie attempts to get the real story by traveling to Beth’s family home in Montana. While he is relieved to see Beth alive, though severely injured from the incident, Frankie is suddenly entangled in a bizarre familial …

A Gentleman's Guide To Love And Murder, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2021-2022 Season Production

Join us as we celebrate a return to live theater with a very special staged concert version of the show that was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020. While we are unable to fully realize the elaborate design of this hilarious knock-em-dead musical romp, the script will be performed in full with much of the original cast, and you will not leave without having a hearty laugh. Poor, low-born Monty Navarro is desperate to inherit the dukedom by surpassing no fewer than eight members of the well-to-do D’Ysquith family in line before him. Just wait until …

The Tempest 2021, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2020-2021 Season

Abducted and set adrift to die by her power-hungry sister and a jealous king, Prospera and her daughter, Miranda have survived 12 long years shipwrecked on a lonely island. When Prospera learns though her magical arts that those whose sought her child’s death are within her reach, she is consumed by rage. Conjuring the greatest of storms to break their ship upon her shores, Prospera brings her enemies to her feet. But when the opportunity to wreak her final vengeance is upon her, Prospera can no longer recognize the thing she has become, and she is forced to choose between …

Into A Lamplit Room, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2020-2021 Season

The life of Composer and Social Activist, Kurt Weill, is celebrated in this cabaret-style compilation of his work. The production includes more than 30 songs, ranging from his life in Berlin during the Weimar Era during which he was a voice against the Nazi regime, to his emigration to the U.S. where he was a supporter of the American war effort in the 1930’s, and finally his contributions to the American Musical Theatre canon. Audiences will particularly recognize his collaborations with Ira Gershwin, Bertolt Brecht, and Maxwell Anderson in the songs written for Broadway including Tschaikowsky, Mack the Knife, Pirate …

The Pajama Game, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2021-2022 Season Production

Based on the novel 7 ½,The Pajama Game tells the story of a labor furor over a seven-and-a-half-cent pay raise at a pajama plant that complicates the course of true love for Sid Sorokin, the new factory superintendent, and Babe Williams, the feisty firebrand heading the Union Grievance Committee.

The Launch 2020: A Senior Cabaret, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2020-2021 Season

No abstract provided.

Dance 2020: The Wild Within, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2020-2021 Season

The Dance Concert, inspired by Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic, “Where the Wild Things Are,” will include a collection of solos, duets and trios which will illuminate the immense power of imagination and prove without a doubt that there’s a wild thing within us all.

An Enemy Of The People, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2020-2021 Season

When a water contamination crisis puts their community in peril, siblings face off in a battle of political ambitions and moral integrity.

The Theory Of Relativity, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2020-2021 Season

Whether you're allergic to cats, in love for the first or tenth time, a child of divorce, a germaphobe, or simply a unique individual, you’re sure to find yourself in this fresh new musical.

Speak The Speech: Lessons In Projection, Clarity And Performance, James Hagerman

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

This study compared two classes and their responses to a controlled curriculum versus an experimental curriculum based on teaching high school students in acting classes to project and speak with clarity during onstage performances. The experimental group had fifteen days of instruction, extensive feedback and an additional two lessons, while the control group participated in two out of the four lessons and had eight days of instruction with limited feedback. The driving question of this study was, “How do you get teenagers to project and speak with clarity on stage, so the audience is not left asking, ‘What did they …

In The Pit: The Sight And Sound Of Broadway Pit Orchestras, Kyle Krygielski

Undergraduate Distinction Papers

The number of musicians in a Broadway pit orchestra has always been a point of contention between the American Federation of Musicians, Local 802 and the League of American Theatres and Producers. These two organizations have had many collective bargaining agreements that have helped dictate and alter the size of orchestras on Broadway. On one side you have the musicians, who are concerned with preserving jobs and the musical integrity of a show, and on the other you have the producers who are trying to ensure the overall and financial success of the show. This thesis examines these orchestral changes …