Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Beyond Search: A Technology Probe Investigation, Erin M. Bryant, R. Harper, P. Gossett

Human Communication and Theatre Faculty Research

Purpose — We assert that researchers developing new web interaction tools should consider an array of user motives beyond query-based information retrieval. This chapter reports on two probes used to investigate user activities that go beyond search as traditionally conceived.

Design/methodology — This chapter reviews research on user experiences with search engines and general web use. It then describes the design and case study of cards and pebbles, two search engine-based probes developed to help elicit new concepts for web-based experiences.

Findings — Participants reflect on their experiences with the probes and offer ideas regarding how to incrementally shift the …

Pass The Roles Please, Dana Christy Klopping

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis project is a study of the process and development of a Career Development Creative Drama unit for first grade students which any teacher can reapply in their own classroom. The goal of this project was to create and polish a program which teachers may use in the classroom to benefit their students. This interactive and creative platform enhanced a career development program for early education students.

Theatre In Education: A Cyber Bullying Prevention Curriculum, Jonathan Douglas Moline

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project is to provide teaching tools that include a two-session curriculum with educational materials for high school teachers on cyber bullying prevention. This project provides tools and curriculum materials to high school teachers on cyber bullying prevention using applied, interactiive, and conflict resolution theatre techniques as the main teaching method.

21 Building Bridges: Connecting Performance Studies And Forensic Oral Interpretation, Alyssa Reid

National Forensic Journal

Forensic educators have faced long standing criticism, within our discipline and beyond, in regards to the true educational benefits of forensic competition with particular scrutiny towards oral interpretation events. Although forensic interpretation events may seem like fun raucous performances, they are in many ways are grounded in sound pedagogy of oral interpretation scholarship. However in recent years, forensic oral interpretation has evolved to move beyond mere rendering of a text. In many ways forensic interpretation has shifted towards a paradigm of performance studies. Therefore, I shall reexplore past criticisms of forensic interp in order to argue for new ways to …

Acts Of Recognition: Gesture And National Identity In Agnes De Mille's 'Civil War Ballet', Ryan Donovan

Graduate Student Publications and Research

Through both her dances and writings Agnes de Mille explored what it means to be American. I argue that, in addition to the explicitly America-themed material de Mille chose, her choreography performs national identity through its use of gesture – informed by de Mille’s interest in folk dance and the collective unconscious. When looking at much of de Mille’s choreography, one is visually struck by its Americanness. It is this act of recognition that begins this enquiry: how does one see de Mille’s choreography and recognize its intrinsic Americanness? How did de Mille’s choreographic process allow for the expression of …

Hanson Brings Realism To Theater Productions, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Horizons, Volume 27, 2012, Sacred Heart University

Vistas (Horizons)

No abstract provided.

Connecting Past And Present: A Rhetorical Analysis Of How Forensics Programs Use Storytelling To Promote Team Legacy, Stephanie Orme

National Forensic Journal

Given forensics programs' status as organizations at academic institutions, these teams experience changes in membership far more often than typical organizations. Each year, a team will graduate a class of seniors who, through their four years as a competitor, have helped shape the program's culture and legacy in numerous ways. Yet this void left by the graduating members is then filled by the incoming freshman or transfer student competitors who will now play a part in reshaping the team's culture. This constant change in organizational culture makes it vital that forensic programs go to extra lengths to ensure that their …

Special Section – Critical Thought In The Age Of Forensics, Bruce Wickelgren

National Forensic Journal

No abstract provided.

Questions Surrounding Questions: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Use Of Research Questions In Academic Writing, Stephanie Orme

National Forensic Journal

The fact that researchers have begun to question the potentially unethical use of questions in research, and that the research question has become an increasing presence in all scholarly rhetorical criticism– including 99% of the speeches you will see this year– the use of the research question in a venue that has traditionally avoided it merits investigation. So in order to explore the objectivity and academic effectiveness of research questions in our field, I performed a content analysis of top rhetoric journals using Hyland’s method for analyzing questions found in the article “What do they mean? Questions in Academic 54 …

Quilters: A Musical "The Work Of Their Hands", Beatrice Casagran

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project was for the author to learn about all the major aspects of production through actually undertaking the production of a play for paying adult audiences. With respect to the particular play Quilters, this project sought to explore the representations of women in this work and to understand the origins of those representations, the context in which this play was created and its message and effect on the audiences.

Through The Tesseract And Back: The Documentation And Reflection On Becoming A Theatre Education And Outreach Coordinator, Julia Tilley Wentland

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project was to gain an understanding of the fundamentals required of an education and outreach coordinator for a professional children's theatre company. It arms educators with numerous activities that tie theatre arts into their everyday curriuclum based on the California Content Standards, and it encourages students to tap into their creativity and imagination.

Thunder Rock: The Play, And Enriching The High School Curriculum, Jason William Bayless

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis is a position paper developing an argument for the advancement of the play Thunder Rock, by Robert Ardrey, into consideration for the California Reading List for Public High Schools. To support the validity of the argument the thesis explores three key elements: the content of the play itself; connections to the California Content Standards for California Public Schools; as well as related instructional methods appropriate to the task of teaching the play. The goal is to develop in this thesis not only an argument for the inclusion of Thunder Rock into the California Reading List, but also create …

Wulfsong Teaches, Executes Designs For Theater, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Shakespeare Burlesque And The Performing Self, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

This paper argues that Victorian Shakespeare burlesques reveal an alternate literary history: a movement away from private, novelistic consciousness toward collaborative performance. Many materialist scholars fault post-Romantic critics for casting Shakespeare as a psychological realist and reading his plays as if they were novels. The burlesque treatment of Hamlet’s soliloquies, however, suggests a contrary trajectory, challenging the equation of Shakespearean character with psychological reflection. Rather than inaugurating a tradition of interiority, Hamlet’s soliloquies generate social speech in works like Gilbert’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, inviting audience participation. The burlesque imperative also inflects novels like Dickens’s Great Expectations, turning the …

The Lab Report, Volume 05, Issue 08, Todd Ristau

Lab Reports

• Darlene Fedele Teaching at Ferrum College
• We Have Achieved Our Fundraising Goal!
• Guest Profile: Lisa Schlesinger
• Guest Profile: Brett Neveu
• Formation of the New Works Advisory Board
• Plane Talk at SkyPilot Features Hollins Playwrights
• Shifting Gears by Jeri Weiss at Fronkensteen
• Young Actors Studio Commissions Samantha Macher
• Hollins Playwright Wins Monologue Competition
• The Muse Factory by Robert Plowman Workshopped
• Clinton Johnston Directs Night of the Iguana
• Sandbox Radio Features Work by Elizabeth Heffron
• Short Plays at SkyPilot Include Hollins Playwrights
• From the Director: Who's a Starving Artist?

Direction Of The Play: Dracula: The Vampire Play, Nicholas T. Hutchinson

Graduate Student Projects

This project entailed the selection, background research and documentation, casting, vocal coaching, direction, and post-production analysis of Heritage Theatre's Nicholas Hutchinson's production of Dracula: The Vampire Play. Documentation included research and analysis of the play and an evaluation of the play as a production vehicle for Heritage Theatre located in Perry, Utah. The analysis also includes a discussion as to the non-traditional directorial vision of this production.

Direction Of The Play: Dead Man Walking, Michelle Willden

Graduate Student Projects

This project entailed the selection, background research and documentation, casting, direction, and post-production analysis of Bingham High School's Production of Tim Robbin's Dead Man Walking. Documentation included research and analysis of the play and an evaluation of the play as a production vehicle for the Department at Bingham High School.

Direction Of The Play: Dead Man Walking, Patrick Williams

Graduate Student Projects

This project entailed the selection, background research and documentation, producing, set and house design, casting, direction, collaboration, and post-production analysis of Mater Dei High School's Production of Tim Robbin's Dead Man Walking, and The Dead Man Walking School Theatre Project. Documentation included research and analysis of the play as a production vehicle for the Project: Discourse event for the Performing Arts Department of Mater Dei High School. The analysis also includes a discussion as to the candidate's directorial vision and execution of this production.

Performing Religiously Between Passion And Resistance, William Robert

Religion - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dancing The Numinous: Sacred And Spiritual Techniques Of Contemporary American Belly Dancers, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In this paper, I explore how contemporary American practitioners of belly dance (as Middle Eastern dance and its many varieties are often called in the English-speaking world) conceptualize not only the spiritual dimensions of their dance, but also how the very notion of performance affects sacred and spiritual dance practices. Drawing on interviews with this community, I describe the techniques of sacred and spiritual belly dancers, how these dancers theorize performance, and how the conflicts inherent to patriarchal mind-body dualism are resolved in these practices. My purpose here is twofold: to document an emergent dance tradition and to analyze its …

If Clothes Could Speak: Sartorial Analysis Of Japanese Cultural Identity, Ivy Han

Whittier Scholars Program

This project is a deep sartorial analysis of Rei Kawakubo’s and Yohji Yamamoto’s designs and how they reveal the global influences that shaped the cultural identity of contemporary Japan. However, such analysis of high fashion would only be half of the identity; to fully understand Japanese cultural identity, it is equally important to delve into the sartorial phenomenon of Harajuku street fashion. While Japanese avant-garde fashion and Harajuku youth culture seem to be at opposite ends of the sartorial spectrum, the two have a closely entwined complementary relationship. Japanese high fashion and street fashion demonstrate how such cultural commodification impacts …

"Spectacular Opacities": The Hyers Sisters' Performances Of Respectability And Resistance, Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

This essay analyzes the Hyers Sisters, a Reconstruction-era African American sister act, and their radical efforts to transcend social limits of gender, class, and race in their early concert careers and three major productions, Out of Bondage and Peculiar Sam, or The Underground Railroad, two slavery-to-freedom epics, and Urlina, the African Princess, the first known African American play set in Africa. At a time when serious, realistic roles and romantic plotlines featuring black actors were nearly nonexistent due to the country’s appetite for stereotypical caricatures, the Hyers Sisters used gender passing to perform opposite one another as heterosexual lovers in …

American Art Theatre In The Digital Archive, Patrick Michael Finelli

Theatre and Dance Faculty Publications

Based on a critical examination, evaluation, and selection of primary and secondary sources related to American art theater that have moved from the private into the public digital realm, Finelli reflects and comments on key issues related to the digital archive and theater historiography. His objective was to analyze the notion of digital archives and consider how accessing materials in electronic form affects the practice of writing history. He hypothesizes that the process of digitizing library and archival materials has a significant affect upon archival elements through their transformation into the digital realm, bringing about change in both an ontological …

An Evaluation Of The Instructional Practices In Voice Teaching At Australian Performing Art Institutions, Ann Adlem

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The purpose of this study was to identify and evaluate the practices and techniques of vocal training for student actors at a tertiary level, through a survey of experienced voice practitioners in Australian performing arts schools, appropriate texts, consideration of contexts and my own professional experience. Vocal instruction starts with the basic training of ‘the instrument’ or the vocal capabilities of the body. Following this or concurrent with its teaching, more specific forms of training are addressed. This research project used qualitative research methods to compile a detailed description of the voice teaching practices currently used in Australia. It comprises …

Perception, Power, Plays, And Print: Charles Ii And The Restoration Theatre Of Consensus, Christopher William Nelson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation aims to establish the importance of Charles II in the shaping and evolution of Restoration theatre. Even more so than the playwrights themselves, Charles II determined the future of the theatre, both by his conscious efforts to do so, as well as unintentionally through his own behavior and image. The tradition of Restoration theatre began in 1660 with Charles’s efforts at establishing a consensus theatre, in which it would appear that he enjoyed unanimous support for his return to England from exile. Consensus theatre was determined by the perception of Charles’s rule and character, his power to manipulate …

Mediums Change, Fears Stay The Same, Lucy Wilhelms

Honors Theses

Although generally dismissed by scholars as being overly sentimental or superstitious, the gothic genre has survived for over four centuries and maintained significant cultural appeal, outlasting the sentimental novel and the travelogue as popular literature. What, then, makes this genre different? What is so special about the gothic?

In my thesis, I examine the evolving cultural appeal of the gothic genre that keeps it attractive and relevant for readers by tracing the gothic text, The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, through its initial inception and its subsequent adaptations. As a novel, The Woman in Black both repeats and revises …

Capturing Dance: The Art Of Documentation (An Exploration Of Distilling The Body In Motion), Kasey J. Lack

Theses : Honours

This research paper is an exploration of documenting and capturing live dance performance in regards to three artistic mediums, Notation, Photography and Film. This piece of writing discusses practitioners who have contributed to the development of these processes such as: Ann Hutchinson Guest, Rudolf von Laban, Eadweard Muybridge, Lois Greenfield, Ted Shawn, Norman McLaren and Sue Healey. In conjunction with historical and current day research the secondary document provided alongside this thesis describes the practical investigation undertaken. The reflections included define first-hand discoveries of how these three mediums of documenting interconnect to describe a contemporary dance solo. Thoughts, findings and …

Thesis On The Eiffel Tower A Stage Manager’S Account Of Working On An Avant-Garde Show, Ellen Johnson

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Rabbit Who Loved Peas, Rebecca Saunders

English Faculty Publication Series

Ned loves growing peas in his garden, and Rudy the Rabbit loves peas too. Rudy manages to hide from Ned and gobble all the peas he wants, until one day . . .

Readers’ Theater for children is a delightful way to involve children in performance while improving their reading skills. Because no memorization is required, children are free to focus on bringing the text to life through their voices