Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Glenn Wilson And "Straight No Chaser – The Thelonious Monk Story.", Jon Norton

Interviews for WGLT

IWU Jazz Director Glenn Wilson says rare concert footage is a major reason the Thelonious Monk documentary, "Straight, No Chaser" is a must-see. Wilson’s non-profit Further Jazz sponsored the film for a screening at a local theater. Wilson speaks to WGLT's Jon Norton about the film, and lasting influence of the jazz great.

Complete Bosoms, Incomplete Men: Reading Abstinence In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc

English and Creative Writing Summer Fellows

Measure for Measure has often been called one of Shakespeare’s problem plays, and as recent productions show, Measure’s problems — including sexual coercion and governmental corruption — resonate with readers and audiences today. Recent scholarship has examined sexual abstinence in Measure for Measure in terms of its historical economic and religious context, arguing that protagonist Isabella represents a radical break from merchant economics by opting out of the sexual economy. However, Angelo and the Duke, the play's other central characters, also make claims about the values of abstinence, and those claims are at odds with Isabella's claims. My research will …

The Taming Of The Shrew, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1985-1986 Season

A ribald, raucous, rowdy look at the eternal “battle of the sexes.” The beautiful Catherine has acquired a reputation as “Kate the Curst” because she apparently does not like the kind of potential suitors encouraged by her father. Enter the swashbuckling but roguish adventurer, Petruchio, who wants both Catherine and her dowry. The father happily agrees to the match and the resulting “battle” ends up as one of Shakespeare's most famous love matches.

Irish Dance In The State Of Utah: A History, India Eve Henrichsen

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis summarizes the history of Irish dance in Utah. Over the past 35 years, from its beginning in 1983 to today in 2018, Irish dance schools have multiplied in Utah and evolved following international trends. The first school of Irish dance in Utah was started by Maureen McTeggart Hall at the request of Harold Gottfredsen in 1983. Five years later, in 1988, Brigham Young University established an Irish dance instruction program. Following the first television broadcast of Riverdance from Dublin in 1994, the interest in Irish dance increased exponentially. The number of schools has grown, new schools have emerged …

Center For Art & Theater News, Georgia Southern University

Center for Art & Theater (Archived)

• Center for Art & Theatre upgrades gallery lighting with $12k sustainability grant

Snoopy!, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018 Summer Theatre

The musical sequel to YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN – deserves each of its three exclamation points. Based on the beloved Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schulz, the show sparkles with wit and warmth as it depicts life as seen through the eyes of Schulz’s unforgettable characters.

The Old Versus The New Equestrian Circus: Demonstrating And Promoting Equine Welfare, Veronica Painter

Theses and Dissertations

Circus is an art form that was originally considered as a humanitarian art, promoting equine welfare by shedding a new light on the horse and human relationship. During a time where horses were used for war, work, and transportation; fancy riding and liberty stood as the framework for a new togetherness between man and beast. The animal activist revolution centered on exotic animals in circus, yet the effects of these demanding pressures caused a major blow to the equestrian circus. This comparative study examines possible improvements to the industry in order to keep this art alive. Keeping up with eclectic …

Accidental Archives Of Performance Making, Sarah Whatley

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper introduces the online toolkit created during the AHRC-funded Resilience and Inclusion: Dancers as Agents of Change project. Although the primary aim of the toolkit is the transmission of information for training purposes, the toolkit has simultaneously created a carefully curated repository of performance documents and related materials with a film at the core out of which many of the learning materials emerge. The discussion considers how this curated library of valuable performance documents creates an "accidental archive." Notwithstanding the challenges of making materials "open," often connected to institutional gatekeeping, this short paper poses questions about the documenting of …

Reflective Documentation As A Movement Potential: Two Digital Platforms Building A Professional Learning Community, John Taylor, Defne Erdur

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Creating dance and training dancers is a collaborative and co-creative process, and teaching has a central role in the co-creative artistic processes. Yet dance teachers, whether free-lance or working in an institution, often develop and maintain their physical teaching practice in isolation. Additionally, because of the ephemeral nature of dance and the relational nature of dance education, these practices usually do not end up being recorded or documented as a body of knowledge. In the face of such a reality the online database IDOCDE.net provides a platform for the development and maintenance of an inclusive professional learning community through a …

The Life Of A Dance: Double Take Part Ii, Gregory C. Sporton

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The documentation of dance regularly asserts a false concept. This is that dances can be fixed, like a text, script, painting or even a musical score. Dance academics and organizations like ballet companies and the trusts that claim to protect and preserve the heritage of specific choreographers protect this idea. Focused far more on outputs than production, they decontextualize dance by ignoring its context: the working process. Notwithstanding the problematics of this assumption about the archival form of such material, that the tokens of the types that Wollheim (1968) posits as necessary are simply too flexible to be captured as …

Should Theatre Disappear Like Soap Bubbles?, Erin Lee

Proceedings from the Document Academy

I recently read an excerpt from a 2004 interview with Peter Hall where he claims that he was happy for his materials to disappear "like soap bubbles" (Reason, 2006). One of the fundamentally difficult things about archiving theatre, aside from its ephemeral nature, is the approach that creatives take to their work. Not only do we need to battle the format of live performance but we also need to convince many creatives, not all I must add, that their work can and should remain in the Archive for use in the future. There are glimmers of potential in the area …

Performing The Quality Of Imperceptible Interactions Between Individuals: A Technological Challenge Regarding The Collective, Marine Theunissen

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Contemporary technologies allow incredible possibilities of capturing individuals, but a problem arises when it comes to capturing a chorus, that is to say a "collective body" in motion. This proposal will address the problem of the sensitive capture of the quality of the interrelations between individuals, and of their refined interpretation through algorithms to "output” them in other forms. We will address two questions on the subject: how to capture the relations between individuals within a collective? How to create a circular-causal loop, whose artistic material (the digital data) is the interrelations of a collective, without engendering redundancy in their …

The Walking Dramaturg: An Autoethnographic Methodology For Performance Documentation, Giselle G. Garcia

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Technology usually implies the distancing of the human experience, but I argue what technology has enabled can teach us something about the role of multiplicity and the rhizomatic nature of history and storytelling. By looking at the subject position of the practicing performance researcher in terms of the walking dramaturg, the autoethnographic catalogue of such experience becomes a form of documentation in the archive of theatre histories. Taking the time to explore a nuanced understanding of the documeter’s subject position acknowledges the multifarious subject positions that contribute to the archive of theatre histories.

Beyond creating a record of evidence, I …

Filming The Stage: Reflections On The Historical And The Aesthetic Perspectives Of An Essential Archive Of The Future, André Deridder

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Since the appearance and growth of cinema, a close but sometimes ambiguous relationship has been forged between the “Seventh Art” and the performing arts. Although cinema evolved quickly to become an art form in its own right, the stage and the productions produced for this space remain an object of attention for film directors. The relationship between the audio-visual sector and the presentational arts torments historians, creators and aestheticians alike. Experimented with and made use of by some, with varying degrees of success, fully rejected by others, the filming of the stage always raises many practical questions as well as …

Co-Creating Our Lives, Performing Our Multi-Cultural Worlds, Aidah Nalubowa

Theses and Dissertations

In his Foreword for Theatre and Migration (Cox 2014), director Peter Sellars writes, “None of us are the picture in our passports” (viii). Neither are we the person that we look or sound like at first glance or the first meeting. Rather, who we are is shaped by among other factors our environment and cultural upbringing. Because traditionally people from different places perform and participate in social and cultural events that are naturally “scripted” differently, we are so much more than the pictures and names we carry on our identification documents. Migration, Sellars continues, is “one of the most basic …

The Lab Report, Volume 12, Issue 02, Todd Ristau

Lab Reports

Vol. 12, No. 02 (July, 2018)

• Summer 2018 Comes to a Close
• Student Spotlight: Ally Thomas
• Guest Profile: Erin Quinn Purcell and Jay Reiss
• Overnight Sensations
• Emma in Complexland
• Sean Abley Plays Open in Two Different Festivals
• Decision Height at New River Stage
• Jonathan G Galvez play in Planet Connections Fetivity
• Cabaret Workshop with Ruth Margraff
• Susie Young in Spring Awakening at MMT
• Dramaturgy Research Luncheon
• Song of Bernadette Jones at Fresh Fruit Festival
• Kevin D. Ferguson Wins Grant
• Neeley Gossett Recognition
• Kate Lowry Teaching in Texas
• Showcases for Advanced Performance, Directing, and Advanced Scene Study
• Playwright’s Festival
• Guest Respondent …

#Parlezvousfemme - A One-Woman Show, Victoria G. Lindbergh

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

#parlezvousfemme is a one-woman show set in 2018 that reimagines the lives of several infamous French women. Each character approaches modern life differently based on her given circumstances and reveals several universal truths about being a woman in today’s society. The famous military leader Joan of Arc is a 19-year-old youtuber criticizing the far-right for using her as their symbol, while revolutionary Olympe de Gouges is a modern-day women’s rights activist. Marie Antoinette is a housewife being interviewed by Vogue and scientist Marie Curie hosts a PBS telethon and addresses the lack of women in science. Designer Coco Chanel is …

Len Berkman On The Caffe Cino, Len Berkman

Theatre: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Black Box, White Cube, Gray Zone: Dance Exhibitions And Audience Attention, Claire Bishop

Publications and Research

Relocated from the “black box” of experimental theatre to the “white cube” of the gallery, dance in the museum brings about new forms of performance — the dance exhibition — and new protocols of audience behavior that permit, even encourage, smartphone photography. This is the “gray zone” of recent performance, which is both a symptom of, and compensation for, the virtualization of contemporary perception.

2018 Illinois Shakespeare Festival Program, School Of Theatre And Dance

Illinois Shakespeare Festival

41st Season. The Theatre at Ewing. The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare. Henry V by William Shakespeare. Shakespeare in Love based on the screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard.

Redefining The Competitive Dance Indsutry: A Plan For The Dance Competitions Of Tomorrow, Stevie Mack

Honors College Theses

There is an absence of direct focus in the development of a dancer’s education within today’s competitive dance world, as current dance competitions have many holes in providing the proper training and education a young dancer needs. It is clear that dance competitions are for-profit businesses with a focus on making money, but it is time to turn these businesses into opportunities for growth, success, and a place where pure talent can be discovered and then launched into the next generation of professional dancers.

I am a strong believer in education. Therefore, I believe competitive dance should be another form …

American Tap Dance History And Proposed Preservation, Margaret Miller

Honors College Theses

The first form of dance conceived in the United States, tap dance, thrived throughout the era of vaudeville and the movie musical. Today’s society often overlooks tap dance beyond basic or beginner dance education; the history of the art from is even more so neglected. Within these pages, I will address the question of how the history of tap dance can be honored and preserved for generations to come. I feel so grateful to have had a tap mentor that valued the history of tap just as much as the technique and steps. Others in my field may not have …

Flying Closer: The Intersection Of Circus And Dance, Emma Thomas

Honors College Theses

Dancers entering the professional industry must consider whether to be a jack of all trades, able to perform any style and any skill, or a specialized performer who has achieved mastery of one specific technique. Because commercial dancers require a greater variety of skill sets, and jobs for commercial dancers such as cruise ships, backup dancing, and Broadway shows, are increasingly asking their dancers to perform aerial arts - and circus companies such as Cirque Du Soleil, and Circa are blending circus and dance, I am arguing that a dancer entering the commercial industry has to also consider the value …

Playwriting Project [Theater], Celia Braxton

Open Educational Resources

HUT 101, The Art of Theatre, is the entrance level course for the Theatre program. It addresses the integrative learning core competency and the oral communication ability. As a freshman course, it provides a baseline for measurement of this competency and communication ability. It is required of all Theatre majors, and is part of the CUNY Flexible Core in Creative Expression. There are generally more non-majors than majors in the class. This assignment was originally developed during our first mini-grant period (2016-17 the academic year) by Celia Braxton and Abby Gerdts with the global learning core competency rubric and digital …

Rehearsal Injuries In Soft-Soled Character Shoes: Injury Rate Of Female Collegiate Dancers Wearing Soft-Soled Character Shoes With 2.5 Or 3.0 Inch Heels In Musical Theatre Rehearsals, Evelyn Vaughan

Honors College Theses

High-heeled shoes (HHS) have been known to present biomechanical imbalances in lower-leg mechanics at the pedestrian level, but have not been thoroughly studied in the context of highly dynamic movement, such as dance. In order to analyze the effects of 2.5-inch and 3.0-inch soft-soled character shoes (CS) worn by female collegiate musical theatre dancers during rehearsals, selected subjects completed a written questionnaire, the star balance excursion test, and a heel raise test. It was predicted that both heel heights would promote irregularities in subjects’ sense of balance and lower leg stamina, while 3.0 inch CS would cause greater rates of …

Anxiety: An Epidemic Through The Lens Of Social Media, Holly M. Wright

Honors College Theses

Anxiety: An Epidemic was originally inspired by the mental health crisis in my hometown, Palo Alto, California, and evolved to specifically focus on social media-related anxiety. I examined the question: How has social media evolved over the last decade and what effect does the proliferation of social media have on the young adult population? I hypothesized that social media would have a predominately negative effect, especially on young women, and set out to create a theatrical piece inspired by my research. In my meta-analysis of studies conducted, I found that more data needs to be collected on the relatively new …

Bringing Life To Theatre: A Scenic Designer's Role In Creating "The Wild Party", Matthew Carlin

Honors College Theses

The purpose of this paper is to examine the research that goes into designing the scenic elements of a musical. I was the scenic designer for Pace School of Performing Arts’ production of Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe’s The Wild Party in the fall of 2017. Directed by Roger Ellis, our version of the vaudeville-style musical was done in an immersive, in-the-round style. As the scenic designer for this production I was strongly focused on the research aspect of the design process. We consulted several art movements and architectural styles, as well as mythology, film and literature in …

Collaboration In Musical Theatre Writing, John Coyne

Honors College Theses

Good musical theatre writing is generally assessed by how intentional it is in telling its story. Since it is a very difficult thing to tell a story using music, writers must exercise extreme caution in allowing a story to unfold in an effective, economic way. Recently, there has been a trend in theatre for projects to be developed in a way that utilizes less time of writers sitting alone in a room, and more of material being developed on its feet. Devised theatre, as it is often called, is anathema to the traditional practices of musical theatre writing. The results …

Establishing Cultural Identity In American Concert Dance: How Corporate Funding Can Revitalize The World Of Dance, Taylor Rosenberger

Honors College Theses

In a country that has rapidly evolved in many industries, it has always mystified me as to why advancement in the arts, specifically dance, has lagged behind. My hypothesis as to why this is occurring is that concert dance in America is not as synonymous to the cultural identity of the nation as it is in comparison to its European ancestors. I began my research with the creation of ballet in order to determine the cultural roots that were established within particular societies. I then compared the funding models between the nations with this deep attachment to the funding models …

The Director's Role In The Development Of A New Play, Andrew Mullins

Honors College Theses

Over the course of May 2017 - February 2018, I examined the role of a theatre director in the development of a new play. The play that I directed was written by Brandon Adam, and is titled Nice Jewish X. We developed the play using three different forms of performances as guideposts and opportunities for feedback. The three forms of performance were a closed cold reading, a rehearsed open reading, and a fully staged and produced production. Over the course of this process, I worked closely with the playwright and helped facilitate his creative process, as well as explored …