Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Forcing Perspective: Selected Projects In Areas Of Scenic Design And Technical Direction, Dwight Camillucci

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Selected projects in areas of scenic design and technical direction.

Dance: Music, Movement, And Performance, Elise Beal

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Dance is an art form that incorporates many different mediums. Music is selected to determine the quality of movement that is visualized. Movement becomes realized through repetition of listening to music and outside influences. All dances require collaboration between choreographer and dancers to construct the piece and prepare for performance. The process of development, refinement, and completion is known as the choreographic process. The methods for the process include determining the style of movement and choosing music to satisfy the inspiration. Once music is selected, movement and steps can be determined with influences from previous pieces or other choreographers. The …

Technology In Theatre: Breaking The Fourth Wall, Samantha Burns

Honors Theses

For a long time, theatre has been seen as a medium of the past. With new technologies such as cellphones being more commonplace, there could be a way to utilize them in theatre. This thesis is a reflection on writing an interactive script, figuring out the best way for an audience to interact with a performance utilizing their phones. The play comments on women in not only theatre, but all sorts of media and how they are portrayed.

A Performance Of: "The Madness Of Lady Bright", Holly Mcdowell

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Lanford Wilson’s The Madness of Lady Bright first premiered in 1964 at the Caffe Cino, and is widely regarded as among the first works of the gay theater movement. Over the course of this one-act play, an aging drag queen slowly loses her mind in her New York apartment.

This production examined the themes of Wilson’s play through the lens of transgender identity, and an updated setting in the 1980s. This time period shapes the idea of the loneliness of not passing as a woman in a world where being visibly transgender meant rejection and danger.

1999 Aaa Jrpg Quality And How A 2019 Indie-Game Developer Can Meet It, Kailynn Haskell-Harbert

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This paper is a delve into 1999 JRPG AAA video games and how small developers can make something of similar quality with contemporary technology. This is explored by using Final Fantasy VIII and Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete as a 1999 AAA standard, then comparing that standard to modern indie-games as well as my own experience in indie-game development. The ultimate goal of the paper is to prove that small indie-game studios can create 1999 AAA quality JRPGs with relatively minimal investment.

Perceiving Live Improvisation In The Performing Arts, Aili W. Bresnahan

Books and Book Chapters by University of Dayton Faculty

This chapter will explore the ways that live improvisational performances by professional-level actors, musicians, and dancers, take place at both cognitive and sub-cognitive levels in ways that are relevant for understanding perception and appreciation of the performing arts. First, evidence from cognitive science will be used to show that improvising, as in a dance or a music jam session or a scene in theatre, may involve physical responses that occur before we are conscious of the event to which we are responding. Second, this chapter will demonstrate how understanding these cognitive processes can help us to pinpoint why live improvisational …

Murder Pass: Tackling Toxic Masculinity Through Musical Comedy, Chad Nowlan

Honors College Theses

The author discusses the process of co-writing a full-length musical that addresses issues of toxic masculinity and sexism.

Memories: The Lighting Design For “The Glass Menagerie”, Catherine Blencowe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents new ways of looking at an old classic by illuminating the emotions and hardship of the Wingfield family through the use of color and texture. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams was presented at the University of Arkansas in September of 2017. The challenges of this production will be addressed as well as the achievements and areas of improvement of this production. Finally, this document will answer the question: How does color, texture, and the angle of stage lighting help heighten the emotions of the characters and engage an audience in the play?

Included are all the …

Three Forms Of Death In David Rabe’S The Basic Training Of Pavlo Hummel And Sticks And Bones, Sloan Garner

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I argue there are three main forms of death that progress chronologically in David Rabe’s The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones. First, the death of civilian identity as the soldier conforms to the military. Secondly, the soldier’s killing—metaphoric or literal—of others, which is part of his attempt to fit with his new military identity. Third, the soldier’s sacrificial suicide as his escape from the military identity. In this paper, I provide evidence and close reading to support my argument that the protagonists in both plays, Pavlo and David, encounter, enact, or experience …

Technical Direction Of Mother Courage And Her Children, Michael Strickland

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

The Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film, in conjunction with the Nebraska Repertory Theatre, produced Mother Courage and Her Children as the second show of the 2018-2019 season, directed by Andy Park in Howell Theater. I served as technical director for this production, whose task was engineering and the constructing the scenic design. My specific responsibilities included the budgeting of scene shop resources, creating and effectively communicating engineering drawings, outlining a clear objective-based schedule, overseeing the construction process, maintaining a safe working environment, installing and removing all scenery from the performance space, and training of back stage personnel for …

Designing A Miracle For David Javerbaum's An Act Of God, Haley Williams

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

This thesis describes the pre-production, production and post-production processes for the Mainstage production of the play An Act of God by David Javerbaum, adapted from Javerbaum’s The Last Testament: A Memoir By God, performed at the Lied Center’s Johnny Carson Black Box Theatre on September 26 thru October 14. Directed by Michael Mendelson, the production was a collaborative effort with Haley Mackenzie Williams serving as Costume, Hair and Make-up Designer, Jill Hibbard as Scenic Designer, Jamie Mancuso as Lighting Designer, Daniel d’Egnuff as Technical Designer and Emily Callahan as Sound Designer.

Advisor: Jamie Bullins

Acting Styles Of Caryl Churchill Performance, Mischa Hutchings

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis contains materials pertaining to my thesis performance and one-person show. This thesis also includes my headshot, resume and link to my website.

The Implementation Of A Systematic Method For Identifying The Root Causes Of Manufacturing Negative Process Yield In A North American Fastener Manufacturing Facility, Bradley J. Venable

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Negative process yield is an unexplained expense that does have a significant impact on profits. As like most other manufacturing processes, there are multiple processing operations that a finished good can be exposed to during the course of the entire process. Negative process yield can occur during these known operations but without accurate reporting and data collection, it becomes a moot point. In order to investigate this unexplainable phenomena properly, understanding of what could possibly cause this from occurring must be achieved. In the case of the North American fastener manufacturing plant, missing pieces that are not accounted for through …

The Actor’S Rhythm, Internal Beat., Lashondra Cherell Hood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a conversational document that will examine the manifestation of the auditory(hearing) and motor(physical motion) cortex of the cerebrum and how this connection influences character physicality in theatre. In this thesis, The Mountaintop, written by Katori Hall, is used as a gateway to conduct research on music and rhythm as it affects the body and creating physical character choices. By reflecting on personal musical exploration,that of my peers, and students, its concluded that this method can be used for all stages of character building and performance experiences. The various backgrounds of the subjects — students and peers — …

Costume Design And Execution Of The Nebraska Repertory Theatre’S Mother Courage And Her Children By Bertolt Brecht, Translated By William Grange, Adapted By Andy Park, Heather Mae Striebel

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

The information, documentation and analysis found within this thesis highlights the design and execution of The Nebraska Repertory Theatre’s fall production of Mother Courage. This production was originally written by Bertolt Brecht, translated by William Grange of The University of Nebraska – Lincoln and then adapted by The Nebraska Repertory Theatre’s Artistic Director Andy Park. Mother Courage was a part of the 2018-2019 Nebraska Repertory Theatre’s 50^thanniversary season and was performed in the Howell Theatre located within the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film. Information found within this thesis showcases the research, production, development, design and …

The Unsung Hero Character: A Harbinger Device Of Misfortune, Eutimio Talavera

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis introduces an obscure storytelling device, The Unsung Hero character, as one way of examining how movies function as stories. This character is often overlooked, as it frequently cloaks its idiosyncrasies, thus it lacks any apparent signs of internal conflict. This analysis foregrounds the character’s overall functionality, found only in rare instances and typically in the story of a movie. With effective implementation in a story, as a functional harbinger device, brief appearances of The Unsung Hero character demonstrate flashpoints or disclosures of a forthcoming misfortune in the story. This movie analysis shows how The Unsung Hero character functions …

Embodied Nostalgia: Early Twentieth Century Social Dance And U.S. Musical Theatre, Phoebe Rumsey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I claim the collective emotional connections and historical explorations characteristic of musical theatre constitute a nostalgic impulse dramaturgically inherent in the form. In my intervention in the link between nostalgia and musical theatre, I look to an area underrepresented in musical theatre scholarship: social dance. Through case studies that focus specifically on how social dance in musical theatre brings forth the dancer on stage as a site of embodied history, cultural memory, and nostalgia, I ask what social dance is doing in musical theatre and how the dancing body functions as a catalyst for nostalgic thinking for …

Broadway Bodies: Casting, Stigma, And Difference In Broadway Musicals Since "A Chorus Line" (1975), Ryan Donovan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores how embodied identities facing social stigmatization are represented in Broadway musicals and provides histories of casting specific kinds of embodied difference. Broadway Bodies: Casting, Stigma, and Difference in Broadway Musicals since “A Chorus Line” considers the politics of representation and makes clear that casting is always a political act, situated within a power structure favoring certain bodies. Previous scholarship on casting largely centers on race and ethnicity as the central issues; this research reframes the study of casting to focus on bodies, inclusive of race and ethnicity but especially relative to ability, gender, sexuality, and size. Though …

Racial Becoming: How Agentic (Self-Initiated) Encounter Events Inform Racial Identity Refinement, Devin A. Heyward

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Racial identity literature has typically focused on identity formation through a series of stages. It also has centered how the experience of negative encounter events informs racial identity formation. With the advent of new genealogical and genomic technology, it is imperative to expand the focus of identity literatures to include encounter events, which participants elect to experience (i.e. self-initiated or agentic encounter events). By using this frame, identity processes become fluid and informed by individual life experiences. In the context of this study, direct to consumer genetic ancestry tests (DTC-GAT) are operationalized as a self-initiated encounter event. Participants were …

Just A Buncha Clowns: Comedic-Anarchy And Racialized Performance In Black Vaudeville, The Chop Suey Circuit, And Las Carpas, Michael Shane Breaux

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While the practice of white musical variety clowns embodying stereotypes of African, Chinese, and Mexican Americans has been widely documented and theorized in scholarship on US American popular performance, it has been done largely in segregated studies that maintain the idea that racial impersonations in musical variety is a privilege of white performers. For instance, no study exists that focuses on more than one stereotype at a time, and the performer’s body is always either white or of the same “color” as the type being played. In addition, very little has been written about the tours and circuits run by …

Queer Pregnancy In Shakespeare's Plays, Alicia Page Andrzejewski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bringing together queer and feminist theory, this dissertation examines Shakespeare’s representations of pregnancy divorced from their promised duration and promised end, revealing that the pregnant body is not wholly symbolic of futurity, chastity, or even heterosexual desire. In queer readings of Shakespeare’s plays and in the methodological debates that inform them, the pregnant body has been conspicuously absent, despite being often subsumed into definitions of heteronormativity and procreative reproduction. In feminist work on Shakespeare’s pregnant characters, scholars largely conflate pregnancy with maternity instead of considering the ways in which these women might engage in non-heterosexual forms of intimacy and eroticism. …

Reclaiming The Musical Burlesque: A Reconstruction Of The 1855 Musical Score To John Brougham’S Po-Ca-Hon-Tas: Or, The Gentle Savage, Christopher Drobny

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Most historians begin their musical theatre chronologies with the 1866 premiere of The Black Crook. However, a few respected scholars cite Po-Ca-Hon-Tas: or, The Gentle Savage, John Brougham’s 1855 musical burlesque, as an important development in the art form’s earlier evolution. The neglect of Brougham’s work is often justified for two reasons. First, his practice of creating lyrics to pre-existing melodies reduces his work to second-tier status. Second, because none of Brougham’s musical scores are extant, it is impossible to recreate a performance of his work and access its qualities. I offer two responses. First, as our contemporary musical …

Eng 302 Playwriting Workshop, Hillary Miller

Open Educational Resources

Pedagogical materials created during Spring 2019 OER/Digital Literacy fellowship at Queens College, revising English 302: Playwriting Workshop.

Changing Internal Identity Through Physical Crafting In Performance., Lauren Elizabeth Dobbs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an analysis of my process in my thesis performance of Tronia in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, adapted by Dr. J. Ariadne Calvano and Dr. Janna Segal. I break the process down into contextual, historical, and textual considerations, as well as my physical, vocal, and emotional process crafting Tronia. I analyzed my process as a means to achieving an end. My goal with this performance was to find and show how changing the body changes the mind. The main tools I used to achieve this goal were Laban Movement Analysis, action, and contextual and historical factors. …

Under Construction : Acting, Creativity, Collaboration, And Siti Company., Carol Stewart

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a case study of New York’s Saratoga International Training Institute (known as SITI Company), one of the most innovative American theatre companies of the last twenty-five years. Research for this study was based in part on the author’s experience with the work of SITI throughout those years, including participation in intensive training with the company and observations of rehearsal and performance of the 2014 world premiere production of Steel Hammer at the Humana Festival of New American Plays, at Actors Theatre of Louisville. SITI Company is defined by their dedication to actor training, and to a democratic …

"Gentlemen With Brains" : The Use Of Historical Figures In The Development Of The Character Of Hortensio In An Adaptation Of William Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew., Terry Tocantins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2018, I played Hortensio in a production of The Taming of the Shrew that took place among the businessmen in the America of 1963. This thesis centers on the strategies and tactics I employed in the portrayal of Hortensio, a moneyed, middle aged, single man who impersonates a music tutor to seduce the much younger Bianca. In my research I investigated the archetype of the advertising executive of the era. The world views of these men upheld the post-war conception of American exceptionalism, and in their occupations were adept at manipulation free of the fear of consequences. Hortensio is …

Costume Design For Qui Nguyen’S She Kills Monsters, Tanner Neal Mcalpin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The following thesis details the process of creating costume designs and implementing them in the production of She Kills Monsters which was produced at the University of Arkansas Black Box Theatre in the Fall of 2018. Throughout this thesis I will explain how the costumes went from initial research and conversations with the director to the final products on the stage. The account of this includes an analysis of the script, collages of photos used for inspiration, portrait gallery, research, rough sketches, renderings with fabric swatches, production photos, and my evaluation of the process as a whole.

Baptizing Shakespeare, Na'tosha De'von Barron

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I will be discussing my process in preparing and performing the role of Lady Macbeth, and how I used the parallels of the King James Bible to approach the text. I will show how this method will allow theatre people to teach Shakespeare to African Americans in a way that will become second nature to grasp. I will include the events of the play, my character analysis, intake on the rehearsal process, production photos, resume, headshot, program, and a link to my website.

On The Variations Of 'Occupatio' In "Richard Ii", William Kelly Reeder

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent scholarship of Shakespeare’s Richard II has been interested in or preoccupied with its historical relations. Particularly the plays association with the Essex Rising of 1601, and the censorship of the deposition scene, both of which seem to resonate for history with Elizabeth’s enigmatic comment expressing her identification with Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard II.

This paper proposes to resolve the question of the play’s censorship by interpreting the deposition scene as a dramatization of transubstantiation, perhaps triggering Elizabethan censors.

Transubstantiation is the doctrine by which the Catholic Church interprets the Eucharist using the distinction between substance and accidens (eternal and …

Costume Design For "Life Is A Dream" By Pedro Calderon De La Barca, Kelsey Looney

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The following thesis explains the process used to create and implement the costume design for the production of Life is a Dream produced at the University of Arkansas in the spring of 2018. In this thesis I will detail the process of moving from research, to renderings, to finished costumes. This design process includes a script analysis, inspiration collages, portrait gallery, sketches, renderings, production photographs, and an assessment of the success of the process overall.