Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

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.

Aliwa! A Reimagined Journey: A Stage Play And Exploring A Nyoongar Theatre Text With Pre-Service Teachers: An Exegesis, Elisa M. Williams

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Australia is home to one of the oldest continuous living cultures in the world. Now, more so than ever before, government and educational bodies are recognising the importance of integrating Indigenous cultures in education as a means of promoting intercultural understanding and improving educational outcomes for Indigenous students. The Australian Curriculum has advocated that Indigenous histories and cultures be embedded into every subject rather than taught separately. Drama is a curriculum area that provides many opportunities to integrate learning about Indigenous perspectives by exploring historically and culturally rich Indigenous theatre texts. Research is showing that non-Indigenous teachers are avoiding this …

การใช้อาวุธตัวยักษ์ในการแสดงโขน, สุวรักข์ อยู่แท้กูล

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

วิทยานิพนธ์เรื่อง การใช้อาวุธตัวยักษ์ในการแสดงโขน มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อศึกษาวิธีการใช้อาวุธของตัวยักษ์ในการแสดงโขน เรื่องรามเกียรติ์ โดยใช้ระเบียบวิจัยเชิงคุณภาพ ด้วยการศึกษาจากเอกสาร การสัมภาษณ์ และการสังเกตจากการแสดง โดยมุ่งเน้นให้เห็นถึงหลักการ ทฤษฎี กลวิธีและแนวทางในการปฏิบัติ การใช้อาวุธลักษณะต่าง ๆ ของตัวยักษ์ในการแสดงโขน เรื่องรามเกียรติ์ โดยศึกษารูปแบบและวิธีการปฏิบัติของครูสมศักดิ์ ทัดติ ผู้เชี่ยวชาญด้านนาฏศิลป์ไทยโขน ตัวยักษ์ สถาบันบัณฑิตพัฒนศิลป์ กระทรวงวัฒนธรรม ผลการวิจัยพบว่า อาวุธของตัวยักษ์ในการแสดงโขน เป็นอาวุธที่มีรูปแบบที่เป็นลักษณะเฉพาะ บางส่วนได้รับอิทธิพลมาจากอาวุธที่ใช้งานจริงและบางส่วนได้นำรูปร่างและลักษณะมาจากภาพจิตรกรรมฝาผนัง อาวุธของตัวยักษ์ในการแสดงโขน สามารถแบ่งตามลักษณะของอาวุธที่ปรากฎในการแสดงโขนได้ทั้งหมด 3 ประเภท ได้แก่ อาวุธสั้น อาวุธยาว และอาวุธพิเศษ วิธีการใช้อาวุธแต่ละประเภทก็จะแตกต่างกันออกไปขึ้นอยู่กับชนิดของอาวุธที่นำมาใช้ ผู้แสดงจึงต้องมีทักษะและความเชี่ยวชาญสำหรับการใช้อาวุธประกอบการแสดง ตัวยักษ์บางตน อาจจะการใช้อาวุธที่มากกว่าหนึ่งชนิด ซึ่งชนิดของอาวุธที่ใช้ก็อาจจะแตกต่างกันไปตามลักษณะหรือประเภทของอาวุธ อีกทั้งการแสดงของตัวยักษ์จะมีลักษณะที่แข็งแรงและคล่องแคล่ว ผู้แสดงตัวยักษ์จึงจำเป็นที่จะต้องรู้จักวิธีการใช้อาวุธในแต่ละประเภท เพื่อสื่อให้เห็นถึงความสวยงาม ความแข็งแรง และความสง่างามของตัวละครที่ใช้อาวุธในขณะที่ทำการแสดง โดยเฉพาะยักษ์ที่เป็นตัวละครเอก การใช้อาวุธในการแสดงของตัวยักษ์ในการแสดงโขนเรื่องรามเกียรติ์ จึงเป็นหนึ่งองค์ประกอบที่สำคัญอย่างหนึ่งสำหรับการแสดง และเป็นกระบวนที่ผู้แสดงสามารถอวดฝีมือการใช้อาวุธของตัวยักษ์ได้อย่างเต็มภาคภูมิ

A Gun For Every Woman, Gentë Retkoceri

Theses and Dissertations

Six centuries ago in Kosova, my home country, unmarried women known as sworn virgins, were forced to adopt a male persona and carry a gun to protect themselves. But today, guns have become tools of oppression and violence against women. And while the legal system carries penalties for domestic violence, marital rape is excluded. To shine a light on, and expose the topic of hidden violence, my thesis uses artivism to address a sensitive but provocative issue, exhibiting a large-scale sculpture of a gun, designed to provoke raw emotions; to challenge visitors to consider the terror felt by women threatened …

Contemporary Films And Contemporary Issues: An Introductory Film Class Curriculum, August W. Liguori-Chien

Liberal Studies (MA) Final Essays

Teachers spend years teaching students to interpret texts. This interpretive skill is deemed vital in our education system, but little time is devoted to developing students’ ability to interpret film, the most popular media students engage with. Film is an incredible amalgamation of words, motion, and music. The world of film offers students incredible opportunities to interpret, analyze, and be moved. If our students must be able to interpret literature shouldn't they also be able to do the same in the immense world of film.

This class will not focus exclusively on the history of film or the classically taught …

Educating The Future Of The Arts, Anna Hollingsworth

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Theatre impacts the youth in a positive way. By helping with social connections, learning skills to tell a story, and getting to utilize their imagination. This thesis looks at what comes into creating a lesson plan for grades fourth-sixth grade. Each grade will focus on different themes that pertains to what they are learning in their literature classes and what is more relevant topic in their age group. To take what they learn from the classroom and apply it to a real-life scenario. To help those children explore through learning it academically and getting to devise their own shows. It …

Sustainable Canons: Gadamer's Hermeneutics And Theatre, Charles A. Gillespie

Catholic Studies Faculty Publications

This essay investigates Gadamer's hermeneutic theory and its application to theatre. Attention to Gadamer's views of theatre and performative interpretation provides a foundation to theorize a more sustainable canon. Classics that constitute a sustainable canon operate within a tradition through a community of interpretation that continually returns to interpret them anew. This structure also describes the theatrical repertoire. Several of Gadamer's central themes find easy analogues on stage: play, the history of effect (Wirkungsgeschichte), the participation of an audience in the fusion of horizons, and art's making present continuity the past. Gadamer provides a framework for understanding the …

The Velvet Ditch, Kate Leslie

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

At the party house, the door is always open.

Fiona finds herself living in her hometown after graduating from college. So she spends her weekends like everyone else: attending late night house parties after all the bars shut down. But no matter how much fun each party might be, Fiona eventually must face her past and her future.

A play about nostalgia and what it feels like to be lost.

The Kids Are Driving The Bus, Kristin Lundberg

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

A full-length play with elements of music and audience participation. Ms. McShizzle has to decide how far she will go to challenge the educational system and empower her students to pursue their dreams. When confronting her nemesis, an audacious Clown with a harmful neurosis, McShizzle struggles to build the school community for good.

The Sun, The Moon, And The Truth, Sarah Cosgrove Gaumond

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

The Sun, The Moon, and The Truth is a collection of two plays: North Wind and I Lived To Tell. Both plays explore the human condition through differing lenses.

In North Wind, a play deeply rooted in magical realism, a trio of characters search for freedom from the past in a snow-bound Midwestern bar. The dramatic question of North Wind is: How do you move forward when everything you see reminds you of what you’ve lost?

I Lived To Tell, a non-linear play, takes place in the character's imagination. The play's dramatic question is: How does a …

Direction Of The Musical Seussical Jr., Amanda Will

All Graduate Projects

This project encompasses pre-production research and conceptualization, direction of Seussical Jr. (including casting and rehearsal of student actors and coordinating technical elements), post-production reflection, and evaluation. The documentation includes research and textual analysis of the play, notes on rehearsal and direction, and post-production critical reflection.

The Sound Design For H.M.S. Pinafore, Kyle W. Jensen

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of a Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre Arts: Sound Design at Minnesota State University, Mankato. This thesis contains a detailed account of Kyle W. Jensen’s sound design process and research for H.M.S. Pinafore. The thesis gives a chronological overview of the designer’s process in four chapters; a pre-production analysis, a historical and critical perspective, a journal detailing the process, and a post-production analysis. The fifth and final chapter provides the process development of the designer’s career before and during his time in graduate school. Appendices feature the paperwork, a list of …

Technical Direction Of Shakespeare In Love, Jared A. Shofstall

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This document is a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the Master of Fine Arts degree in theatre. It is a detailed account of author Jared Shofstall’s technical direction process for Minnesota State University, Mankato’s production of Shakespeare in Love in the fall of 2019. This thesis chronicles the author’s process from pre-production through post production in five chapters: an early production analysis and a process development analysis. Appendices and works cited are included.

Women Dancers Of Color Decolonizing Knowledge Production Through Performance, Mio Yoshizaki

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis focuses on how women dancers of color (WDoC) decolonize the process of knowledge production through performance. Through a feminist perspective, this research analyzes the ways WDoC use dance and movement to share their voices as women of color. The American concert dance industry was established based on Western perspectives. When WDoC create performances about their own lived experiences, dance plays a role in decolonizing the process of knowledge production by portraying their unique perspectives and culture through movement. Focus group discussions with women of color who perform in a midwestern metro area were selected as a method for …

Open Education Exploration Grant: Michelle Cowin Gibbs, Michelle Cowin Gibbs

Ames Library Awards

No abstract provided.

Signed Hamlet Poster Installation, University Of North Florida

UNF Shakespeare - Hamlet

Image of a signed Hamlet poster installed in a frame in an exhibit in the Thomas G. Carpenter Library in the Cynthia and Walter R. Graham, Jr. M.D. Student Art Gallery during the spring of 2022.

Gallery Installation Of Unf Production Of Hamlet, University Of North Florida

UNF Shakespeare - Hamlet

Gallery Installation of costumes and props at the Thomas G. Carpenter Library of UNF's Production of Hamlet

Asl Interpreter Team, University Of North Florida

UNF Shakespeare - Hamlet

Flyer with the names of the American Sign Language interpreters involved with the UNF Shakespeare production of Hamlet in January of 2022.

Need Finding For An Embodied Coding Platform: Educators’ Practices And Perspectives, Tommy Sharkey, Robert Twomey, Amy Eguchi, Monica Sweet, Ying Chun Wu

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

Eight middle- and high-school Computer Science (CS) teachers in San Diego County were interviewed about the major challenges their students commonly encounter in learning computer programming. We identified strategic design opportunities -- that is, challenges and needs that can be addressed in innovative ways through the affordances of Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR). Thematic Analysis of the interviews yielded six thematic clusters: Tools for Learning, Visualization and Representation, Pedagogical Approaches, Classroom Culture, Motivation, and Community Connections. Within the theme of visualization, focal clusters centered on visualizing problem spaces and using metaphors to explain computational concepts, indicating that an AR/VR coding …

Breaking Barriers: Creating Inclusive Dance Spaces For High School Students With Cerebral Palsy, Samantha Michelle Barnewolt

Dance (MFA) Theses

Abstract This thesis explores the power of positive mindsets as it relates to creative movement development in dance for students living with Cerebral Palsy (CP) who also use motorized wheelchairs. This research dives into the development of movement mantras used to break negative mindsets and create thinking strategies that encourage movement development for varied bodies. As a result of collaborative efforts between the researcher, a student living with CP, and students living without CP, this study reveals that through the removal of mental barriers which complicate the accessibility of intentional movement in dance, students with CP may overcome obstacles that …

Honor Thyself, Alonzo O. Williams

Dance (MFA) Theses

The black male experience and identity in America are filled with complexity. We struggle to know ourselves. We work to see the way of love and the peace of an unviolated free spirit. We want to engage with ourselves with the highest degree of freedom and comfort, not to continue to question our identity in a life-threatening white patriarchal masculinity ideal. Honoring oneself from the lenses of the Reconstruction era of the United States is essential. Reconceptualizing this history explores the significance of emphasizing Reconstruction in my life as a black male to go through a process of self-discovery and …

Traces: Embodied Ephemera From Here To There, Alice Svetic

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis work explores contemporary queer dance making through the concept of ephemera - what is left after performances "end." Taking heavy inspiration from José Esteban Muñoz's Cruising Utopia: the then and there of queer futurity, the research situates one young queer dance maker’s own past, present, and future choreographies as a site for the extraction of queer embodied experience. The textual and written research culminates in a gallery installation which houses a series of vignettes that act as preserved documents of these queer performance histories. The live performance calls the alive, dancing body into the conversation of the ephemeral. …

Healing Through Mother Earth, Taylor A. Russell

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis deals with mental health, with a focus on Black women. Historically, Black women are often so compromised, being constant caregivers and helping everyone else, that they forget to help themselves, not having the time and financial means to do so. If we go back in the time of slavery, many Black women were taking care of slave owners' children and suckling the white women’s babies instead of their own. By the time they got home and after diligently caring for other people’s children they were focused on their own children, who they had been away from for hours …

The Means To Escape, Devonn Mckenna

Dance (MFA) Theses

This research interrogates what it means to utilize escapism, transforming it from passive to active consumption, drawing strong ties between performance and social media. Through audience awareness and participation, this research aims to cultivate a social collective within performance viewing and social media. Framing escapism as a social collective experience resists contemporary notions suggesting that escapism is an individual experience. This work argues that social media and performance have become a space allowing for social collective awareness. Thus, escaping together is the only way to move forward.

Tapping In: A Movement Meditation For Wellness, Victoria Rodriguez

Dance (MFA) Theses

Victoria Rodriguez’s thesis paper and accompanying video explore the somatic movement sequence Tapping In. Tapping In was born to facilitate the mind-body connection, muscular balance, and flexibility as well as implement tools for the physical and mental release of trauma. The written manifestation explores the practices that allowed for the creation of the Tapping In movement sequences such as Pilates, Yoga, Emotional Freedom Technique, Physical Therapy, and more. Each method provides a unique and valuable stance on navigating the previously mentioned goals, but no single technique led to the results Victoria was looking for. As a result, it is through …

Different Versions Of Myself, Anya Smith

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This is a research-informed screenplay exploring the relationship between religion and recreational pole dancing. While the popularity of recreational pole dancing has grown over the last two decades, it remains a controversial topic in some circles. This study employed interviews, autoethnography, and a literature review to examine the tensions between pole dancing and religion. Creative Analytic Practice was employed as a method of evaluating and presenting the research, which culminated in a fictional screenplay.

The story is about Louise, a young woman caught between two worlds. She feels pressured to conceal her recreational pole dancing activities in order to retain …

Fleshcrawl, Shanita Jackson

Theses and Dissertations--English

I am fascinated with the spiritual, physical, and psychological experiences that occur when one’s flesh crawls. The experiences, akin to inverted goosebumps, result from provocations of the senses or of the mind. James Blake’s latest album, for example, triggers my flesh to crawl. The art on the album cover depicts a decaying body turned into a canyon-like labyrinth. In undergrad, attempts to conceptualize slave-deck diagrams disturbed my flesh to crawl. I am intrigued by how anxiety, epigenetics, and superstition all factor into the subjective intensities of this collective experience. As it seems, circumstance heightens the severity and frequency of the …

For As Long As The Lamp Is Burning: A One-Act Play, Jon Papernick

Emerson Authors, Researchers, & Creators

Miriam Bravermann, (Mama) a Holocaust survivor living in 1990’s Jerusalem believes the Nazis have stolen the mezuzah off her door post. Her adult son Avshalom is concerned that she’s beginning to lose her grip on reality and wants her to move in with him and his family. Mama has taken on the near holy responsibility of remembering, and refuses to accept that she may actually be forgetting.

Choreographing The Line: Exploring The Art/Obscenity Paradox Of Feminine Sexuality Within The Context Of Recreational Pole Dance, Cameron Boucher-Khan

Scripps Senior Theses

This project seeks to explore the relationships between pole dance and pole fitness, art and obscenity and respectability as it relates to work, class, and social systems. It analyzes the way female sexuality is accepted or rejected within society and explores the boundaries between the two through the staging of pole and contemporary dance. The dichotomy between art and obscenity is explored in the relationship between stripper pole dance, and the fast-growing pole fitness community. Within this relationship, strippers are demonized as obscene, while pole fitness dancers' labor is viewed as artistic, despite the sexuality present in both. The difference …

Tap Dance In Post-Secondary Dance Education: Why Is It Disappearing And How Can We Fix It, Natalie Riddick

Dance Department Best Student Papers

Tap dance is an artform that is rapidly declining in popularity in dance training, especially in post-secondary dance education. To answer the questions of how and why a quintessentially American artform has so faded in dance teachings, this paper analyzes the history of tap and its creation by marginalized individuals, the Eurocentric legacies that influence our definitions of 'technique' in dance training, and how tap dance is currently being taught today. Evidence for the conclusions of this paper include current discussions of tap among dancers and dance educators as well as a review of recent scholarship on the history of …