Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Teaching Social Studies Through Drama, Colin Anderson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Educators and researchers have long discussed methods for improving student achievement in the social studies and history. Research on student attitudes reveals that the social studies suffers from a lack of interest among students. Common complaints among students are that the subject is tedious, does not relate to their lives, is not particularly useful for their future careers, is repetitive, or that it is simply boring (Schug et al., 1982). Even when students recognize the utilitarian value of skills they learn from social studies / history, they rarely express an interest in the subject (Chiodo, 2004). After reviewing the body …

Expressions Of Madness In Coloratura Mad Scenes Of Bel Canto Operas, Rachel G. Christenson

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis will explore the musical innovations in the mad scenes of the bel canto composers in the 1800s. It will analyze Gaetano Donizetti’s mad scenes in Anna Bolena (1830) and Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), and Vincezzo Bellini’s mad scenes in I Puritani (1835) to discover how each composer expresses madness through the high and virtuosic voice of the coloratura soprano. The subject of madness is not a new idea in opera. However, the mad scenes of Donizetti and Bellini are the most successful and are often performed in opera houses around the world. Specific attention is given to the …

Experiences Of Adolescents And Drama: "This Is Bullsh*T. I Can't Do It", Erin K. Hulse Phd

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The purpose of this practitioner action research (PAR) study was to explore experiences of middle school students enrolled in a basic drama class, creating a performance piece that allowed for the representation of voices and opinions of participants. Seventh and eighth grade students developed work relating their perspectives on issues important to them--friendship, respect, equality, secrets, and moving on. Questions were 1) how are trust, ensemble, and community developed with the participants? 2) how do students respond to drama games, and 3) how do participants express their perspectives regarding issues using the creative drama strategies? Students created a performance of …

Drama For Social Justice: Embodying Identity And Emotion In Elt, Riah Werner

MA TESOL Collection

In this thesis, the author makes the case that drama is a powerful tool for language acquisition because it develops and engages embodiment, emotion and identity, important aspects of learning and communication that are often neglected in traditional language classrooms. The thesis establishes a theoretical foundation for the use of drama in the social justice-oriented language classroom, reviews research on drama for language learning and describes common drama techniques. The author connects the theories of embodied cognition and multiliteracies to an intersectional model of identity and argues that drama helps students re-examine the way society positions them based on their …

Damn Yankees, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2016-2017 Season

The story is a modern retelling of the Faust legend set during the 1950s in Washington, D.C., during a time when the New York Yankees dominated Major League Baseball. It is based on Wallop's novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.

Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama And The Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Claire T. Solomon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (1929-2016)" Claire Solomon analyzes the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope as an apparatus of capture (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand). More precisely, her article models how such tropes imply modes of reading anachronistically and metafictionally that decontextualize gestures of resistance and conflate female writers, performers, and characters across time and place. Solomon offers a situated formalist reading of Argentine playwright Salvadora Medina Onrubia's 1929 drama, Las descentradas, revealing an avant-garde counterpoint of melodrama and metafiction as an ambiguous alternative to capture.

When The Rain Stops Falling

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of When the Rain Stops Falling by Thornton Andrew Bovell.

Performed February 24-26, March 3-5, 2017.

It’s 2039. A fish falls from the sky and lands at Gabriel’s feet. Where did it come from? Gabriel’s estranged son decides to visit for dinner. What does he want? To know about his past? Gabriel barely knows his own past. From 1959 to 2039, from London to Australia, When the Rain Stops Falling follows the fragmented history and mystery of Gabriel’s family and the falling fish.

The Crucible, School Of Theatre Arts

All Production Programs

Winner of the 1953 Tony Award for Best Play, Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as an allegory in response to McCarthyism and the US government’s blacklisting of its citizens accused of being communists. Using the Salem witch trials which occurred in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692 and 1693, the play is a partially fictionalized and dramatized account of some of those events. The piece has become an American classic and a central work in the canon of American drama.

Top Girls, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2016-2017 Season

Top Girls is a 1982 play by Caryl Churchill. It is about a woman named Marlene, a career-driven woman who is only interested in women's success in business. In the famous opening scene, she hosts a dinner party for a group of famous women from history. As the play unfolds we find Marlene has left her 'poor' life, and illegitimate child with her sister Joyce, in order to tread the path to 'success'. The play is contemporary and examines the role of women in society and what being a successful woman means.

Head In The Game: A One-Act Play, Carolyn Gage

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Head in the Game is a fifteen-minute, five-character, easy-to-stage-anywhere play that brings audiences into the world of male "pay-to-play" abuse of women, through a fantasy scenario of "boxing girls," women whom men pay to batter. The world of the boxing girls is an apt analogy for prostitution. The play uncompromisingly brings home the point that paying to use someone for sexual gratification is no more "sex" than paying to punch someone is boxing.

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

2016-2017 Season

A showcase of performances by seniors with special guest Lindsay Nicole Chanbers '02

Dance 2016: The Goddess, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2016-2017 Season

No abstract provided.

Giant, School Of Theatre Arts

All Production Programs

IWU School of Theatre Arts musical production of Giant by Sybille Pearson, music and lyrics by Michael John Lachiusa.

Harry Potter And Hamilton From The Stage To The Page, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

In this article originally published in Public Books, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner offers commentary on the two best-selling plays on record, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Hamilton. Specifically, Pollack-Pelzner examines how the Anglo-American world’s favorite orphans play at home, adopted, as it were, from the stage to the page.

The Crucible, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2016-2017 Season

The Crucible is a 1953 play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692/93. Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government persecuted people accused of being communists. _{^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucible}}

Antigone

Taylor Theatre Playbills

Taylor Theatre presents Sophocles’ timeless tragedy “Antigone,” translated and directed by Joe Ricke.

Performed September 29-October 2, 2016 at the Mitchell Theatre.

In this story, the bold yet cursed princess Antigone, daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, chooses to confront her unmovable uncle/king about his decision to dishonor her brother by refusing his burial. Her choice to defy him shocks the entire city of Thebes. Ultimately, all concerned, including the audience, are forced to wrestle with the relationship of divine law to human laws.

This striking production, translated and directed by Joe Ricke, explores this universal question in the ancient context …

The Addams Family, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2016-2017 Season

We have drawn inspiration for this rendering of The Addams Family from Charles Addams' original cartoons. We were fascinated by the challenge of taking a two dimensional world and extending it into three dimensional reality.

Brighton Beach Memoirs, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance

2016 Summer Theatre

Brighton Beach Memoirs is the first play in Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical comedic Eugene trilogy, which also includes Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound. The story of Brighton Beach Memoirs follows a 15-year-old boy named Eugene Jerome as he grows up in 1937 Brooklyn. stageagent.com/shows/play/2119/brighton-beach-memoirs

Creating A Sense Of Relevancy: Directing Lee Blessing’S Two Rooms, Erick L. Wolfe

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The following thesis is a documentation of the production of Two Rooms, including analysis, research production book, script, documentation, and evaluation. The play was performed in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the University of New Orleans Performing Arts Center Lab Theatre on November 7^th, 8^th, 12th, 13th, 21st, and 22^nd, 2015.

The Old Sorrow, Emmett J. Schlenz

Honors Thesis

From 1969 to 1998, the conflict known as the Troubles raged in Northern Ireland, killing 3,500 people and devastating Belfast. Many dramatic adaptations tackle the conflict, from Neil Jordan’s Oscar-winning The Crying Game to Fifty Dead Men Walking. These adaptations usually focus on combatants in the conflict, however; none, to my knowledge, full address the experience of Belfast hospital staff, from doctors to nurses to porters. Hospital staff – especially those working at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, which lay at the edge of the Falls Road, an area keenly affected by the conflict – came from all …

The Passionate Actor, Britney Nichole Walker-Merritte

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of materials documenting my thesis performances as well as a statement of artistry, a copy of my current headshot, and resume and a link to my website.

Burch, Kelly Calvert, B. 1964 (Sc 3001), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3001. Script for a one-act play titled “Allen County: A Work in Progress” written by Kelly C. Burch in commemoration of the bicentennial of Allen County’s formation in 1815. Includes script, program, DVD, and news clipping about the play’s performance on 28 June 2015 at Allen County-Scottsville High School.

Fiddler On The Roof, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2015-2016 Season

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jews and Orthodox Christians live in the little village of Anatevka in the pre-revolutionary Russia of the Czars. Among the traditions of the Jewish community, the matchmaker arranges the match and the father approves it. The milkman Reb Tevye is a poor man that has been married for twenty-five years with Golde and they have five daughters. When the local matchmaker Yente arranges the match between his older daughter Tzeitel and the old widow butcher Lazar Wolf, Tevye agrees with the wedding. However Tzeitel is in love with the poor tailor Motel Kamzoil …

Hamlet, School Of Theatre Arts

All Production Programs

An IWU School of Theatre Arts production of Hamlet: A National Tragedy by William Shakespeare.

Rabbit Hole

Taylor Theatre Playbills

Taylor Theatre presents Rabbit Hole by David-Lindsay-Abaire.

Performed February 19-21, 26-28, 2016 at the Mitchell Theatre.

As improbably funny as it is heartbreaking, this story of a family in crisis won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Becca and Howie had the perfect life—a great marriage, a beautiful house, and a lovely son. But after a tragic accident, the couple faces the challenges of surviving great loss and making a life with the family that remains.

Staging (Within) Violence: A Conversation With Frank Wilderson And Jaye Austin Williams, Jaye Austin Williams

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Exploring Literary Characters In Classroom Performance, Gerald Lee Ratliff

Communication and Theater Association of Minnesota Journal

Original classroom exercises are an invaluable instructional tool to actively engage students in analysis and performance of dramatic and non-dramatic literary texts. The basic principle of classroom performance emphasizes a critical and creative teaching perspective that stimulates student responses to the aesthetic, emotional and intellectual content of a literary text. Selected exercises that promote a more theatrical impulse in the study and performance of literary texts present meaningful opportunities for students to give vocal and physical visualization to the actions, attitudes and emotions of literary characters and, ultimately, enriches the classroom learning experience.

Middletown, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2014-2015 Season

Will Eno’s Middletown, or maybe more appropriately, Everytown, is a very insightful look at the alienation, loneliness and subtle despair that lives at the edges of contemporary life. It also examines the accumulation, and effects, of the small and seemingly insignificant moments of our lives, that in an instant can change our lives.

Much Ado About Nothing, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2015-2016 Season

The friends include Don Pedro, a prince who is a close friend of Leonato, and two fellow soldiers: Claudio, a well-respected young nobleman, and Benedick, a clever man who constantly makes witty jokes, often at the expense of his friends. Don John, Don Pedro's illegitimate brother, is part of the crowd as well. https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/muchado/summary/

The Arab-Israeli Cookbook

Taylor Theatre Playbills

"The Arab-Israeli Cookbook" is a verbatim play written by British playwright Robin Soans. The script was created as a result of a collaboration with two directors, one Arab and one Jewish. The three of them went to Israel and interviewed a wide variety of people including farmers, fishermen, photographers, students, the young, the old, the orthodox, the unorthodox, those who were pessimistic and those who were hopeful. Soans used the interviewees' own words to tell their stories—to give voice to those caught up in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The composite picture that emerges in their stories demonstrates that regardless of labels …