Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

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 …

Moments In Performance: Developing An Aid For Articulation And Reflection, Shelby R. Mckenzie

Theses : Honours

Embodiment is an innately human experience. Why then, is it so difficult for society to come to a shared understanding of what it is to be embodied? This problem is particularly relevant in a theatrical context. Critical thinking across the disciplines of Philosophy, Science and History have impacted an actor's theoretical understanding of embodiment. However, this has not affected their corporeal understanding. As an actor I realised that this gap led to my inability to articulate the embodied experience in my practice. This inability to explain the experience meant I was unable to experience it consistently. This thesis examines how …

The Practice And Purpose Of Adaptation Of Classical Texts, Cassandra J.S. Gutterman-Johns

Honors Papers

This paper focuses on two adaptations of classical texts: Off the Rails, Reinholz’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, and AtGN, Howard’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone, and examines the ways in which these plays both replicate the cycles created by the original texts and seek to break from them. Taking theater as an inherently repetitive practice, this paper pulls from many sources to develop a vocabulary for discussing theatrical adaptations, then applies it to these two case studies to demonstrate that each uses a variety of strategies to create a new narrative. Whether a theater-maker is building new meaning into …

Proceptivism: Applying Buchler's Theory Of Human Judgment To Art, Dance, And Choreographic Methods, Michael Blue

All Master's Theses

In 1951, philosopher Justus Buchler crafted Toward a General Theory of Human Judgment, a seminal work that changed how philosophy examined human judgment. One central and guiding principle to Buchler's theory is what he called “proception,” a lens through which to freshly view human experience. Specifically, proception is a philosophically appropriate substitute for the term “experience,” and refers to the process by which the human individual relates to their world as a cumulative being. Buchler describes in copious detail how the individual accomplishes proception by way of judgments or “utterances.” That is to say, crucial to relating to the …

รำโจ๋ง ตำบลท่าโรง อำเภอวิเชียรบุรี จังหวัดเพชรบูรณ์, นิศากานต์ ชอุ่ม

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

วิทยานิพนธ์ หัวข้อ รำโจ๋ง ตำบลท่าโรง อำเภอวิเชียรบุรี จังหวัดเพชรบูรณ์ มีวัตถุประสงค์ เพื่อศึกษาความเป็นมาของการละเล่นรำโจ๋ง และศึกษากระบวนท่ารำ องค์ประกอบของการละเล่นรำโจ๋ง ตำบลท่าโรง อำเภอวิเชียรบุรี จังหวัดเพชรบูรณ์ ผู้วิจัยใช้กระบวนการวิจัย จากการศึกษาข้อมูลเอกสารงานวิจัย การสัมภาษณ์ และการลงพื้นที่สังเกตการณ์การแสดง ผลการวิจัยพบว่า รำโจ๋ง มีพัฒนาการมาจากรำโทน ประมาณหลังสงครามโลกครั้งที่ 2 โดยนายธวัช ธูปมงคล ได้นำการละเล่นรำโจ๋ง เข้ามาแสดงในหมู่บ้าน เป็นที่นิยมสืบต่อกันมา แสดงในเทศกาลวันสงกรานต์ ประมาณปี พ.ศ. 2562 คุณกาญจนา ทองมา ผู้บริหารโรงเรียนอนุบาลกาญจนา ได้นำการละเล่นรำโจ๋ง เป็นหลักสูตรการอบรมให้กับนักเรียน และปี พ.ศ. 2564 ถึงปัจจุบัน วัฒนธรรมอำเภอวิเชียรบุรีได้จัดสรรงบประมาณ โครงการอบรมการแสดงรำโจ๋งให้กับตัวแทนนักเรียนใน ระดับอนุบาลถึงชั้น ประถมศึกษา ในเขตอำเภอท่าโรง อำเภอวิเชียรบุรี จังหวัดเพชรบูรณ์ ได้เรียนรู้และสืบทอดการแสดง จากผู้เชี่ยวชาญการแสดงรำโจ๋งให้อยู่สืบต่อ ลักษณะการรำโจ๋ง แบ่งผู้รำเป็น สองฝ่าย ฝ่ายชาย สมมุติเป็นวัว รำอยู่วงใน ฝ่ายหญิง เป็นผู้ต้อนวัว รำอยู่วงนอก รำเป็นวงทวนเข็มนาฬิกา ท่ารำ คล้ายกับการต้อนวัวเข้าคอก ประกอบการตีโทน เป็นจังหวะ การแต่งกายผู้แสดงชายสวมเสื้อคอกลม นุ่งโจงกระเบน ผ้าขาวม้าคาดเอว ผู้แสดงหญิงสวมเสื้อแขนยาว ห่มสไบ นุ่งโจงกระเบน การละเล่นพื้นบ้านรำโจ๋ง ปัจจุบันมีการถ่ายทอด และสืบทอดท่ารำ เป็นหลักสูตรในโรงเรียน เพื่ออนุรักษ์ให้การแสดงท้องถิ่น ตำบลท่าโรง อำเภอวิเชียรบุรี จังหวัดเพชรบูรณ์ ให้คงองค์ความรู้สืบทอดต่อไป

Stardust In Cedar Forest: Suicide Prevention Through Interactive Theatre For College Students, Ghina Fawaz

Honors Program Theses

Suicide can impact people from all walks of life, and for those who are vulnerable to circumstances that amplify suicidal ideation, prevention programs can be effective methods to provide relief and promote awareness to community members. The World Health Organization (2021) highlighted a global need for prevention programs targeted toward young people as suicide is the second leading cause of death for people aged 15-29. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of interactive theatre as a form of psychoeducation and suicide prevention for college students. This study found that interactive theatre had a positive impact as …

So You Think You Know Dance?: Fundamentals Of Dance, Mary Francis “Cissy” Whipp, Roshanda Spears, Susan Perlis, Vanessa Kanamoto, Peter Klubek (Editor)

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

The Right To Fail: Defining And Imitating The Style Of The Royal Court Theatre, Annie Sheneman

Senior Independent Study Theses

No abstract provided.

Los Fantasmas De La Imaginación En El Deseo Más Canalla De Arístides Vargas, Rojo Robles Mejias

Publications and Research

Como motivo del evento crítico teatral Un espacio seguro producido por Caborca y Teatro Público en el Teatro de la UPR en Octubre 2022, este ensayo revisita la obra de Arístides Vargas, El deseo más canalla (2001). El artículo argumenta que la obra divisa la posibilidad de transformar espacios y proyectar seres creativos por medio de la imaginación. La imaginación en la dramaturgia de Vargas es un mecanismo recurrente para establecer una relación entre la realidad interior y la exterior, entre una posible construcción del yo y la otredad. Esa metamorfosis del yo se alcanza por medio del juego literario …

The Dances Of Diplomacy: French Social Dance Culture In The United States, 1780-1800, Kaylar Gina Moser

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis explores how social dancing in the United States formed a noteworthy aspect of political, diplomatic, social, and class exchange for U.S. elites both domestically and overseas; and how the cultural dominance over dance that France enjoyed during this period created an informal cultural diplomatic relationship between the United States and France in the 1780s and the 1790s. I argue that U.S. elites utilized this dance culture as a form of upper-class status legitimation that could serve diplomatic purposes. This project increases the purview of U.S. cultural diplomatic studies by centering on the eighteenth century and by utilizing an …