Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Developing Soft Skills With Interdisciplinary Teams In The First Year: Lessons Learned, Christian Rogers

Symposium on Education in Entertainment and Engineering

The academic structure of most universities dictates that a student work with those of their own program and in conjunction with a program that is tangential to theirs. Interdisciplinary educational experiences that provide students with the opportunity to develop soft skills (such as communication, empathy and problem solving) are considered rare but are much more common in the working environment. As an example, working environments such as Universal Creative are comprised of multiple disciplines (i.e. civil engineer, mechanical engineering, illustration, user experience design, etc.) A function of working in an interdisciplinary team can also be to work on unknown or …

Timing, Latency, And Live Performance, Robert Klimek, Catherine Skokan

Symposium on Education in Entertainment and Engineering

How important is synchronous timing in a performance? In the world of science, engineering and the arts, we cannot avoid it. In the arts, it is a living and vital concept between composer, performer and audience. During the Pandemic, with an increase in virtual meetings and performances, made us more aware of timing issues and introduced us to a path with many questions about latency and affect between audience and performer. The hand waving, head nodding and eye gestures of Renaissance musicians led eventually to the classic conductor’s baton. These all helped ensembles of dissimilar instruments and/or voices, conquer problems …

Catenate: Creating An Interdisciplinary Art Project, Brian Phillips, Melissa Eddings Mancuso, Emma Sherban

Symposium on Education in Entertainment and Engineering

This paper will present the rationale for, the challenges of, and successes encountered in the formation process of an interdisciplinary Visual & Performing Arts Project, Catenate, at Ohio Northern University’s School of Visual & Performing Arts.

Deaf Inclusion And Accessibility In The Dance Field, Samantha M. Doyle, Caroline S. Clark

Symposium of Student Scholars

Over the past ten years, the dance field in the United States has shifted towards practicing diversity and inclusion. However, there are still underrepresented groups in dance, such as the Deaf community. There is a current lack of pedagogical content to help dance teachers and choreographers be inclusive to Deaf dancers. This research addresses the gap by discussing issues and access for Deaf and hard-of-hearing (HOH) dancers in the dance classroom and on stage. To do so, I present a literature review and analysis of current scholarship with a goal of bringing awareness to the current lack of accessibility to …

Authenticity And Humanity: Women In Ming Dynasty Theatre, Sarah Rogers

Symposium of Student Scholars

Since the dawn of theatrical performances, women had very limited opportunities for participation and presence in productions, often being portrayed onstage by male actors in untruthful, borderline degrading drag, which fortunately was not the case for the Ming Dynasty. My research investigates the societal roles and customs that women in the Ming Dynasty were initially assigned to and the shift they experienced in these roles; this shift empowered women to have more agency in every aspect of their everyday lives, especially in participating in performances. Methodologically, I consider the feminist/gender lens of Karl Marx’s Critical Theory and the opera The …

The Orlando International Fringe Festival: An Historical And Administrative Overview, Brook Akya Hanemann

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation marks the first historical and administrative overview of the Orlando International Fringe Festival. The Orlando International Fringe Festival (OIFF) is America's oldest still-operating fringe theatre festival. This two-week performing arts and immersive cultural event features uncensored, unjuried, accessible, and inclusive performances on indoor and outdoor stages. The Festival subverts traditional commercial theatre models by giving 100% of ticket proceeds back to its artists. Originally held in Downtown Orlando, it now resides at the Loch Haven Cultural Complex of Orlando where it overcame struggles common to arts organizations such as the beer truck scenario, a sustainability issue linking an …

A Midsummer's Night Dream

Theatre Programs

No abstract provided.

Look Who's Coming To Dinner, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2021-2022 Join Us in Engaging with the Imaginations of Unparalleled Visionaries

Stefanie Batten Bland creates performance at the intersection of dance-theater and installation, questioning contemporary and historical cultural symbolism and the complexities of human relationships. Inspired by the 1967 Stanley Kramer film starring Sydney Poitier, Katherine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy, Look Who’s Coming to Dinner pays tribute to those who paved the way toward acceptance in love and life. Set around a transformative dinner setting, seven dance-theatre artists excavate interlaced universal traumas through imagery and ritual as they seek a seat at the table.

Thea 141: Introduction To Theatre Studies, Michelle Gibbs

Departmental Initiatives

No abstract provided.

Addressing The Lack Of Availability In Diverse Skin Tone Options For Performance Fabric, Jessica Batey

Honors College Theses

The following research addresses the lack of availability in diverse skin tone options for performance fabric. The project will discuss the struggles people of color face when finding fabrics that accurately match their skin tone and the difficulties in sourcing the materials needed to successfully design a garment. The research gathered will be used to produce a collection of 4 looks using nude mesh fabrics that are readily available to the average consumer. The garments within the collection will be designed to match the skin color of 4 models. The collection’s theme will be based around the 4 cardinal witches …

Intimate Apparel (November 17-20, 2021), Lynn Nottage

Student Theatre Programs

Program for Intimate Apparel (November 17-20, 2021).

Fall Dance Concert (November 11-13, 2021), Lindenwood University

Student Dance Programs & Brochures

Program for the Fall Dance Concert (November 11-13, 2021).

Program: Through The Looking Glass, And What You Found There, University Of Dayton, Teejai Dorsey

Dance and Theater Programs

Co-produced by the Theatre, Dance, and Performance Technology program and the Department of Music

What do you see when you look in the mirror? If you were on the other side looking back, in a land of opposites, how would your perception of reality be altered? Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There reflect the larger truths that underscore our social experience in this constantly changing nonsensical world. Journey with us through a wonderland of mystery and delight while exploring who we were, who we are, and who we are yet to become in this dramatic …

“Thrilla In Manila”: Troubling Theatricality And Uneasy Spectator Affects Surrounding The Ringside Bar Midget Boxing And Wrestling, Neslie Carol Tan

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

This paper illustrates how performance and affect inform disability politics in the case of Filipino Little People wrestlers and boxers at the Ringside Bar along a red-light district in Makati City, Philippines. The archive of the study focuses on the reception of its primarily foreign visitors as manifested online, including the bar’s unofficial Facebook account, review-based websites, and select travel and expatriate blogs/vlogs where reviews of these attractions most actively circulate. First, I map out the troubling theatricality of midget wrestling and boxing, identifying their cast, choreographies, and designs, to reveal traces of freak show traditions. Second, I unpack the …

“A Sick Way Of Thinking?”: The Unorthodox Dramaturgy Of Young Jean Lee’S Identity Politics Theater, Io Chun Kong

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

The article addresses the predicament of what I refer to as “racial contingency” in Asian American theater and how such conception draws critical attention to the naturalizing of neoliberal multiculturalism. Utilizing “racial contingency” as a critical lens to examine the emerging wave of Asian American artists, this essay explores Young Jean Lee’s identity politics theater as a counter-ideological project that responds to neoliberal multiculturalism. It aims to explore her “unorthodox” dramaturgy as critical aesthetic embodied in her latest Broadway success, Straight White Men (2015), which expresses (quoting her own line) “a sick way of thinking” that is deemed as both …

Institutionally Speaking: Speech Departments And The Making Of A Philippine Eloquent Modernity, Oscar Tantoco Serquina Jr.

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

This essay initiates a historiographical account of speech departments in the University of the Philippines (UP) and Silliman University. Founded in 1959 and 1965, respectively, these academic formations are the two existing bastions for the comprehensive and disciplinary study and practice of speech/speech communication in the country and the rest of Asia. This essay explores a) the use of speech as the organizing principle of scholarly inquiry in the Philippine modern university, b) the pedagogies composing Philippine speech curricula, c) the performances enacted by speech programs in UP and Silliman University, d) the speaking subjects that speech departments seek to …

Crossings Of Heritage, Memory And Archives: A History Of Moroccan Cinema In The Bouanani Archives, Sarah Dornhof

Regards

This article interrogates archival forms and practices in relation to remembering the “lost archives” of Moroccan cinematographic history.
It presents the Bouanani Archives — a private, fragmented, and still largely uncatalogued collection located in the Bouanani family apartment in Rabat, comprising a variety of texts, visuals, and objects connected to Morocco’s cinematographic and cultural memory.
The archive is the personal legacy of filmmaker, writer, and artist Ahmed Bouanani (1938–2011), his wife Naïma Saoudi (1947–2012), and their daughter Batoul Bouanani (1969-2003), all of whom worked for Moroccan cinema.
Today, it is preserved and cared for by his daughter Touda Bouanani and …

Towards A Decentered History Of Palestinian Revolutionary Cinema? Case Study Of The Film “Tall El Zaatar” In The Audiovisual Archives Of The Italian Communist Party, Hugo Darroman

Regards

The film Tall El Zaatar (1977, Abu Ali, Pino, Chamoun, Palestine/Italy), a co-production between the Palestinian Cinema Institute and the Italian Communist Party’s (PCI) audiovisual company, was considered lost for three decades and finally rediscovered in 2011.
Beyond the dramatic stories surrounding this film, Tall El Zaatar reveals the importance of considering the transnational dimension of Palestinian militant cinema.
In this article about Tall El Zaatar, I approach the history of Palestinian revolutionary cinema through the traces left within the archives of an institution with which the Palestinian filmmakers collaborated.
On the basis of a set of interviews and …

Iraqi Cinema Beyond The Screen And The Archives Of Leisure, Pelle Valentin Olsen

Regards

The emergence of new forms of leisure in Iraqi urban landscapes, such as cinemas, nightclubs, and theaters, unleashed debates about the dangers and potentials of leisure.
The result of this process is a vast, albeit scattered, archive of texts that deal with practices and institutions of leisure.
The archive of leisure, as it pertains to cinema, can be located across a variety of texts including memoirs, short stories, student essays, police records, official discourse, medical texts, and works by Iraqi historians.
Given the limited access to Iraqi film and cinema archives, the archive of leisure can offer an important addendum …

Ciné-Archivistes And The Metaleptic Archive Of Lebanese Cinema, Claire Launchbury, Marilyn Matar, Max Silverman

Regards

The article considers three Lebanese films – Il était une fois, Beyrouth (1995) by Jocelyne Saab, the short Le Liban à travers le cinéma (2003) and the documentary Cinéma de guerre au Liban (2003), both by Hady Zaccak – to explore the archival impulse in their composition.
We suggest that this impulse takes two major forms: the use of a montage of sequences from Lebanese films, or films about Lebanon, and crossovers between narrative thresholds and between fact and fiction.
We draw on Gérard Genette’s version of metalepsis to analyze the nature of these crossovers, and on the notion of …

سيميولوجيا جمالية الفضاء في فيلم: "السنونو لا يموت في القدس" لرضا الباهي, Abdel Salam Shaaban

Regards

In this study, we aim to conduct a perceptual experiment and a semiological reading of the aesthetics of space in the film El Sounounou La Yamoutou Fil Kods by Tunisian director Ridha Behi.
This film, produced in 1994, came as a response to the accusation that Tunisian cinema ignored the Palestinian cause. It also combines three genres of cinematic practice: fiction, documentary, and political.
The film tells the story of the search for a mother who has been lost since 1948. A daily newspaper publishes a recent photo of this mother. The director takes her story as a starting point …

Le Cinéma Maghrébin Entre Traçabilité Coloniale Et Déterminations Nationales, Malika Gueddim

Regards

This article focuses on the beginnings of cinema in the Maghreb countries (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia), which suffered the same process of enculturation in favor of the culture of the French occupier.
From the end of the Second World War, the colonial authorities understood the importance of cinema, through fiction or newsreels, and the urgency of creating cinematographic centers: in Morocco in 1944, and in Tunisia in 1946.
Algeria, considered a French department rather than a protectorate, was provided with a cinematographic service by the Algerian governorate in 1947.
Then comes the period of independence, in which directors from these …

The Women Of Lockerbie

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University's performance of The Women of Lockerbie by Deborah Brevoort..

Performed October 29-31 & November 5-7, 2021 at the Mitchell Theatre.

The Women of Lockerbie is a poignant drama inspired by the real-life aftermath of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The play follows a grieving mother from New Jersey who roams the hills of Lockerbie, searching for her son's remains. She encounters the women of Lockerbie, who are fighting the U.S. government to retrieve the clothing of the victims found in the wreckage. These women aim to wash the clothes …

You On The Moors Now (October 28-30, 2021), Jaclyn Backhaus

Student Theatre Programs

Program for You on the Moors Now (October 28-30, 2021).

The Year In Review: 2020-2021 Letter From The Co-Presidents, Robin Brandehoff, Rachel Desoto-Jackson

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

Report of PTO's activities in the past year and a preview of upcoming plans. Also included is information about ways to get involved in the Organization's work throughout the year.

Review Of Theatre Of The Oppressed - Roots & Wings: A Theory Of Praxis, Uri Yitzchak Noy Meir

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

Theatre of the Oppressed - Roots & Wings: A Theory of Praxis by Barbara Santos is a necessary, previously unwritten, ontology of Theatre of the Oppressed with a feminist twist. It is a gift and a fantastic resource.

Book Review Of The Routledge Companion To Theatre Of The Oppressed, Amy Phillips

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

In my review of The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed by Boal, J., Howe, K., and Soerio, J., eds. (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), I compare the book’s call for Theatre of the Oppressed to embrace a nuanced investigation of social problems with its response: the international movements detailed in its chapters. While demonstrating that the first-hand accounts provide a measured answer to contradictions inherent in a system which Augusto Boal developed in response to a specific political climate, I emphasize the beauty of theory and practice sitting side by side, in paradox, and encourage scholar and …

Expanding And Expounding Upon Forum Theater To Engage Spect-Actors In Virtual Spaces, Lasonja Roberts, María Migueliz Valcarlos, Tara Nkrumah, Vonzell Agosto

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

In this article, we analyze our experiences of jokering in online spaces during the pandemic. Our journey traversed the 2020/2021 academic year, engaging in Forum Theater work with a local university and community organization. During our planning, leading, and reflecting on these experiences themes emerged addressing the efficacy of practicing Forum Theater in an online setting, as well as recommendations for TO practitioners who wish to pursue online Forum Theater in the future.

Unmuted: A Digital Dilemma Inspired By Forum Theatre, Akhila Khanna

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

This report describes the purpose, process and reflections of a Forum Theatre video project, titled Unmuted, created to investigate the increased online harassment faced by women during the pandemic. Led by an arts and community education based initiative in New Delhi, India - Rang Karwan - and supported by the 25 x 25 Initiative by India Foundation for the Arts grant, Unmuted included a series of surveys and Forum scenes that were screen-recorded and distributed among 100+ digital spect-actors across the country. This report by Akhila, one of the facilitators of the project, will evaluate the 9-month-long rehearsal and research …

Exploring Online Participatory Theatre During Covid-19: Reflections On Adapting, Delivering, And Evaluating Student-Led Theatre For Health Workshops, Jeffrey Pufahl, Emmanuelle Crider, Kelviyana Walker

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the higher education community to quickly shift and adapt courses to the online environment. While traditional theatre programs struggled, the flexible nature of applied theatre created the space for students and instructors to explore and adapt existing forms, such as Forum Theatre and Sociodrama, and create engaging online workshops for the public. Over the course of 2020-21, students in the University of Florida’s Applied Theatre for Health program developed, delivered, and evaluated online health and wellness workshops for the public. This report focuses on two such projects: 1) a workshop on female reproductive health, and 2) …