Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Saga Beyond The Gate: Chapter One, The Coming Of The Gate Ghost, Tristan B. Miller

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

“Saga Beyond the Gate: Chapter One, the Coming of the Gate Ghost” explores performance sculpture used as religious ritual. My work emphasizes ritual, creation myths, relics, physical manifestations of lived religion, and the power of narrative belief. One often turns to religion, science, or spirituality, to seek answers to questions about being a conscious entity, and one’s journey to the end. This saga uses scripts from all three of these schools of thought, placing the world of the Gate Ghost into tangible reality, as a play on a stage. Artefacts represent objects of power and mystery. Characters embody morality tales, …

Book Review: Anna Watkins Fisher. The Play In The System: The Art Of Parasitical Resistance, Nora Almeida

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Chickens In Texas: A Farce In One Act, Lawson Marchetti

Honors Theses

Herein lies a one-act farce written by Lawson David Marchetti, an English major in the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College at the University of Mississippi. His emphasis is in Creative Writing, and his minors are in Theatre Arts and in Music. This farce was written as his senior thesis, for the completion of requirements of the Honors College. The play was conceived in August of 2020, and completed in April of 2021. The play itself is set in modern times, sans pandemic, and is highly whimsical in style. It requires a cast of twelve comedic actors, and several complicated technical …

The Glob, Spring 2021, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

The Glob was a one-off student newspaper created for the course Words, Images and Ideas, ILLUS 3412-01, taught by Ernest A. Bryant III. Students contributed 1-2 pages each of writing and images on topics such as COVID-19, fashion and style, risograph printing, and more.

The Story Of A Journey: Awakenings Before, During And After The Zoom Production Of The Play Thrift Store Junkie, Brendan Beseth

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis tells the story of several awakenings I had while pursuing my M.F.A. in playwriting at the University of Arkansas. It details some of the traps a writer can fall into. It tells of how to get out of the quicksand. Also contained within is an account of the thesis production of my play Thrift Store Junkie and the play’s script.

Violet The Musical Playbill, Providence College

Playbill and Promotion

Providence College Department of Theatre, Dance & Film

Violet the Musical

A Virtual Event: Premiered April 30, 2021

Friday, April 30^th at 7:30pm, Saturday, May 1^st at 7:30pm, and Sunday, May 2^nd at 2:00pm

Jimmy Calitri............Director

Lila Kane...................Musical Director

Kelly Slader.........Stage Manager

Abbie Joy, Gabriela Esposito, Joseph Pekar, Abdelnasser Zadieyh.........Asst. Stage Managers

Sydney Cahill.................Asst. Director

Katelyn Salvato.....................Asst. Choreographer

Katie Vennard..................Asst. Costume Designer

The Cast

Violet-Kaleigh Liebler, Monty-Daniel Jameson, Flick-Daniel Strother, Teen Violet-Caitlyn Mitchell, Young Violet-Clare Krug, Father-Alex Cannon, Old Lady-Halle Pratt, Virgil-Nick Bullock, Preacher-Michael Henshaw, Lula Buffington-Dinah Beckford, Ensemble-Analisa Pisano, Ensemble-Carolyn Bradley, Ensemble-Madelyn Rich, Ensemble-Nolan Donato, Ensemble-Christopher …

Violet The Musical Poster, Providence College

Playbill and Promotion

Providence College Department of Theatre, Dance & Film

Violet the Musical

A Virtual Performance

Virtual Performance Dates: Friday, April 30 at 7:30pm, Saturday, May 1 at 7:30pm, Sunday, May 2 at 2:00pm

Music by Jeanine Tesori

Lyrics and Book by Brian Crawley

Based on "The Ugliest Pilgrim" by Doris Betts

Jimmy Calitri..........Director

Lila Kane......Musical Director

Caprial Harris.......Associate Director/Choreographer

Sydney Cahill......Assistant Director

Emily Turtle.........Associate Musical Director

Examining Flow Through Auto-Ethnography And Performance Studies, Reagan Romero Maiquez

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

The Sinulog Festival is a fiesta that happens annually in the city and island-province of Cebu, Philippines every December-January. It is a massive pilgrimage to the Santo Niño or the religious image of Christ figured as a child king and a tourist event full of dancing and festive performances. In this essay, I examine a small portion of this festival or the parade to interpret flow. The concept of flow in academic terms is fluid and multifaceted, having been construed in a number of ways in the social sciences and the humanities. Various studies have also cited flow as an …

Takeshi Kawamura’S Tokyo Trauma: Performing Gender And Sexuality, Toshi Pau

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

Japanese theater practitioner Takeshi Kawamura (1959-) has gone relatively unnoticed since writing and directing his own plays in the early 1980s. Despite success in the early years of his career, his politically charged works reminiscent of Western influences such as Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht as well as local influences Terayama Shūji and Kara Jūrō, have received little scholarly attention. His 1995 theatrical production Tokyo Trauma is a scathing critique of Japanese war history and the social constructs in power that have all been for the sake of “modernity,” including modern constructions of gender and sexuality. This paper is a …

Under One Sun, Lucille Vasquez

Theatre, Dance & Film Student Scholarship

Major: Theatre
Minor: Business and Innovation
Faculty Mentors: Dave Rabinow and John Garrity, Theatre, Dance, and Film

Subconsciously deriving from the separation the world underwent this past year, Under One Sun was created to explore the difficult and comforting truth about being alive- we never know what to expect. In that space of uncertainty, eleven characters navigate discoveries, news, and realities that they must learn to accept and move forward with. In short, episodic scenes, the eleven characters that we meet along the way introduce and momentarily resolve their struggles in the same time we have with them. The tiny …

A Playwright’S Process: How Ideas Change From Germination To Execution, Austin Roberts

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Eagle Eye Vs. Gear Jammer, Jessica Danielle Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

Where similarities in class struggle have historically operated as a unifying force globally, the American crafted mythos isolates the individual and dehumanizes those that do not fall within the parameters of the cowboy archetype. The national protagonist is turned into a class traitor and an extension of government power.

Graduating Presentation, Erin Bates

Honors Theses

tethered is a seven minute dance for film that explores the baggage that every individual carries with them on a daily basis. When walking through a crowd, it is hard to imagine the people, thoughts, and experiences others might be connected to, as if by a tether. This graduating presentation thesis is a culminating project which combines the knowledge and experience I have gained as an artist in dance, choreography, costuming, conceptualization, and most recently - film. The full portfolio includes my artist biography, dance and headshots, resume, personal artistic statement, as well as the project elements. These project elements …

I'M Going To Go Back There Someday: Reading, Writing, And Directing Hauntings In Four American Plays, Asher A. G. De Forest

Theatre and Dance Honors Projects

Asher de Forest

I’m Going to Go Back There Someday: Reading, Writing, and Directing Hauntings in Four American Plays

In this personal and formal research essay, I discuss and compare the plays A Raisin in the Sun, Fefu and Her Friends, Angels in America, and I’m Going to Go Back There Someday (my own work, which I am also directing in partial fulfillment for Honors in Theater and Dance). These plays all bring forth hauntings, despite and in some cases because of their differences in content and style—ranging from realism to the avant-garde. I base my discussion …

“Graduating Presentation: Sunday”, Lauren Smith

Honors Theses

This portfolio fulfills the requirements for both my Department of Dance senior capstone, DANC 4800: Graduating Presentation, titled sunday, and my honors thesis for the Lee Honors College. DANC 4800 requires the senior BFA dance students to collaborate and produce a dance concert, usually held in-person, but was hosted virtually this year due to COVID-19. This capstone is designed for the students to create a portfolio worthy of sharing with the public and to aid in their career post-graduation. Responsibilities during this process include the choreographing an original work, managing production elements, promoting the concert, and coordinating with any personnel …

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story? A Marxist Analysis Of "Hamilton" And Its Relationship To The Broadway Economic System, Alana Ritt

Honors Projects

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s mega-hit Hamilton: An American Musical has been both a critical and academic darling since its premiere in 2015. A historical retelling of America’s inception through the eyes of an oft-ignored founding father, the musical weaves together a diverse cast and hip-hop musical stylings in order to tell the story of “America then, as told by America now.” While many critics and scholars alike have praised the musical for putting an exciting and accessible twist to American history, others have argued that the musical is not nearly as “revolutionary” as it claims to be. This essay is designed to …

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story? A Marxist Analysis Of "Hamilton" And Its Relationship To The Broadway Economic System, Alana Ritt

Honors Projects

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s mega-hit Hamilton: An American Musical has been both a critical and academic darling since its premiere in 2015. A historical retelling of America’s inception through the eyes of an oft-ignored founding father, the musical weaves together a diverse cast and hip-hop musical stylings in order to tell the story of “America then, as told by America now.” While many critics and scholars alike have praised the musical for putting an exciting and accessible twist to American history, others have argued that the musical is not nearly as “revolutionary” as it claims to be. This essay is designed to …

Graduating Presentation: Stones Beneath A River, Lauren Desmedt

Honors Theses

Stones Beneath a River is an eight-minute collaborative staged work through the eyes of a soloist who is exploring the concept that you are the product of the five people you surround yourself with. The soloist realizes the ebbs and flows of relationships and how to let go of relationships that no longer serve the individual. The graduating presentation is a culminating project of everything I have learned in the past four years. This includes collaboration, performance, choreography, production, conceptualization, costuming, and much more. My final portfolio consists of my dance and headshot, artistic statement, biography, resume, proposal application, essay, …

The Tempest 2021, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2020-2021 Season

Abducted and set adrift to die by her power-hungry sister and a jealous king, Prospera and her daughter, Miranda have survived 12 long years shipwrecked on a lonely island. When Prospera learns though her magical arts that those whose sought her child’s death are within her reach, she is consumed by rage. Conjuring the greatest of storms to break their ship upon her shores, Prospera brings her enemies to her feet. But when the opportunity to wreak her final vengeance is upon her, Prospera can no longer recognize the thing she has become, and she is forced to choose between …

Musical Theatre Showcase: A Performance Journey And Reflection, Alyssa Zamora

Honors Theses

For her senior musical theatre showcase, Alyssa Zamora attended and in person showcase with agents and theatre professionals in Detroit. Later, she recorded videos of her performing “Thrills” by Donna Missal and “I Want Them...” by Zina Goldrich and Marcy Heisler. In addition to videos of her performance, she reflects on her growth in her time as a student at Western Michigan University and looks at how she has grown as an artist and how her showcase experience set her up for success in the professional theatre industry.

An Annual Training Plan For Collegiate Dance, Ashley R. German

Honors Thesis

The focus of this thesis is on developing an annual resistance training plan for collegiate dance with no test subjects. This project provides biomechanical, physiological, and injury analysis of collegiate dance. Based on the analysis, a research-based, linear resistance training program for the University of South Dakota Dance Team was created. The resistance training program follows basic strength and conditioning principles including specificity, overload, and periodization. Additionally, exercise selection, order, volume, and intensity were prescribed based on standards set forth by the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Generally, from off-season to in-season, exercises moved from general to specific, along with …

On Display, Office Of Arts + Cultural Programming, Peak Performances At Montclair State University

2020-2021 Launch of PEAK HD and PEAK PLUS

The New York Times has described Heidi Latsky as a “choreographer and dancer of uncommon intelligence and fluidity” and has written that, for her, “there are no unbeautiful bodies and no bodies incapable of dancing. In what some might call disability, she finds possibility.” With her ongoing series On Display, she turns a cast of diverse bodies into a sculptural installation, appropriating the notion of the body as spectacle and addressing society’s tendency to objectify, judge, and stigmatize people who are different from ourselves. On the stage of the Kasser, in collaboration with lighting designer Robert Wierzel, New York Live …

The Somaesthetics Of The Multitude: The Politico-Aesthetic Logic Of Antonio Negri And Michael Hardt In Constructing The Subjecthood, Jinying Li

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

"The Multitude", a concept reconstructed by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt after the deconstruction of the subjecthood by post-structuralism, is a combination of singularity and commonality, and physicality and affection, and it is the subjecthood of postmodern society that overthrows the control of the empire and constructs the commonwealth. In the early days, Negri began to explore social issues from the perspective of the relationship between art and the multitude. From this perspective, his logics in constructing the multitude can be summed up as aestheticization and bio-politicization, and its inner trajectory of reasoning can be summarized as a transformation from …

Nelson Goodman On Exemplification, Hui Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Nelson Goodman holds that there are two forms of symbolizing, namely, denotation and exemplification. In denotation, a symbol is used to refer to an object, while in exemplification the exemplifier has a label or is referred to by a label. Exemplification explains how abstract works perform symbolic functions and express metaphorical exemplifiers. Being highly creative and influential, Goodman's theory is valuable and can serve as a reference for Chinese scholars.

“Inaesthetics” And The “Passion For The Real”: Alain Badiou On The Avant-Garde Art, Kaifeng Xia

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Alain Badiou distinguishes between the didactic schema, classical schema and romantic schema in art, and further suggests that the avant-garde art does not create a new schema, but synthesizes the previous schemata into a didactico-romantic schema. Badiou strives to propose a new schema, the "inaesthetics" schema, which is both immanent and exclusive, that is, taking art as a truth-procedure. The inaesthetics schema is actually modeled around the avant-garde art, as Badiou believes that the avant-garde art embodies the "passion for the real" which implies two approaches of "destruction" and "subtraction." When Badiou attempts to combine these two approaches in his …

Wang Guowei's Theory Of Intuition And New Practice Of Symbolizing With Affective Image In Ci-Poetry, Bailing Yang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The category of "perceiving" runs through all the fields and the whole process of Wang Guowei's research. He insists that art is based on intuition, but this does not mean that he is an anti-rationalist. He is not opposed to the use of bi(comparison) and xing (affective image) in classical Chinese poetry, yet reforms these methods with his theory of intuition, thereby giving them connotations of symbolism in modern Western poetics. Taking sorrows for the change of seasons, observations of moonlights, and astronomical phenomena as examples, this article analyzes the symbolic means of intuitive cognition embodiedin Wang Guowei's statement, "all …

Mao Qiling's Comments On The Romance Of The West Chamber And The Value Of His Concept Of “Lyric Example” In Literary Criticism, Xurong Yang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Theatre critics of the Ming dynasty spoke only occasionally about the "example (li)" of the Yuan-dynasty plays (za ju). In early Qing dynasty, Mao Qiling proposed "lyric example ( ci li)" as the primary commentary approach to The Romance ofthe West Chamber. The concept of "lyric" refers to the Yuan-dynasty plays, and the concept of "example" refers to the conventions, commonalities, laws and paradigms. Mao's concept of "lyric example" provided a comprehensive analysis of the language, the temperament, the system, and the performance as well as the critical standards in evaluating not only The Romance of the West Chamber but …

The Breakthrough And Limitations Of Qi Biaojia's Xiqu-Play Criticism, Shiyang Zhang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In his letters to friends, Qi Biaojia expressed his hope to compile a collection of xiqu-plays in the Ming dynasty to promote contemporary xiqu-plays with textual criticism of the manuscripts. Qi inherited Wang Jide's idea of being the first to bridge the gap in the xiqu world and Lv Tiancheng's "intention to be close to the secular." Therefore, he tried hard to collect all the xiqu-plays in the Ming dynasty available to him, and compiled a monograph on xiqu-plays. Qi focused on manuscripts rather than on the playwrights or actors as his basis of evaluation. As opera music meters and …

Multidimensional Construction And Deconstruction Of The Claim That The Eight-Legged Essay Was Epitomized In The Ming Dynasty, Xiong Zheng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The claim that the eight-legged essay was epitomized in the Ming dynasty was solidified by scholars of the Ming and Qing dynasties with the belief that each generation had an exemplary genre since the Yuan dynasty. The claim was constructed from four dimensions of the three relationships between writing and, respectively, societal politics, scholar's vitality, and tradition of adhering to the classics and doctrines, as well as generic transformation and its value. The value of the eight-legged essay in the Ming dynasty had also been criticized in the above mentioned four dimensions by the Ming and Qing dynasty scholars. However, …

The Aesthetic Concept Of On The Absence Of Sentiments In Music And A Reflection On The Construction Of Chinese Aesthetics, Kai Lin

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Ji Kang's ( 223-263) On the Absence of Sentiments in Music has three types of aesthetic concepts. First, listeners of sorrowful music release his emotions through listening. Second, peaceful listeners obtain aesthetic pleasure through appreciating the beauty of musical form. Thirdly, peaceful listeners focus specifically on moderate music, in order to acquire peace and preserve his health. Going beyond utilitarian emotions, Ji Kang laid more emphasis on the second type of aesthetic concept, which was close to Kant's definition of disinterestedness. Yet, he regulated desire due to vigilance, rather than stressing "aesthetic freedom" like modern aesthetics. Therefore, Ji Kang's three …