Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Images Of Women In Refugee Drama: Eve Ensler’S Necessary Targets And Ellen Mclaughlin’S The Trojan Women, Kaitlyn Tossie

Theses and Dissertations

In the past ten years, a critique of the conceptualization of refugees in Western mass media has emerged as a developing discourse in response to post-20th century genocides. Photographs in mass media of wailing refugees began to appear in the early 1990s when reports of the Bosnian genocide appeared in the United States. These images, and the stereotypes that surround them, contribute to the universal depiction of refugees as weak. Though the way in which theatre comments on this conceptualization of refugees has largely been ignored, theatre has a unique ability to comment on, reflect, and create a culture that …

Over The Ropes: Boundary Play In Professional Wrestling, Ethan Ingram

Theses and Dissertations

Within the anthropology of performance, scholars have traditionally considered theater, spectacle, sport, and ritual performances in terms of the discrete boundaries of space and time that separate these events from daily life and in terms of the disparate roles that demarcate performers from audience members. Professional wrestling, a popular performance genre in the American Midwest, exhibits features that challenge these boundaries through the collaborative construction of the event by performers and audience members. Audience interaction is an essential part of wrestling performances, characterized by routine and contextually understood behaviors that performers can process as evaluative feedback. Moreover, during wrestling matches, …

Ethnography Of Dance Pedagogy Traditions: Chinese Dance Culture Compared To Eurocentric Dance Culture, Caitlin Shill, Marilyn Berrett

Journal of Undergraduate Research

This project’s purpose was to analyze the traditions, customs and philosophies of professors at the College of Dance at Beijing Mingzu University during Brigham Young University’s China dance study abroad. Recording and analyzing their pedagogical practices informed our own theories on the optimal balance between nurturing artistic development while preserving technical traditions. The globalization of the world’s dance community has revolutionized teaching philosophies. The international standard for dance pedagogy and technique for professional dancers continues to defy preceding theories as pedagogical practices are shared and incorporated into various training systems. China has consistently produced some of the world’s best technicians …

“Sometimes You Have To Be A Little Bit Naughty”: Matilda The Musical Through A Feminist Lens, Kristin Perkins, Megan Sanborn Jones

Journal of Undergraduate Research

My research analyzed the popular musical Matilda to dissect and explicate underlying feminist ideologies. The grant went primarily to helping fund a trip to New York City where I was able to watch Matilda the Musical as well as helping to fund my trip to present my research at a conference in Chicago. This project has yielded two conference presentations thus far and I am continuing to work towards fulfilling my Honors Thesis requirement using this as my research topic.

A Makeup Artist’S Guide To Mastery The Standard Procedure, Michaela Fordham, Mary Farahnakian

Journal of Undergraduate Research

It is a rare opportunity to be able to study makeup design in a collegiate setting, especially one of Brigham Young University’s standard. Because I have the unique perspective of approaching makeup with an academic perspective, I wanted outside research to aid my personal career pursuit as well as explore the different jobs in the makeup industry. I wanted to find the common standards of procedures within different fields to compile a presentation for other makeup artists as well as inform others of Brigham Young University’s excellent program.

Ethnographic Observation Of Dance Pedagogy At The Minzu University For The China Dance Study Abroad, Emily Bayles, Marilyn Berrett

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In Asian cultures, a lack of creativity shows a hindering element to the success and progress of the Chinese dancers’ education. Keeping with tradition, the “purpose of the arts was not the making of ‘art’”¹. A few methods of dance pedagogy put into action have enhanced the students’ ability to expand their knowledge and individual voice in the world of dance “rather than the creation of “perfect” art”².

An Invitation To Play: Sleep No More / Punchdrunk At The Mckittrick Hotel, Shannon Mchugh, Alice Fischetti, Mohammad Sadic, Amy Moore

Early Modern Culture

No abstract provided.

Love's Labour's Lost & Won / Royal Shakespeare Company, Mary L. Hjelm

Early Modern Culture

No abstract provided.

Henry Vi, Part 2 / Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, Marcia Eppich-Harris

Early Modern Culture

No abstract provided.

The Public Theater's Free Shakespeare In The Park Troilus And Cressida / Delacorte Theater, Central Park, Stephanie Pietros

Early Modern Culture

No abstract provided.

The Anti-Brexit Cymbeline / Royal Shakespeare Company, Rachel Ellen Clark

Early Modern Culture

No abstract provided.

King And Country: Shakespeare's Great Cycle Of Kings / Brooklyn Academy Of Music, Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich, Joey Burley, Kaylor Montgomery, Will Sly, Ashley Van Hesteren

Early Modern Culture

No abstract provided.

The Culture Of British Servitude And Music, Erin Meeks, Jeff Parkin

Journal of Undergraduate Research

I am writing a feature-length screenplay set in Victorian England about a servant of a manor trying to bring her mother’s fairy tales to life to escape her homesickness. However, I soon realized that writing this screenplay based solely on internet articles and my love of the BBC series Downton Abbey was not going to provide the research necessary to create an authentic setting and a believable, nuanced character. For this reason, I applied for an ORCA grant to attend a six-week study abroad program with the Theater and Media Arts department so that I could gather on-site research.

Putting It Together: Creating, Rehearsing, And Performing, Scott Whipple, George Nelson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

As a dancer the music dance theatre program, who is pursuing his goal to be on Broadway, the chance to be the dance captain for a musical is a priceless opportunity. When I was asked to be the dance captain for BYU’s stage production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, I jumped at the opportunity. Getting the chance to work closely with a director like George Nelson as well as choreographer Becky Write Phillips was something I could not pass up, even though I was taking 21 credits; it was a challenge I was willing to take on. I knew …

Arabella’S Valentines And Literary Connections [Dot] Com: Playing With Eighteenth-Century Gender Online, Melanie D. Holm

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This article describes two digital assignments that ask students to imaginatively embody characters from eighteenth-century texts written by women in order to cultivate a greater awareness of the critical role of gender and gender critique in these works. The first of these assignments, “Arabella’s Valentines,” asks students to translate dialogue from Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote as humorous Internet memes. The second assignment, “Literary Connections [dot] com,” asks students to imagine how characters from the course archive might represent themselves on an internet dating site. Through creative role-play facilitated by these digital genres, students engage with the texts in stimulating …

Review Of Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, And Belief In Early Modern England, Amy Mallory-Kani

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Charlotte Charke’S Gun: Queering Material Culture And Gender Performance, Jade Higa

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This essay juxtaposes readings of material culture and gender performance in Charlotte Charke’s Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke (1755). It argues that the transient relationship Charke has to the objects in her life mirrors the fluidity of her gender. The essay ultimately uses Charke’s narrative as a case study in a questioning of a binarized gender matrix. The thesis suggest that, though we lack language to fully describe it, characters and historical figures like Charke move beyond and explode gender binaries.

General Editor's Note, Laura Runge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

The Heyday Of Hats A Look At Headwear In The 1950s, Kirsten Watkins, Mary Farahnakian

Journal of Undergraduate Research

With the end of World War II came a drastic change in fashion. Gone were the stiff shoulders and narrow silhouettes and in came the New Look of 1947, designed by Christian Dior. This look emphasized soft curves, narrow waists, and large wide skirts—a far cry from wartime fashions where fabric was rationed and such skirts were seen as a luxury that few could afford. With this change of fashion came a change in hats. While wartime hats were still widely worn, many new hats came onto the scene. This decade became the culmination of different hat styles from the …

A Study Of The Variances Between China’S And The United State’S Dance Education Strategies, Tessa Homer, Kate Monson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

As a dance education major at Brigham Young University (BYU), my constant goal is to improve my teaching strategies by studying methods of effective teaching and observing my professors. Through my dance and education courses at BYU, I have developed a personal teaching style and toolbox of different strategies and methods. The opportunity to travel to China and participate in prestigious dance courses expanded my knowledge of diverse teaching methods and styles. This project enabled me to recognize, study, and compare the various strategies of effective dance education in the United States and China and implement those techniques into my …

Restoration Raillery: The Use Of Witty Repartee To Gain Power Within Gendered Spaces Of Restoration London, Bonnie Soper

Madison Historical Review

“Restoration Raillery: The Use of Witty Repartee to Gain Power within Gendered Spaces in Restoration London,” examines the creation of gendered spaces to gain political and social power through the use of satire and wit in poetry, theater, and the court of Charles II in Restoration London. During the Restoration period, mentions of wit and incivility in print and theatre increased over previous eras due to the heightened importance placed on wit as a tool to gain popularity within the court of Charles II. At the same time, witty repartee and well-executed satire provided political power to men within Parliament, …

Performing Human Rights In Neoliberal Asia: Artistic And Activist Engagements In Hong Kong, Malaysia, And Singapore, Melissa Wansin Wong

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines artistic and activist performances that address issues of rights abuses in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore. I demonstrate how the centralized ruling parties encourage the neoliberalization of their economies while maintaining autocratic rule, thus intensifying structural inequalities while also clamping down on dissent. This condition then exacerbates the lack of labor, sexuality, and democratic rights. Concurrently, the states’ aspirations to be part of the global capitalist market have paradoxically provided conditional spaces of political and artistic expression. I contend that existing critiques of human rights from sociological and legalistic perspectives are inadequate for contemplating this state of …

"Propaganda For Democracy": The Vexed History Of The Federal Theatre Project, Karen E. Gellen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My thesis explores and analyzes the Federal Theater Project’s cultural and political impact during the Depression, as well as the contested legacy of this unique experiment in government-sponsored, broadly accessible cultural expression. Part of the New Deal’s Works Projects Administration, the FTP aimed to provide jobs for playwrights, actors, designers, stagehands, and other theater professionals on relief in the stark period from 1935 to 1939. But the project became a nationwide political and artistic flashpoint, spurring fierce debate over the leadership, politics and impact of this “people’s theater.” The FTP gave professional theater an unprecedented reach into working-class and black …

Embodying Rhythm Nation: Multimodal Hip Hop Dance As A Site For Adolescent Social-Emotional And Political Development, Lauren M. Roygardner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This exploratory study employed qualitative methodology, specifically values analysis, to learn more about how being involved within Hip hop dance communities positively relates to adolescent development. Adolescence was defined herein as ages 13-23. The study investigated Hip hop dance communities in terms of cultural expertise (i.e. novice, intermediate and advanced/expert) to look specifically at dance narratives (i.e. peak experience narratives and “I dance because” essays) and hip hop dance performances. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to (1) explore how adolescents use multimodal Hip hop dance discourse for social-emotional development and critical consciousness, and to (2) understand how values …

Acts Of Provocation: Popular Antiracisms On/Through The Twenty-First Century New York Commercial Stage, Stefanie A. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an abolitionist feminist study of the role of liberalism in the twenty-first century political economy. It takes as its object New York City bourgeois cultural productions (in particular Broadway theatre and the New York Times) from approximately 1984 to 2009. It offers insights into important yet widely-misunderstood features of turn-of-millennium US society: class, art, political practice, and war. In order to understand liberalism’s political and economic agenda, I look at how these objects are pitched in the struggle over racism. Sometimes when we say “liberal” we mean it in the philosophical sense, with particular attention to liberal …

Theatre Translation As Historiography: Projections Of Greek Self-Identity Through English Translations During The European Crisis, Maria Mytilinaki

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project focuses on theatre translation from Modern Greek into English through the examination of three plays translated in the early years of the ongoing Greek crisis (2012-2014). Currently Greek culture is received internationally through two important frames of reference: Hellenism, the admiration for the ancient Greek spirit, and the more recent negative associations with modern Greece provoked by the Eurozone crisis. The three translations I examine challenge these dual external projections onto Greek culture by promoting a more nuanced image that recontextualizes the Greek past. In their capacity to travel between cultures, often in bilingual iterations, these theatrical translations …

Nervous Salomes: New York Salomania And The Neurological Condition Of Modernité, Margaret K. Araneo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In January 1907, New York City had its first major encounter with the figure of Salome. Appearing on three large stages in the city simultaneously, the archetype of the dancing girl quickly became an object of controversy. Her appearance at the Metropolitan Opera House in its staging of Strauss’s Salome resulted in public debate and the ultimate closure of the performance by the Met’s Board of Directors. The event brought attention to the Salome archetype’s already contested character. Salome arrived in the United States from Europe where she had been the subject of a quarter century of debates about how …

Twenty-First-Century Transnational Theatre Development In The Cases Of Théâtre Du Soleil/Aftaab And Sundance Institute East Africa: Cultural Politics, Performance Aesthetics, And Global Circulation, Julia Goldstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines two case studies of twenty-first-century transnational theatre development programs in which arts organizations from wealthy countries in the Global North extend resources and support for the professional development of theatre artists in regions in the Global South. The first case study takes up the French theatre company Théâtre du Soleil’s work in Afghanistan, starting in 2005, leading to the formation of the Afghan theatre company Aftaab and the next ten years of Soleil’s support of and collaboration with Aftaab, transpiring both in Kabul and Paris. The second case study examines the Sundance Institute East Africa Theatre Lab …

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Thursday, June 1, 2017

The Right Way To Direct A Play, Erin Kraft

The Theatre School MFA in Directing Theses

A director needs more than inspiration to guide their work. During grad school, I learned, abandoned, modified and re-embraced many tools for directing in order to develop my own process. In this paper, I examine the revelations and challenges that arose from my coursework and the plays I directed at The Theatre School: Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker, The Lady From the Sea by Henrik Ibsen, The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, Tender by Nikki Bloom, We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, from the German Sudwestafrika, …