Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

Chasing Eliza: Shifting And Static Women In Elizabeth Craven's The Miniature Picture, Heather A. Ladd

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

Georgian actress and author Mary Robinson famously wore a miniature portrait of her royal lover, the Prince of Wales, whom she captivated in the Shakespearean breaches role of Perdita. Intriguingly, Robinson’s final stage appearance was as the cross-dressing heroine of The Miniature Picture (1781), a three-act comedy penned by writer and socialite Lady Elizabeth Craven, later Baroness Craven and Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach. The play’s action, initiated by the threat of exposure, is driven by Eliza Camply, who aims to retrieve her miniature from the man who left her. Craven, like the actress playing her enterprising protagonist Eliza Camply, was no …

A Kaleidoscopic Book That'll Make Your 'World Spin', Wendy Macleod

Wendy MacLeod

No abstract provided.

Angels In America And Rent: Aids Through The Ages, Nicole Motahari

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Henrik Ibsen’S A Doll’S House: A Marriage Built To Fail, Alison Dees

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

The Importance Of C.S. Lewis To Faith-Based Theatre As Seen In The Silver Chair, Andrew J. Wilkinson

Senior Honors Theses

The paper contains an adaptation of the book The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis and details the purpose for why this particular story is important for the faith-based theatre community. There are a number of Christian themes that are evident in the story that are examined as well as the elements of the story that make it apt for adapting to a play format.

Playing With Croxton, Molly Mccann

Selected Honors Theses

The Croxton Play of the Sacrament is an often overlooked, yet highly important piece for understanding the social climate of England in the fifteenth century.

This time period was riddled with religious and nationalist anxieties ingrained in the text of Croxton. This paper is designed to give an overview of these tensions and explain how our production of this drama sought to navigate and translate these tensions for a modern audience.

More Than A 'Mere Painted Scene': The Role Of Theatricality And The Carnivalesque In 'The Mayor Of Casterbridge', Christine R. Vahaly

Student Publications

This essay examines the role of Thomas Hardy's scenes of community theatre, drawing examples from Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, and The Mayor of Casterbridge. Only in such scenes from The Mayor of Casterbridge does Hardy employ Mikhail Bakhtin's carnivalesque, reversing the roles of the spectator and the creator of spectacle, the supporting cast and the lead actor, in order to magnify the fall of protagonist Michael Henchard.

Shakespeare's Blush, Or "The Animal" In Othello, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

This essay examines how the rhetoric of animalization in Shakespeare’s Othello compels us to think early modern categories of race in connection with early modern discourses of “human” versus “animal.” Beginning with Shakespeare’s representation of Iago, I suggest that it is the potential for sameness conditioned by Iago’s counterfactual statement (“Were I the Moor, I would not by Iago”) that is most significant about his relation to Othello. From there I consider the overlap between the play’s representations of animality and black skin. Read in the context of Jacques Derrida’s reflections on animals, I consider the deconstructive value of linking …

Disciplines, Institutions—And Desires, Will Stockton, Mario Digangi, Ruth Mazo Karras, Melissa E. Sanchez

Publications and Research

Will Stockton: I would like to begin by asking you to consider the chiasmus under which we gather: “Desiring History and Historicizing Desire.” The chiasmus focuses our attention on the crossing of two terms, each with noun and verb forms their grammatical flexibility indexed, perhaps, to the methodological flexibility of the fields in which most of us work: early modern (here both Renaissance and late-medieval) queer and/or sexuality studies. Talk a bit about the definitions of desir/e/ing and histor/y/icizing, and the relation of these terms to the periodization and thematization of your and our work. Is defining these words more …

Antitheatricality And Irrationality: An Alternative View, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"Over the last three decades, antitheatrical authors like Stephen Gosson, Phillip Stubbes, and William Prynne have become increasingly visible in the literary and cultural studies of the early modern period. Even so, the tendency has been to treat these authors as ideological extremists: reactionary hacks whose opposition to stage plays originates in outrageous ideas of the self, impossible notions of right and wrong, and bizarre beliefs about humanity’s susceptibility to external suggestion. This characterization can be traced back to several of the pioneering studies in the field, including Jonas Barish’s The Antitheatrical Prejudice (1985) and Laura Levine’s Men in Women’s …

"Outside And Also Beside Herself:" A Discussion Of The Treatment Of Hysteria In Female Characters Within The Western Theatrical Tradition, Molly Belsky

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

We Are Standing In The Nick Of Time: Translative Relevance In Anne Carson's "Antigonick", Michelle Alonso

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The complicated issues surrounding translation studies have seen growing attention in recent years from scholars and academics that want to make it a discipline and not a minor branch of another field, such as linguistics or comparative literature. Writ large with Antigonick, Carson showcases the recent Western push towards translation studies in the American academy. By offering up a text that is chaotic in its presentation, she bypasses the rigid idea of univocality. By giving the text discordant images, she betrays the failed efficacy of sign and signification, and by choosing a text to be performed and mutually participated …

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: 60 Years Of American Dialogue On Sex, Gender, And The Nuclear Family, Amy Brooks

Masters Theses

This thesis is a two-part work. Its components, a written paper and a one-night symposium/film screening event entitled Tennessee Williams: Gender Play in 2015 and Beyond, have been closely coordinated with my dramaturgical research for the February 2015 University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Theater production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The written inquiry is structured around a chronological, selected American production history of Cat; this history, rendered in a series of three case studies, will (1) synthesize preexisting analyses of Cat’s dramaturgical profile, its impact on American theater, and its position in Williams’s oeuvre; …

Three Readings Of Reading, Pennsylvania: Approaching Lynn Nottage’S Sweat And Douglas Carter Beane’S Shows For Days, Courtney Mohler, Christina Mcmahon, David Román

Scholarship and Professional Work – Arts

No abstract provided.

Is He Dead?, Otterbein University Department Of Theatre And Dance

2015-2016 Season

This play was written by Mark Twain in 1898 and first published in print in 2003. The play focuses on a fictional version of the great French painter, Jean-François Millet, as an impoverished artist in Barbizon, France who, with the help of his colleagues, stages his death in order to increase the value of his paintings, and afterwards dresses as a woman to keep his secret safe. Combining elements of burlesque, farce, and social satire, the comedy relies on such devices as cross-dressing, mistaken identities, and romantic deceptions to tell its story, which raises …

A Case Study: Using Blackboard Tools To Measure Correlations Between Student Engagement And Student Achievement, Andrew Vorder Bruegge

Winthrop Conference on Teaching and Learning

The Blackboard course management system includes the tool "statistics tracking." An instructor can use this tool to generate a report that "displays the summary of usage for that content item and [the students] enrolled in the course. The access date, hour and day of the week are all reported for the selected item and [students]." In this case study the researcher will correlate aggregate data about students' visits to numerous content items in a course and their final grade in the course. The instructor will also correlate aggregate data from a study log created to track the number of hours …

La Dame Aux Camelias’ Effect On Society’S View Of The “Fallen Woman”, Christiana Johnson

The Kabod

Alexandre Dumas’ play, La Dame aux Camelias presents Marguerite Gautier, a “fallen woman,” as having redeemable qualities which challenged both society’s condemnation of the “fallen woman” and led to a more realistic portrayal of life on the stage and in literature as a whole.

Professional Wrestling And/As Theatre: Bodies, Labor, And The Commercial Stage, Eero Laine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation pursues questions of how theatre and performance relate to and interact with contemporary politics and economies. In particular, this dissertation intervenes in theatre and performance studies to examine professional wrestling as a century-old, embodied, narrative form that spans from its local places of performance to circulate as a global theatrical product. Professional wrestling is not simply proven to be theatre in a formal sense, insofar as professional wrestling embraces many theatrical elements such as plot, character, scenic design, props, and spectacle; rather, professional wrestling is examined here as a distinct form of globalizing, commercial theatre. Whereas many studies …

Autobiographical Poetry To Plays: Taking Memoir To A Theatrical Level, Ryan P. Tofil

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Pulitzer prize winning playwright John Patrick Shanley wrote, “Theatre is a safe place to do the unsafe things that need to be done.” For my Capstone Project, I have compiled my autobiographical poetry, prose, and performance monologues into a theatrical manuscript to be used as the basis for a play. The final Capstone Project is a manuscript of an anticipated theatrical production based on the grieving process surrounding my brother's suicide, as well as an exploration of my sexuality and the relationships I developed during the years surrounding his death.

The Capstone Project’s theatrical manuscript is also accompanied by a …

Faustus’ England: Marlowe’S Representation Of Individualism And Spiritual Authority In Elizabethan England In The Tragical History Of Doctor Faustus, Andrea Holstein

2016 Undergraduate Awards

This paper explores Christopher Marlowe’s representation of individualism and his criticism of spiritual authority in Elizabethan England as presented in Doctor Faustus. Current Marlovian scholarship focuses on the question of how Marlowe’s consideration of the pressing doctrinal questions of his day were used to advance the narrative of Doctor Faustus. The goal of this paper, however, is to demonstrate that Doctor Faustus is first and foremost a subversive commentary on the religious climate of Marlowe’s day. This analysis of Marlowe’s attitude regarding the religious authorities—both doctrinal and institutional—of this period was accomplished by examining the representation of religious beliefs …

Decayed Drama, Increased Inclusivity: Beckett’S Theater In The 1960s, Ryan Diller

The Expositor: A Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities

No abstract provided.

El Metro En El Teatro Y El Teatro En El Metro: Un Escenario Laberíntico De Múltiples Velocidades, Polly J. Hodge

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"En esta investigación se explora el metro como un espacio teatral único y laberíntico. El metro se revela como un espacio ambiguo: es un lugar brindado con la capacidad de fomentar relaciones amorosas y transformativas entre los seres humanos; a la vez se concibe como un sitio condenado a destruir lazos personales al fomentar comportamientos de decepción y violencia aplastando cualquier esperanza para el espíritu humano. El metro, como espacio urbano recóndito y específicamente localizado bajo la tierra, con sus connotaciones que giran alrededor de la oscuridad, la clandestinidad, el secreto, el misterio y el crimen, es el escenario laberíntico …

Maria Rosa, Adaptada Al Cinema Per Cecil B. Demille, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

En l'época actual, en la qual l'éxit teatral s'acostuma a mesurar en funció del reconeixement internacional, molts dramaturgs contemporanis han somniat un muntatge a Nova York o, fins i tot, un triomf a Hollywood. Potser els sorprendria saber que fa aproximadament cent anys, Ángel Guimerá, sens dubte el dramaturg catalá més prominent del seu temps, ja havia complert aquest somni gairebé impossible quan dues de les seves obres teatrals més famoses, Maria Rosa (1894) i Terra baixa (1896), es van estrenar en versió anglesa sota els focus de Broadway. De fet, entre els anys 1903 i 1914, les obres de …

The Filial Dagger: The Case Of Hal And Henry Iv In 1 & 2 Henry Iv And The Famovs Victories, Kristin M.S. Bezio

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

English culture and politics in the last decade of the sixteenth century were both patriarchal and patrilineal, in spite of— or, perhaps, in part, because of—the so-called bastard queen sitting on the throne. The prevailing political questions of the day concerned Elizabeth’s successor and the fate of the nation that, so many believed, hung precariously in the balance. Questions of legality, legitimacy, and fitness formed the crux of these debates, but almost all claimants attempted to justify their right by tracing their bloodlines back to either Henry VII or Edward III, the respective patriarchs of the Tudor dynasty and the …

Lust Gluttony Greed, Abigail Adele Matthews Adler

Senior Projects Spring 2016

I make theater because it is social; a dialogical tool rooted in the interface between performer and audience. As an artist I seek community, a remedy for passivity, and movement between destruction and reification. I incorporate voice, text, sound, video, movement, politics, gender, spectacle, and tomfoolery. I believe in the necessity of others in process, practice, and performance, and I pursue joy in all I do.

This project is the product of surprise. In February 2015, the Theater Department announced that Senior Projects would need to be collaborative. In response to this challenge, the 2016 Theatre Makers met to figure …

In Pursuit Of Women Scientists: Using Science Plays To Promote Women Entering Stem Disciplines, Danielle Hartman

Theses and Dissertations

Higher education currently seeks to increase female enrollment in STEM. Women face many challenges attempting to breach this male dominated arena with misconceptions, gender stereotypes, and few female role models. With the recent trend in higher education to encourage more women to enter the STEM disciplines and K-12 schools cutting funding for arts programs, theatre may be losing its value in the education system. The value of interdisciplinary studies is beginning to be forgotten during the grade school years as school boards battle budget cuts, but we can remind society of it through science plays. Theatre artists use other disciplines …

A Patriot For Men: The Politics Of Masculinity In John Osborne's "A Patriot For Me", Joshua Kelly

All Master's Theses

By applying David Savran’s scholarship on the politics of masculinity to John Osborne’s play A Patriot for Me (1965), I demonstrate that Osborne exemplified contradictory sexual politics in the play, and was criticized as homophobic and praised as revolutionary in similarly contradictory original reviews. I argue that play very much typifies the heteronormative politics of masculinity by placing a dominant homosexual (Redl) as protagonist, and inverts the positions of the period woman and the staged effeminate man. Redl is historically represented as a heroic homosexual, but is actually a heteronormative object. I provide evidence for this interpretation by employing Savran …

A Dramaturgical Analysis Of The Miracle Worker, Abby Butzer

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This document is a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the Master of Arts degree in theatre. It is a dramaturgical analysis for William Gibson's play The Miracle Worker, providing a reference for directors and actors. The thesis explores the play's medical and pedagogical history in six chapters: the physiology and psychology of language acquisition as it pertains to sight and/or hearing impaired children, a pedagogical comparison of Samuel G. Howe and Annie Sullivan, a modern diagnosis of the fever that destroyed Helen Keller's vision and hearing, the 19th century pathology and treatment options for the disease of the eye …

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

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

It Will Turn Vicious: An Exploration Of The Cycle Of Audience Ridicule In French Drama, Stephanie C. Elfont

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The intent of this thesis is to investigate the prominence of audience ridicule in the French theatre from the medieval sottie to Ionescan Absurdism of the mid-twentieth century. Throughout the history of French drama, playwrights have exploited this tactic with either the purpose of invoking an emotional or intellectual response or inciting a social or political call to action. This exploration takes particular interest in shaming theatrical audiences during periods of political unrest, analyzing the ways in which playwrights employed language, studies of characters, and plot-related content to highlight the prevalent and pervasive ills of society and of humanity. The …