Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

We’Re Late; But We Made It: A Brief Analysis And Comparison Of Characterization And Storytelling In Pre And Post-World War American Theatre, Jasmine Binford

McNair Scholars Research

As the effects of the World Wars hit the American people, playwrights responded to the grief and passion of the country with a new approach to theatrical storytelling. After World War I and II, American playwrights finally made it to the movement that had been sweeping through Europe for five decades: realism. Theatres began exploring real emotion, action, and characters in their stories. This research will explore the journey of transitioning from American melodrama to American modernism using characterization and storytelling methods. Critiques from contemporaries and the works form each movement will be used as primary sources.

Rewriting Greek Tragedies As Immigrant Stories, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

In this piece originally published in the New York Times, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner writes about Mojada, Luis Alfaro's adaptation of the Greek tragedy, Medea. Mojada is part of a trilogy from Alfaro that attempts to bring his Latino community into modern theater by writing them into classical plays.

Rousseau On Stage: Playwright, Musician, Spectator. Edited By Maria Gullstam And Michael O’Dea, Wendy Nielsen

Department of English Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Teatro, Ciencia Ficción Y Distopía En La España Tardofranquista: Sodomáquina (1970), De Carlo Frabetti, Miguel Carrera Garrido

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

La ciencia ficción no es uno de los géneros más practicados en el teatro español del siglo XX. Ello no obsta para que exista algún que otro título merecedor de atención y estudio. El presente artículo se centra en Sodomáquina, del italiano afincado en España Carlo Frabetti (Bolonia, 1945). Publicada en 1970 en las revistas especializadas –en ciencia ficción y en teatro, respectivamente– Nueva Dimensión y Yorick, constituye uno de los más dignos intentos de aclimatar el género en las tablas, con todo su potencial imaginativo y discursivo. En nuestro análisis, valoramos su condición de distopía crítica, …

Dmt And “The Man Box:” Provoking Change And Encouraging Authentic Living, An Arts-Based Project, Steven Reynolds

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This thesis explores the mind-body experience through an arts-based research approach to examine, and redefine the emotional capacity and usefulness of males through societal determinants that limits and hinders men from living their authentic selves. Through the lens of a metaphoric “Man Box” 112 men participated in a workshop recreating their personal narratives of socialization through, style of dress, coping mechanisms, belief systems and who they should be as men through society's standards. In the “Man Box,” male bonding, and emotional feelings are discouraged, while the objectification of women, material property and physical/emotional strength are encouraged. This research investigates the …

Power In The Hands Of The Uninvolved, Sarah Vita

Across the Bridge: The Merrimack Undergraduate Research Journal

The Dutchman, written by Amiri Baraka, expresses the racism of the 1960s. While skimming the surface to find the tones of racism and white oppression exhibited by Lula, Baraka craftily sneaks the bystander effect into his stage directions. The bystander effect is easily looked past in this play because the words of Lula and her actions distract from the small details that create the real problem.

Mansfield Park By Kate Hamill (And Jane Austen), Christopher Nagle

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

This article reviews the world premiere of Kate Hamill's Mansfield Park directed by Stuart Carden and produced for the Northlight Theatre in Chicago in November and December 2018. Hamill’s bold new adaptation is notable for foregrounding the contexts of empire and the slave trade undergirding the novel, and in ultimately offering a feminist fairy-tale of radical self-assertion and self-determination for its heroine.

Neoclassicism And Camp In Sir William Hamilton’S Naples, Ersy Contogouris

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

Susan Sontag, in her now-classic “Notes on Camp” (1964), traces the origins of camp to the eighteenth century (13, 14, 33). And although it is precisely the baroque and rococo art movements against which Winckelmann rebelled that Sontag identifies as camp, it is worth reflecting on whether the notion of imitation that is central to both movements – imitation of ancient works in the case of neoclassicism, and imitation as parody in the case of camp (Meyer 7) – might not bring the two closer. Once the conceptual chasm separating neoclassicism and camp has begun to be bridged, we can …

Sterne’S Sentimental Temptations: Sex, Sensibility, And The Uses Of Camp, Julie Beaulieu

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

Laurence Sterne’s lack of commitment to the tenets of sentimentality in A Sentimental Journey—present in his ability to mock and praise the individual capacity to feel, and more precisely, in his satirical reading of the “cult of sensibility,” the new ideological imperative to have and to showcase deep, sentimental feelings—remains as one of the central challenges for readings of the novel. To explore Sterne’s portrayal of sensibility in A Sentimental Journey, I turn to camp sensibility, and the discussions that followed Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp.” Sterne’s novel could be read as camp, perhaps most notably in his …

Eighteenth-Century Camp Introduction, Ula Lukszo Klein, Emily Mn Kugler

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

A blend of the silly and the extravagant that puts the serious into conversation with the ridiculous, camp today is often signified by elements of eighteenth-century Europe with its elaborate hairstyles, exaggerated silhouettes, affected courtiers, and a rise in the consumption of exotic goods, candelabras, masks, and other markers of elite excess (often with a nod to the era’s demise in the form of either the French Revolution or subsequent Victorian strictures). Camp’s relation to queer modes of performance and its prioritization of style over (or in conjunction with) substance offers a queer aesthetic lens to re-evaluate the eighteenth century …

"Playhouse Creatures:" A Study Of Restoration Actresses, Emily Laplante

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Creatures. Women. Actresses. We are here because of women like Mary Betterton, Doll Common, Nell Gwyn, Elizabeth Farley, and Rebecca Marshall. Theatre is about telling stories. Their story is a timeless one: of suffering, resilience, dedication, love, and comradery. Actresses were first permitted by royal decree to act upon the stage in 1669 by King Charles II of England. This decree created a spark within the playhouses to see actresses in the flesh perform. With this came a ripple effect of a host of expectations and suppression. This Honors Capstone is a comprehensive look into the themes of April De …

To Speak Ghosts And See Echoes: Longing In Lolita, Emily Aucompaugh

CURCE Annual Undergraduate Conference

Underneath the plot of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, which focuses on the musings of a pedophile and murderer who attempts to “confess” actions and impulses of which he feels no guilt, a secondary motif emerges of a man motivated, guided, and consumed by longing, which he cannot assuage due his fixation of desire on a subject that does not exist. Longing embodies Humbert’s greatest joy and deepest pain, a feeling of anxiety and anticipation which eclipses the necessity of completion. Lolita invokes longing, the desire towards absent things, in two ways. Firstly, Nabokov alludes to a cornucopia of other poetic, …

On The Variations Of 'Occupatio' In "Richard Ii", William Kelly Reeder

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent scholarship of Shakespeare’s Richard II has been interested in or preoccupied with its historical relations. Particularly the plays association with the Essex Rising of 1601, and the censorship of the deposition scene, both of which seem to resonate for history with Elizabeth’s enigmatic comment expressing her identification with Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard II.

This paper proposes to resolve the question of the play’s censorship by interpreting the deposition scene as a dramatization of transubstantiation, perhaps triggering Elizabethan censors.

Transubstantiation is the doctrine by which the Catholic Church interprets the Eucharist using the distinction between substance and accidens (eternal and …

Costume Design And Execution Of The Nebraska Repertory Theatre’S Mother Courage And Her Children By Bertolt Brecht, Translated By William Grange, Adapted By Andy Park, Heather Mae Striebel

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

The information, documentation and analysis found within this thesis highlights the design and execution of The Nebraska Repertory Theatre’s fall production of Mother Courage. This production was originally written by Bertolt Brecht, translated by William Grange of The University of Nebraska – Lincoln and then adapted by The Nebraska Repertory Theatre’s Artistic Director Andy Park. Mother Courage was a part of the 2018-2019 Nebraska Repertory Theatre’s 50^thanniversary season and was performed in the Howell Theatre located within the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film. Information found within this thesis showcases the research, production, development, design and …

Performing Bernarda: Activating Power And Identity, Ana Martinez Medina

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The musical Bernarda Alba tells the story of a woman who is confined within the heavily patriarchal and Catholic society that was 1930s Spain. Because of this, I thought it the perfect arena to explore power dynamics on stage. My thesis will explore status, hierarchies, relationships, and identity via the stolid matriarchal character Bernarda Alba. Through analyzing the playwright's words, fleshing out the character, and exploring the character's relationships with others in rehearsal, I have studied how to activate status on stage. There are many sociology theories and psychological studies that can be applied to theatre-making in order to create …

Embodied Nostalgia: Early Twentieth Century Social Dance And U.S. Musical Theatre, Phoebe Rumsey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I claim the collective emotional connections and historical explorations characteristic of musical theatre constitute a nostalgic impulse dramaturgically inherent in the form. In my intervention in the link between nostalgia and musical theatre, I look to an area underrepresented in musical theatre scholarship: social dance. Through case studies that focus specifically on how social dance in musical theatre brings forth the dancer on stage as a site of embodied history, cultural memory, and nostalgia, I ask what social dance is doing in musical theatre and how the dancing body functions as a catalyst for nostalgic thinking for …

Queer Pregnancy In Shakespeare's Plays, Alicia Page Andrzejewski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bringing together queer and feminist theory, this dissertation examines Shakespeare’s representations of pregnancy divorced from their promised duration and promised end, revealing that the pregnant body is not wholly symbolic of futurity, chastity, or even heterosexual desire. In queer readings of Shakespeare’s plays and in the methodological debates that inform them, the pregnant body has been conspicuously absent, despite being often subsumed into definitions of heteronormativity and procreative reproduction. In feminist work on Shakespeare’s pregnant characters, scholars largely conflate pregnancy with maternity instead of considering the ways in which these women might engage in non-heterosexual forms of intimacy and eroticism. …

Three Forms Of Death In David Rabe’S The Basic Training Of Pavlo Hummel And Sticks And Bones, Sloan Garner

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I argue there are three main forms of death that progress chronologically in David Rabe’s The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones. First, the death of civilian identity as the soldier conforms to the military. Secondly, the soldier’s killing—metaphoric or literal—of others, which is part of his attempt to fit with his new military identity. Third, the soldier’s sacrificial suicide as his escape from the military identity. In this paper, I provide evidence and close reading to support my argument that the protagonists in both plays, Pavlo and David, encounter, enact, or experience …

Strict Restraints: Abstinence's Gender Problems In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc

History Honors Papers

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure poses questions about sexual coercion and governmental corruption that resonate today. Recent scholarship has examined sexual abstinence in Measure for Measure in terms of its historical economic and religious context regarding Isabella. However, Angelo and the Duke, the play's other central characters, also make claims about the value of abstinence. I put these characters’ claims into dialogue with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and extensive scholarship on Shakespearean England. I argue that abstinence is the axis around which Measure’s main characters revolve, and that Measure locates these characters’ abstinences as competing performances of manhood and …

In Search Of National Identity: Portraits Of Motherless Women In Clarín And Galdós, Leslie I. Quezada

LSU Master's Theses

Drawing on novels by Leopoldo Alas Clarín and Benito Pérez Galdós, I will examine the portraits of women in La Regenta (1885), Tristana (1892), andLa de San Quintín (1894). By exploring how women in the works are reflected in terms of identity and nature of their role from a male-authored perspective, I will study how different aspects influence the development of their character, as well as the issues they face when searching for their identity. Galdós and Clarín unravel the women to embody the nation of Spain and the conditions it was going through before the …

Performing Queerness, Jasmina Sinanovic

Open Educational Resources

This is a syllabus for a course Performing Queerness

El Otro Lado De La Máscara De Lorca: Federico, En Carne Viva, Polly J. Hodge

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

José Moreno Arenas (Albolote, Granada) lleva casi cincuenta años escribiendo piezas teatrales y escenificando sus obras. Con la celebración del estreno de su última creación teatral, Federico, en carne viva, en Los Ángeles, California (6 de octubre, Frida Kahlo Theater), Moreno Arenas comparte con nosotros su paseo por los textos y campos de Lorca para poder retratar a esta figura mítica con la luz enfocada al otro lado de su máscara.

"La Llorona": Evolución, Ideología Y Uso En El Mundo Hispano, Raquel Sáenz-Llano

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis studies the evolution, ideology and use of the myth of La Llorona through time in the Hispanic World. Considering this myth as one of the most known traditional narratives of the American continent, I begin by providing visual, ethnohistorical and ethnographical insights of weeping in Mesoamerica and South America and the specific mention of a weeping woman in some Spanish chronicles to say how western values were stablished in “the new continent” through this legend. I suggest that during the postcolonialism the legend did not tell anymore about a mother that cries and search a place for their …

Trespassing Physical Boundaries: Transgression, Vulnerability And Resistance In Sarah Kane’S Blasted (1995), Paula Barba Guerrero, Ana Mª Manzanas Calvo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Sarah Kane’s Blasted has been analyzed from various perspectives that address the layers of destruction it exposes. From the questioning of its title and meaning, to the unravelling of the protagonists’ abusive relationship, the analyses have emphasized the depiction of vulnerability as the defining human trait that Jean Ganteau observes in contemporary British literature. However, a key aspect has been overlooked in the critical response to the play: for Kane vulnerability does not equal helplessness, but rather stands in opposition to it. Hence, this article concentrates on how Blasted formulates a new understanding of vulnerability that fits Judith Butler’s later …

The Unruly Womb In Early Modern English Drama: Plotting Women's Biology On The Stage, Ursula Potter

Late Tudor and Stuart Drama

This study provides an accessible, informative and entertaining introduction to women’s sexual health as presented on the early modern stage, and how dramatists coded for it. Beginning with the rise of green sickness (the disease of virgins) from its earliest reference in drama in the 1560s, Ursula Potter traces a continuing fascination with the womb by dramatists through to the oxymoron of the chaste sex debate in the 1640s. She illuminates how playwrights both satirized and perpetuated the notion of the womb’s insatiable appetite.

The Mixed Reception Of The Hamilton Premiere In Puerto Rico, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

In this article originally published in The Atlantic, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner wonders about the challenges of premiering the famed Broadway musical, Hamilton, during a time of political discord in the aftermath of 2017's Hurricane Maria, in Puerto Rico.

Kinship And Twinship In Jacob And Esau, Kent R. Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"The implications of these early stage directions are upheld and amplified elsewhere in the play. In what follows, I demonstrate this to be the case by reviewing some of the ways the interlude seeks to justify Jacob’s usurpation, most interestingly in its systematic and strategic deployment of kinship ties and familial terms. After explaining how the play leverages family relations to elevate Jacob and overthrow Esau, I concentrate on one family relation in particular: namely, the complicated bond between twin brothers. As I will make clear, the interlude’s treatment of twinship raises pressing questions about the way wealth, affection, and …

Direction Of The Imaginary Invalid By Molière Translated By Charles Heron Wall Adapted By Kimberly Dorman, Kimberly S. Dorman

All Graduate Projects

This project comprises of the selection, research, casting, adaptation, production and post-production process of The Imaginary Invalid. Documentation and research include adaptation, analysis of the play as a production vehicle for our program, research, script analysis, outcome goals, a record of the production period, and a postproduction evaluation.

“The Ground On Which I Stand” Healing Queer Trauma Through Performance: Crafting A Solo Performance Through The Investigation Of Ritual Poetic Drama Within The African Continuum, Ashley W. Grantham

Theses and Dissertations

“The Ground On Which I Stand”

Healing Queer Trauma through Performance:

Crafting a Solo Performance through the investigation of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum.

By: Ashley W. Grantham

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Performance Pedagogy at Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University

April 16^th, 2019

Thesis Adjudicator: Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates

Committee: Dr. Keith Byron Kirk, Director of Graduate Studies and Karen Kopryanski, Head of Voice and Speech

How does this method of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum, by extension, solo performance, …

Myrrha Now: Reimagining Classic Myth And Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses In The #Metoo Era, Claire A. Pukszta

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper represents the final culmination of a theater senior project. The project consisted of an analytical research paper, performance in a mainstage department production, and supporting process documentation. I portrayed Myrrha, Hunger, Zeus, and others in a production of the play Metamorphoses.

Through research on Mary Zimmerman’s 1998 play Metamorphoses, adapted from the works of Roman poet Ovid, this thesis grapples with the historical meaning of the myth of Myrrha. A polarizing figure, Myrrha was cursed to fall in lust with her father. By exploring of portrayals sexual assault onstage, I tackle themes of audience relationships to …