Other Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Identities Of Women In Indian Art And History, Nalini Rao

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

The stereotypical image of Indian women portrayed in the art of stone sculpture is often interpreted as images of beauty that are sensuous, religious as well depict social life. There are historical reasons for depicting her as such. This paper inquires into the changing depiction and social forces that influenced feminine imagery. This paper examines the portrayal of beauty through idealization of female body which has evolved over the centuries in India. It also aims to understand their changing status and explores issues of feminine identity, status, and empowerment largely in ancient and medieval India. It also provides a brief …

Does Participation In Extracurricular Theatre Productions Influence Emotional Wellbeing?, Francis V. Sada Gutiérrez

International Graduate Program for Educators Master's Projects

The purpose of this study was to research whether or not participating in extracurricular theatre productions had an impact on the emotional wellbeing of students in middle and high school. Students involved in extracurricular theatre productions during the 2021-2022 school year were surveyed and asked to rate their level of confidence, self-esteem, among others. They were also asked open-ended questions regarding their experience in the theatre department and the learnings or benefits they perceived to have gained as a result. The multiple-choice questions showed data ranging from students claiming they were very confident to not confident at all, but the …

An Embodied Drama Therapy Approach To Restorative School Practices: A Method, Sarah Harmer

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Restorative School Practices offer schools a circle structure to shift the punitive mindset and power dynamics commonly found in America’s schools, to a model that focuses on relationship, connection, and mutual respect. Drama therapy interventions utilize embodied or active work that engage the entire person. The purpose of this thesis was to create a method to explore the addition of embodied drama therapy techniques to deepen the experience of the restorative school circle process. Three community-building and social emotional learning focused circles, in a second, fourth, and sixth grade class, were compared using the traditional scripts and then the same …

Sharing Walks As A Witnessing Practice: Exploring Movement-Based Pedagogies, Catalina Hernandez-Cabal

Feminist Pedagogy

How we walk—or our inability to do so—is telling of who we have been. I propose this simple movement practice as a pedagogical engagement with the concept of faithful witnessing, which refers to attending to modes of power unbalance that might go unnoticed, and to people's creative and resistant possibilities (Lugones, 2003; Figueroa-Vásquez, 2015). This activity is suggested to provoke reflections about how we understand and experience social difference and power unbalances. The work introduces a simple score (a creative prompt) to explore walking-with others, creating instructions to teach others our movement, learning others', and delving into conversations concerning the …

Vedantic Basis And Praxis Of The Integral Advaita Of Sri Aurobindo, Debashish Banerji

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

The integral nondualism of Sri Aurobindo can be traced to the great pronouncements (mahāvākya) of the Upanishads and later commentaries. This study examines teachings on the Supermind (vijñāna) and the other four kinds of consciousness that define human reality: Matter (annaṃ), Life (prāṇaḥ), Mind (manaḥ), and Bliss (ānanda). Through Yoga and Tantra, one learns and embodies the pathway to the divine.

Digital And Spatial Humanities Mapping: Eurasia-Pacific Early Trade And Belief Linkages, Igor Sitnikov, David Blundell

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

The Eurasia-Pacific is a dynamic region of rapid economic growth, cultural awareness, natural resource exploration, and military buildup. The concept of the region is relatively new, featuring contested vast areas of geo-resource space of numerous cultures and languages. The current findings in anthropology and archaeology and even its more specific subfields such as folklore are important contribution to the understanding of periodic environmental changes and technical innovations were the main forces of transformations in social structures that have determined the mechanisms and levels of cross-cultural trade activity across the region. We have traced early trade and belief linkages across Eurasia-Pacific …

Tusha Hiti: The Origin And Significance Of The Name, Deepak Shimkhada

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

In this article, the author examines the royal bath called Tushā Hiti located in Sūndari Chowk (Beautiful Courtyard) of Pātan Durbar Square, using six different methods of investigation. The question: What is in a name? started the ball of investigation rolling and along the way were added more supporting blocks such as history, iconography, function and purpose, notion of purity and impurity, and finally the hiti in popular culture to get a complete picture of the subject in question.

Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion: Perspectives From Contemporary India And 6th Century Jain Yoga, Christopher Key Chapple

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Times New Roman

Ganges In Indian Sculpture And Literature: Mythology And Personification, Nalini Rao

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

The river Ganges is a symbol of wealth, purity and eternity, and its sacred waters have inspired sages, philosophers, and artists in India who have immortalized its divine imagery. However, it has rarely been understood from a historical point of view, as to how it became so sacred and to view it from a multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary perspective with an accumulation of layers of historical thought and practices, provides a rationale for the living practices around the river. The paper explores the evolution of the concept of sacredness and eternity of River Ganges through art- historical and archaeological evidence. It …

I’M Not A Tragedy: Speaking Up About Ableist Microaggressions, Kasandra Marguerite Colwell

Communication Senior Capstones

Have you heard of ableist microaggressions? Let me tell you about them, as someone who has experienced them. I have a bi-lateral dislocating knee condition that I was born with. I can walk, but sometimes I need additional stability or reduction of pain while getting around, in which case I tend to use a cane. I have had many othering interactions while using a mobility aid in public, whether that be a knee brace, a cane, or crutches. While it often seemed the stranger didn’t mean any harm, the question is how many invasive questions and comments from strangers can …

Educating The Future Of The Arts, Anna Hollingsworth

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Theatre impacts the youth in a positive way. By helping with social connections, learning skills to tell a story, and getting to utilize their imagination. This thesis looks at what comes into creating a lesson plan for grades fourth-sixth grade. Each grade will focus on different themes that pertains to what they are learning in their literature classes and what is more relevant topic in their age group. To take what they learn from the classroom and apply it to a real-life scenario. To help those children explore through learning it academically and getting to devise their own shows. It …

Trauma-Informed Performance Art Education, Yvonne Houy, Kymberly Mellen, Alethea Inns, Morgan Iommi

Creative Collaborations

Trauma is the emotional response to a disturbing event or series of events, and can cause symptoms such as unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, headaches, and nausea, according to the American Psychological Association (2022). Learning activities in the performing arts - such as adjusting the body through touch, or the emotional content of scenes - can retraumatize students unintentionally. In contrast, creating the conditions for emotional states that enhance learning is a science, and an art, that can support conditions for optimal performance including Flow states

Performing arts educators can proactively support students and performances by becoming trauma-informed and actively using intimacy …

Transdisciplinarity In Experience Design: A Global Survey Of Higher Ed Programs In Exd/Xd, Yvonne Houy

Creative Collaborations

In our age of ubiquitous devices and digital media it is the perceived value of the end-to-end experience that brings people to a place. Designing inspiring and emotionally engaging end-to-end experiences requires experts in a wide range of disciplines committed to an interdisciplinary collaboration that can arrive at transdisciplinary design - the sum becomes greater than its parts.

Civil engineering, hospitality, business, psychology, digital User Experience (UX) design, and experience data analysis need to be seamless integrated with the fine and performing arts and design fields:

• Architecture, interior, landscape and sound design actively engage the senses.

• Graphic and fine arts …

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Theater And Peacebuilding In Post-Conflict Settings: Participants’ Experiences In The Morning Star Theater Program In South Sudan, Shiphrah Mutungi Akandiinda

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation explores the role of theater for peacebuilding in post-conflict settings through the analysis of experiences of participants in the Morning Star Forum Theater for Peacebuilding in South Sudan. Arts-based activities, including theater, have increasingly gained momentum as viable interventions for peacebuilding in post-conflict zones. Much of the existent research fails to capture the experiences of the theater participants themselves. Using narrative inquiry, this study interviewed 12 community members who participated in the Morning Star Forum Theater event. In particular, this study focused on how experiences of Morning Star Theater events impacted interpersonal growth and relationship-building, thus positively impacting …

A Reflection On The Scope Of Feminist Pedagogy In Indian Tertiary Education, Sreemoyee Sarkar, Anirban Debsarma

Feminist Pedagogy

The Indian National Education Policy seek to restructure and standardize the higher education institution (HEI) curriculum and look forward to a futuristic, meritocratic, equitable, and multidisciplinary pedagogy. Present work critically analyses the scope of Feminist Pedagogy in the Indian higher education scenario, in this regard. It would try to offer an active participatory teaching-learning strategy to dismantle the existing gender hierarchy and oppression in Indian HEIs.

Civic Engagement Through Theatre: Running A Brechtian Workshop In The Classroom, Margot Morgan

eJournal of Public Affairs

This study presents an innovative active learning technique to support the development of civic education: a theatrical workshop based on the dramaturgy of Bertolt Brecht. I argue that the Brechtian workshop can develop three skills necessary for effective civic engagement: perspective taking, collaboration, and critical judgment/self-reflection, and that these skills are directly tied to the three civic values of pluralism, community, and civic responsibility. Using qualitative data gathered in the course of teaching this workshop to two distinct student populations — a self-selecting group of students in a liberal arts environment and a group of students at a commuter campus …

The Effects Of An Authentic Collaborative Project On University Directing Students’ Learning Experiences, Nur Hilyati Ramli, Safia Najwa Suhaimi, Muhammad Kamarul Kabilan

The Qualitative Report

This phenomenological study reports an authentic collaborative project between students of acting and directing (AD) and students of Teaching English as Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) in University Sains Malaysia (USM). The project, which is integrated and infused with features of authentic learning and creative drama education, aims to provide the AD students with new learning experiences that are authentic in nature and that focuses on their abilities to direct a full theatre performance. Using qualitative data collection methods (i.e., online reflections and open-ended items), the study identified and determined six meaningful learning experiences that the 29 AD students gained: …

The Conscience Of Little Women: Beth's Epic, Mcewen Baker

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

From its conception, and through countless retellings, there is no doubt that Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is an American classic that has stood the test of time. Kate Hamill’s stage adaptation affirms and extends this legacy; the playwright adopts a contemporary feminist approach that defies gender norms and exclusivity in casting and encourages an actor-centered approach. This essay explains the importance of this adaptation and its influence on my portrayal of Beth March in Belmont University’s Fall 2021 production. It touches on the often overlooked significance of the second youngest sister as well as how my personal battle with …

Tya And Educational Outreach In Higher Education: An Asset To Undergraduates And Their Community, Emily J. Mattison

Theses and Dissertations

Undergraduate students pursuing a career in theatre are at the beginning of their life-long training and understanding and appreciation for the art. Performing in a Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) touring production alongside the responsibility of crafting educational outreach opportunities provides the students with a unique chance to comprehend the art they have chosen to devote their lives to. This paper details the value of offering a course I crafted entitled “TYA Educational Outreach”, for both the undergraduates enrolled and the community they would be reaching. While undergraduates develop an understanding of the impact theatre can have on an individual …

Kinesthetic Language: A Dialect Of Kinesics, Terrill Suzanne Corletto

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Human communication requires the disciplines regarding physical fitness, codified language, and the performing arts to overlap, and exist symbiotically. Within the realm of artistic performance, the three disciplines working together deliver a deliberate message in a way unique to performing artists. The general tendency to compartmentalize sports, communication, and the performing arts into their pigeonhole categories of Kinesiology, Linguistics, and Theatre Arts is impractical, particularly for performing artists simply because all of the disciplines are mutually dependent in the context of all kinesthetic communications.

The purpose of this paper is to define and discuss several concepts and the ways in …

Exploring A Qualitative Approach To Arts Advocacy And Evaluation, Lycette C. Belisle

Undergraduate Theses

The quantitative impact of the arts has become an increasingly important factor in determining the overall value of a project, and is often used to determine acceptance of submissions, public recognition and funding disbursement. This project evaluates current understandings of how the arts function within society, popular methods for determining the value of the arts and explores how qualitative reasoning can be utilized to communicate the value of supporting artistic endeavors. While placing a numerical value on the arts based on data collection can be important, this project will aim to evaluate the implications of relying so heavily on facts …

Louder Than A Bomb: Poetry Slams And Community Activism Create A Powerful Brew, Kristin Lems

Faculty Publications

Louder than a Bomb is the oldest youth poetry slam in the country, born out of Chicago's oral performance resources, including Second City. The article shares LTAB's beginnings, evolution, growth, and influence, and the author describes the experience of being a judge at the annual poetry slam.

Creating Life-Long Relationships With The Arts: A Caring Philosophical Approach, Jennifer Sparkman Bartee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is important to understand how performing and visual arts teachers make their classes personally relevant for students. This study examines what the intentions of elementary performing and visual arts teachers who chose to teach with additional affective content. Four research questions were addressed in this study: 1) What are the instructional intentions of care-oriented elementary arts teachers? 2) What are the affective intentions of care-oriented elementary arts teachers? 3) How are these intentions actualized (or not actualized) within elementary arts classrooms? 4) What is the significance of these findings for elementary schools throughout the country?

To respond to these …

A Deep-Er Practice For Educators: Reflecting, Unpacking And Confronting Racism Through Critical Performative Pedagogy, Natalia Ortiz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the current political climate, we have seen time and time again the killings of black and brown youth, witnessed the separation of immigrant families, and the mass murders caused by nativist xenophobic white rage. Teachers in schools across our country need to be better prepared to engage in critical race dialogues and need to understand their location in the larger educational system so to contest, rather than reproduce, racism. This study is based on the premise that teachers are not adequately learning about structural oppression that impact the experience of school children and are not trained in the art …

Mimicry: A Short Play, Diana M. Pho

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

This short play is inspired by the author’s lived experience as a queer Vietnamese-American woman in academia and in US society. This theatrical piece, centered around two young women meeting for the first time after several years, reflects upon the mutable divergence of shared memory, while also exploring intersectional feminist theory and the Vietnamese-American community. This is also a critique of US-based stereotypes about young Asian-American women, and how social prejudices and microaggressions can result in internalized anti-Asian misogyny. Like the range of identities and life experiences that characters Laurel and Mattie have, the Asian diasporic experience in the United …

Pantomime: The History And Metamorphosis Of A Theatrical Ideology, Karl E. Toepfer

Open Educational Resources

This book offers perhaps the most comprehensive history of pantomime ever written. No other book so thoroughly examines the varieties of pantomimic performance from the early Roman Empire, when the term “pantomime” came into use, until the present. After thoroughly examining the complexities and startlingly imaginative performance strategies of Roman pantomime, the author identifies the peculiar political circumstances that revived and shaped pantomime in France and Austria in the eighteenth century, leading to the Pierrot obsession in the nineteenth century. Modernist aesthetics awakened a huge, highly diverse fascination with pantomime. The book explores an extraordinary variety of modernist and postmodern …

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 …

Dance Of Exile: The Sakharoffs’ Visual Performances In Montevideo (1935–1948), Pablo Munoz Ponzo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the life-work chronology of the dancers and choreographers Clotilde von Derp (whose surname then was Sakharoff) and Alexander Sakharoff, who were exiled in Montevideo, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, between 1941 and 1948. During their stay in the Rio de la Plata region, the Sakharoffs stirred up the art scene by performing extremely detailed dances with great attention to costume design. This thesis begins with a review of the reception of the dancers’ performances by the artistic and cultural circles in Montevideo, arguing that the Sakharoffs’ “queer” trajectory resonated with the Uruguayan artistic community, influencing the creation …

Auditioning At The Southeastern Theatre Conference As An Undergraduate Student, Aubrey Moore

Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Critical Embodied Praxis For Social Justice And Peace Educators: A Story Of Personal Transformation Through Analysis Of My Jewish And Settler Identities, Cara Michelle Silverberg

Capstone Collection

In this paper, I examine definitions of and relationships between violence, oppression, peace, liberation, and embodiment in the context of critical pedagogy in order to construct a theory of critical embodied praxis for social justice and peace educators. Considering the body to be a tangible vessel through which narratives and mechanisms of violence are expressed and maintained, I explore the potential of the body to be a vessel through which liberatory narratives may be generated and shared. After constructing a theory of critical embodied praxis, I illustrate this framework in action through a personal narrative that explores the intersections …