Performance Studies Commons^™

Make Love, Not War?: The Role Of The Chorus In Kokoschka’S “Murderer Hope Of Women”, Susan F. Russell

Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

In the summer of 1909, two one-acts by the twenty-three-year-old painter Oskar Kokoschka premiered in Vienna in an outdoor theatre built in the garden adjacent to the art museum as part of the second Kunstschau exhibit. The two Kunstschauen (of 1908 and 1909) were organized by Gustav Klimt and his friends in order “to expose the Viennese public to the most shocking and revolutionary forces in contemporary art,” and Kokoschka exhibited in both. The showing of Oskar Kokoschka’s art and his plays cemented his reputation as the most prominent enfant terrible of his day. These exhibitions helped ensure that, by …

The Fight Master, Fall 2015, Vol. 37 Issue 2, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Fight Master, Spring 2015, Vol. 37 Issue 1, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

Ua68/17/4 Potter College Of Arts & Letters Theatre & Dance Administration, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and for the administration of Theatre & Dance.

A 'Paradox Of Expression': Bertolt Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt In Performance, Cohen L. Ambrose Mr.

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Rediscovering Vaudeville: Influences On Film And Theatre, Audra Leigh Edwards

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The greatest thing that vaudeville contributed to the legitimate theatre and to films was talented artists. Many performers who became well known on the stage and screen began in vaudeville. It even occurred that performers with hardly any training at all had an opportunity to perform on vaudeville, and after some time became some of the best performers America has seen. Vaudeville is significant not only because it was an important part of American history in general, but also because it created and trained many artists for successful careers, particularly in film and radio. Without it, many famous and influential …

Ua1c11/66 Western Players / Summer Players Photo Collection, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Photographs of Western Players and Summer Players productions, participants, and other activities.

Ua68/17/2 Potter College Of Arts & Letters Theatre & Dance Western Players / Summer Players, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about the Western Players theater group including the Summer Players.

Cries From Within: The Struggles And Triumphs Of Creating A Singaporean Voice In Musical Theatre, Caleb Goh

Theses

This research explores the plausibility of replicating a Broadway-type musical theatre industry in Asia. What would it take to establish a similar standard of musical theatre in an Asian country? With the problem being a lack of Asian representation in the genre, my aim has unashamedly been to see whether it was possible to increase the visibility of Asian musical theatre in form and content, with greater representation for makers and audience. By exploring the viability of creating a strong musical theatre platform in Asia, this research aimed to empower student/emerging Asian performers in believing that the dominant paradigm of …

Robot Saints, Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

In the Middle Ages, articulating religious figures like wooden Deposition crucifixes and ambulatory saints were tools for devotion, techno-mythological objects that distilled the wonders of engineering and holiness. Robots are gestures toward immortality, created in the face of the undeniable fact and experience of the ongoing decay of our fleshy bodies. Both like and unlike human beings, robots and androids occupy a nebulous perceptual realm between life and death, animation and inanimation. Masahiro Mori called this in-between space the “uncanny valley.” In this essay I argue that unlike a modern person apprehending an android (the uncanny human-like object that resides …

The Fight Master, Fall 2014, Vol. 36 Issue 2, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

How To Tame A Shrew (11 Things I Hate About Her) An Actor's Method To Characterizing Petruchio In The Taming Of The Shrew, Robert J. Facio

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The Taming of the Shrew is an early comedy that exposes the oddities we take for granted: curious conventions, wild assumptions, gender roles, relationships, social status, fashion, and everything else we know so defectively. The given circumstances of the script and Petruchio are specific in choice, yet broad in interpretation. Petruchio, the catalyst behind Katherine’s character arc, needed to not only be believable in his ways, but likeable by the audience.

This thesis examines the process required to successfully develop and bring to life the character of Petruchio to our modern audience. It includes historical background information on William Shakespeare …

The Fight Master, Spring 2014, Vol. 36 Issue 1, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

Technology And Wonder In Thirteenth-Century Iberia And Beyond, Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

As the desire for affective experiences of the sacred increased in communities across Europe in the late Middle Ages, the Christian faithful crafted lifelike, mechanized figures of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and saints for use in religious festivals. Although each devotional culture evidences unique body/object relationships and meanings, in general animated ritual objects encouraged lay participation in the celebration of saints and the Passion by engaging the senses, and, consequently, an emotional sense of God. In this essay I investigate the ritual alliances between moveable, prop-like saints and their Iberian devotees, in particular the performative meanings that arose from encounters …

The Fight Master, Fall 2013, Vol. 35 Issue 2, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Fight Master, Spring 2013, Vol. 35 Issue 1, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Art Of Adaptation, Katharine E. Jordan

Honors Theses and Capstones

My honors thesis The Art of Adaptation discusses the process of adapting old stories and theatrical pieces for modern audiences through the exploration of various adaptations (theatrical, operatic, dance and film) of Euripides' Medea. It also touches on my own short, modern, adaptation; FURY: A Rock Musical Inspired by Medea. All of this research was important in making the performance aspect of my capstone the best it could be.

Contemporary Theatre In Catalonia: A Story Of Creative Struggles, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

The term “normalization” is typically employed within Catalan political and linguistic circles to refer to the process of recuperation, revival, and relegitimization of Catalan cultural and intellectual life that ensued following the period of the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975). Here, to be “normal” is to move from the periphery to the centre, to be regarded as valid rather than illicit, and to be visible and vociferous—even obvious and everyday—instead of obstructed, silenced, or relegated to the margins of exile, the recesses of memory, or the darkness of invisibility. The path along which the contemporary Catalan theatre scene has struggled to recover …

The Fight Master, Fall 2012, Vol. 34 Issue 2, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

Three Musketeers And A Rock Band, Brandi K. Kawamoto

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

This thesis is the culmination of my scenic design work for Ken Ludwig’s The Three Musketeers in the Howell Theater at the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the spring semester of 2012. Within this paper I will look at the conceptualization process, historical research, execution of the set design, the realized final product, and the critique process. The rough sketches, research images, computer draftings, finalized renderings, and production photos are featured within the thesis.

Advisor: Sandy Veneziano

Power And Relationships In The Plays Of Neil Labute: Directing And Performing In Some Girl(S), Mary Peyton Griffith

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the major works of Neil LaBute's career as a playwright and screenwriter, including the criticism he has received on theatrical and literary levels. The themes most prevalent in the thesis are the use of power and manipulation in the relationships between LaBute's characters and the ongoing maturation of his characters that coincides with the maturation of his work. The second section of the thesis follows the production, directing, and acting in LaBute's play Some Girl(s).

King's Theatre Queens: Three Successful Women In The Early Classical Era, Ashley Mchugh

2012 Awards for Excellence in Student Research & Creative Activity - Documents

In the early Classical era, three particular women are accredited with encompassing the vocal style and techniques of the timeframe: Madame Gertrud Mara, Brigida Giorgi Banti, and Mrs. Elizabeth Billington. They were of different nationalities, statuses, educational backgrounds, vocal qualities, and performance strengths. However, they were all frequently associated with similar repertoire, critics and audiences, and companies- especially the King's Theatre in London.

The Fight Master, Spring 2012, Vol. 34 Issue 1, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

"Spectacular Opacities": The Hyers Sisters' Performances Of Respectability And Resistance, Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

This essay analyzes the Hyers Sisters, a Reconstruction-era African American sister act, and their radical efforts to transcend social limits of gender, class, and race in their early concert careers and three major productions, Out of Bondage and Peculiar Sam, or The Underground Railroad, two slavery-to-freedom epics, and Urlina, the African Princess, the first known African American play set in Africa. At a time when serious, realistic roles and romantic plotlines featuring black actors were nearly nonexistent due to the country’s appetite for stereotypical caricatures, the Hyers Sisters used gender passing to perform opposite one another as heterosexual lovers in …

American Art Theatre In The Digital Archive, Patrick Michael Finelli

Theatre and Dance Faculty Publications

Based on a critical examination, evaluation, and selection of primary and secondary sources related to American art theater that have moved from the private into the public digital realm, Finelli reflects and comments on key issues related to the digital archive and theater historiography. His objective was to analyze the notion of digital archives and consider how accessing materials in electronic form affects the practice of writing history. He hypothesizes that the process of digitizing library and archival materials has a significant affect upon archival elements through their transformation into the digital realm, bringing about change in both an ontological …

The Masks Of Commedia Del’Arte, Noh Theater And Classical Greece: The Cultural Meanings, Influences And Similarities, Makena Bennett

A with Honors Projects

This essay examines the use and meanings of masks in Noh, commedia dell'art, and classical Greek theatre.

The Fight Master, Fall 2011, Vol. 33 Issue 2, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

Los Exilios De Els Joglars, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Quizàs no hay ninguna otra compañía teatral en el Estado español que se haya inspirado tanto en las encrucijadas ambivalentes del mundo del espectáculo con la vida real -especialmente, la vida política catalana- como Els Joglars. A lo largo de SU trayectoria de más de cincuenta años, Albert Boadella y su compañía no han dado nunca la espalda a la política; al contrario, han ido modificando sus valores estéticos de manera gradual, ajustando su punto de ataque según las cuestiones políticas mas apasionantes y ardientes de cualquier momento dado. Els Joglars siempre han dejado que lo político despierte e invada …

The Fight Master, Spring 2011, Vol. 33 Issue 1, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Angel And The Imp: The Duncan Sisters’ Performances Of Race And Gender, Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

From 1923 to 1959 Vivian and Rosetta Duncan performed the show Topsy and Eva in front of thousands of audiences in the United States and abroad. This essay examines how the Duncan Sisters’ appropriation of blackness through a yin and yang performance of black and white womanhood, their sexualized but ultimately infantilizing routine as young girls, and their take on anarchistic comedy resulted in a particular spin on age, gender, race, and sexuality that reinforced their privilege as white women even while it pushed the boundaries of acceptable femininity in the swiftly shifting American culture of the first half of …