Performance Studies Commons^™

The Fool’S Errand: Art As Resistance. Art As Hope, Edwin Urbina

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This editorial offers a perspective on the role of laughter and the comedic arts through the trope of the Fool or Jester. Comedic arts not just speak truth to power through the ages; it also offers society hope, resilience, and resistance though counter narratives that make us laugh at "emperors without clothes".

Shaping Shakespeare: How American Shakespeare Festivals Adapt Shakespeare’S Texts In The Twenty-First Century, Paul Jacques

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Shakespeare’s continued importance in American festival settings stems from adaptive and collaborative processes. In this study, adaptation refers to any reinterpretation of Shakespeare's works for contemporary contexts, while collaboration refers to the combined creative efforts among artists and institutions. These processes, including reinterpretation, modernization, and partnership, propel performance and underpin Shakespeare festivals. Such festivals play a central role, balancing cultural prestige with institutional sustainability by prioritizing long-term viability and financial health. At the same time, festivals respond to local audiences' beliefs and interests. Instead of presenting static versions, these institutions continually interpret, revise, and adapt the canon, the authoritative collection …

I Am Hookman: A Reflection, Fiona E. Larsen-Teskey

Scripps Senior Theses

I am Hookman is a reflection paper on my process, experience, and growth performing in the play, Hookman, as my senior thesis.

The Right Way To Go Wrong: A Reflection, Peter A. Graham

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis documents my personal experience acting in Pomona College’s Fall 2024 production of The Play That Goes Wrong. I begin with an artist statement – a poem explaining the reasons why I act. The paper then moves into a general overview of the project, including my past training and future goals. The next section, which is the bulk of the material, contains chronological evidence of the production from start to finish and focuses on my attempt to find precise physicality. I finish with thoughts about the result as well as general reflections on how the process has shaped …

Stage Clutter: An Interactive Journey Following A Theater’S Existential Ponderings, Taylor Tsiamas

Scripps Senior Theses

“Stage Clutter” is a devised, interactive theater piece that focuses on accessibility in theater, as well as questioning what theater is by deconstructing the divide between the “audience” and “performer”. The event consisted of audience participation and exploration, as well as solo performance and puppetry, along with other accessibility features. It aims to center community and joy and subvert Western theatrical “norms” in order to help decolonize theater spaces.

From Franco's Nightmare To A Globalized Spain: A Cinematic Analysis, Claire Maurer

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Spain has had a long history of determining its own identity through successive regime changes, national crises and shifting international alliances. With Las Chicas de la Sexta Planta (Le Guay, 2011), Torremolinos 73 (Berger, 2003), Miente (De Ocampo, 2008) and The Way (Estévez, 2010) as a guide, I examine the distinctive characteristics of Spansh identity across three notable sections of its history: Francoist Spain (1939-1975), “free” Spain (1975-1986), and Spain as a member of the supranational European Union (EU) (1986-), or the European Economic Community (EEC) at that time. These films and time periods help to shed light on important …

Choreographing The Line: Exploring The Art/Obscenity Paradox Of Feminine Sexuality Within The Context Of Recreational Pole Dance, Cameron Boucher-Khan

Scripps Senior Theses

This project seeks to explore the relationships between pole dance and pole fitness, art and obscenity and respectability as it relates to work, class, and social systems. It analyzes the way female sexuality is accepted or rejected within society and explores the boundaries between the two through the staging of pole and contemporary dance. The dichotomy between art and obscenity is explored in the relationship between stripper pole dance, and the fast-growing pole fitness community. Within this relationship, strippers are demonized as obscene, while pole fitness dancers' labor is viewed as artistic, despite the sexuality present in both. The difference …

On Mochizuki: Interview With Mikata Shizuka And Udaka Tatsushige, Diego Pellecchia, Rebecca Teele Ogamo

Mime Journal

No abstract provided.

Guise And Disguise: Nō Costumes In The Context Of Cultural Norms, Monica Bethe

Mime Journal

No abstract provided.

Introducing Genzai Nō: Categorization And Conventions, With A Focus On Ataka And Mochizuki, Diego Pellecchia

Mime Journal

No abstract provided.

Mochizuki: History And Context, Michael Watson

Mime Journal

No abstract provided.

From Ataka To Kanjinchō: Adaptation Of Text And Performance In A Nineteenth-Century Nō-Derived Kabuki Play, Katherine Saltzman-Li

Mime Journal

Nō techniques and play borrowings provided important infusions into kabuki throughout its history, but in the nineteenth century, a genre of kabuki plays in close imitation of nō or kyōgen wasadded to the kabuki repertoire. The genre came to be called matsubamemono, meaning “[nō/kyōgen-derived kabuki] plays [performed] on a stage with a pine painted on the back wall” or “pine-boardplays.”1 These plays are the focus of this article, in which I first introduce the genre and its place in kabuki history, and then discuss its most famous example, the play Kanjinchō (Hattori 17–40; Meisakukabuki zenshū 181–197; Brandon, The Subscription List …

Paragons Of Loyalty On The Japanese Stage, J. Thomas Rimer

Mime Journal

No abstract provided.

On Ataka: Interview With Udaka Michishige And Sugi Ichikazu, Diego Pellecchia, Rebecca Teele Ogamo

Mime Journal

No abstract provided.

Dance – A Healthy Gateway To Steam Practice, Kenneth Walker

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

A rumination on dance and STEAM

Josephine Baker & Me: Black Femme Identity In Performance, Meghan Gwinn

Scripps Senior Theses

The paper explores the complicated intersection between Black womanhood and performance by considering Josephine Baker as a site to engage the concept of “performing identity.” It discuss both the development of burlesque and the history of Josephine Baker to provide a foundation for the investigation of her early-career movement and visual practices. Then, the paper explore these hallmarks through Sherril Dodds’ “critical components of neo-burlesque striptease” writ into her book, Dancing on the Canon: Embodiments of Value in Popular Dance. The second half of this document includes a script of CATHARSIS, a self-devised solo show created to process one’s personal …

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 …

Where Do We Go From Here? A Semi-Autobiographical Performance Exploration Into The Therapeutic Benefits Of Theatre, Emma Elliott

Scripps Senior Theses

My intention in this performance is to create a therapeutic theatrical process for myself and engage the audience with intense emotional vulnerability regarding the combination and validation of the nobody and performative self. I utilized both my vocal and acting training to work through emotional trauma that I have experienced and created a musical performance to demonstrate my journey of therapy and emotional reconciliation within myself and my family. I focused my research on using autobiographical performances to solidify and validate the identity of the performer to an audience. In doing so, this allows the performers to become the …

An American Myth In The (Re)Making: The Timeless Fantasy Appeal Of 'The King And I', Lina Purtscher

Scripps Senior Theses

It is now well-known that The King and I has little claim to truth. Recent research has exposed the inaccuracy of the “biographical” works on which the musical is based: Anna Leonowens invented many things about her personal background and experiences. Much of her life, then, is a contrived fantasy. Yet her life of fantasy has been resurrected in countless adaptations, including the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and its 2015 revival production, that ceaselessly draw audiences. The fascination of American audiences with Anna’s tale lies their belief in the timeless American ideals that her fantasy employs: those of freedom …

The Shadow Puppets Of Elsinore: Edward Gordon Craig And The Cranach Press Hamlet, James P. Taylor

Mime Journal

Taylor considers the role that book arts may play in Craig’s theories of the new theatre, or the Art of the Future. He expands our understanding of Craig’s design work to include print culture, examining his engravings for the monumental editions of Hamlet published by Count Harry Kessler’s Cranach Press in 1929–30. Taylor explores the relationship of Craig’s designs for the 1912 Moscow Art Theatre production of Hamlet to his engravings for the German and English-language Cranach Press editions of the play. He suggests that it was only with this print publication that Craig finally achieved the absolute artistic control …

A Rainbow Of Iranian Masculinities: Raqqas, A Type Of Iranian Male Image, Anthony Shay

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

In this essay, I will explore the male dancer in the Iranian world, and how he came to occupy this abject position (dance, according to Zainab Stellar, being regarded by many conservative elements in Iranian society today as "the worst possible behavior of an undisciplined body in public, and symbol of all vice" (2011, 235)). Lotfollah “Lotfi” Mansouri, the renowned opera director and producer, recounted at a dinner that I attended (January 27, 2002 Peyvand Organization, San Jose), how one day as a student at UCLA, he entered Schonberg Music Hall and heard opera for the first time. He was …

Wrapped In Greek Robes Of Spirituality: The Historic Context For Isadora Duncan's Dance Performances, Anthony Shay

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

In this paper I want to address Craig and Duncan’s shared interest in ancient Greek art, which is the context within which Isadora Duncan developed her art, the various influences that inspired her choreography, and the historical time period that influenced the decisions that she made. I want to make several preliminary comments before proceeding to the main claim that I am making, which is that Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and other “barefoot” dancers were not the mothers or grandmothers or inventors of modern dance, as is repeated as if it were a religious tenet of faith in dance …

Encountering Greek American Soundscapes, Anthony Shay

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

For this chapter I will look at Greek American music making through the eyes of a non-Greek, my younger self, who enjoyed and sought out this musical tradition for over fifty years, primarily as a folk dance enthusiast. For the international recreational dancer of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Greek music has rich melodic lines and many different rhythmic patterns (5/8; 7/8; 9/8, etc.) that attracted many individuals of Anglo American background like me to learn these dances, especially in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s when recreational and performance folk dance constituted a major leisure-time activity for hundreds of thousands …

Walking In The City: Koji Nakano’S Reimagining And Re-Sounding Of The Tale Of Genji, Isabella Ramos

Scripps Senior Theses

Imagined Sceneries is a work written by composer Dr. Koji Nakano of Burapha University, Thailand for two sopranos, koto, light percussion, narrations, soundscapes recorded in Kyoto, Japan in December 2015, and digital projections of Ebina Masao’s 1953 print series Tale of Genji. Imagined Sceneries’ reimagining and “re-sounding” of Heian Kyoto relies on a balance between what is imagined and what is experienced in performance. Its many elements collectively explore multiple layers of Japanese histories, soundscapes, environments, and sensibilities. Using Michel de Certeau’s concepts of the city, this thesis journeys through Nakano’s imagined spaces.

Acting Is Repetition, Job Barnett

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

A short discussion of repetition in acting.

Transforming Body, Angelina Prendergast

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This is a reflection about the use of balls for body therapy.

Lara Salmon, Thesis Statement, Lara Salmon

CGU MFA Theses

My art brings together materials and ideas inspired by personal experience that do not usually exist side by side. My body is the primary mechanism with which I make work, incidentally making me the subject matter of the work. I use my physical self as an instrument to coalesce and transform other materiality. Through live performance and photographic installations I create tension and balance between crude biology and bright, polished formalism. This body of work focuses on Millennial Feminism and the Middle East.

The Naïve Ingénue, The Plucky Everyman's Hero, And The Ingénue Gone Awry: The Satirical Deconstruction Of Theatrical Character Tropes In Urinetown: The Musical, Victoria Montecillo

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis looks to explore Urinetown: The Musical through a critical and theoretical framework, analyzing the show's presentation and deconstruction of theatrical character tropes through musical satire. Using the theories of theatre theorists such as Bertolt Brecht, Peter Brook, and Augusto Boal, this thesis discusses the use of theatre as a device for political and social commentary. Additionally, this thesis focuses more specifically on the show's character of Penelope Pennywise as a new kind of character in the theatre: an "ingénue gone awry," within the context of approaching a performance of the character in a performance of the musical.

Playing The Fool: Feste And Twelfth Night, Brooklyn D. Robinson

Scripps Senior Theses

Twelfth Night does not end with the acceptance and consummation of these “alternative couples.” Instead, the reveal of the twins has a clarifying effect and the characters are returned to the partner who is considered socially acceptable. The final relationships are heterosexual matches that do not stray from class or any other societal confines. Indeed, the story serves to reinforce common standards equating alternative love with madness and proper love with lucidity. Standing outside of the couplings are only bachelor men: Antonio, Sir Andrew, Feste and Orsino’s pages. In effect, these men are desexualized without romantic counterparts. While they are …

"Can We Do A Happy Musical Next Time?": Navigating Brechtian Tradition And Satirical Comedy Through Hope's Eyes In Urinetown: The Musical, Katherine B. Marcus Reker

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis proposes a critical study of the theoretical framework of Urinetown, asking the question of whether or not the show is truly a “Brechtian musical,” utilizing the tenets and beliefs of Bertolt Brecht. Set in a quirky, Gotham-like town where you have “to pay to pee” due to a severe drought, Urinetown follows a cast of absurdist characters as they navigate a society plagued by the perils of big business, ecological devastation, and the inequalities of capitalism. While the show appears to make a relevant social commentary, supporting a righteous rebellion to overthrow the evil Urine Good Company, in …