Performance Studies Commons^™

The Laramie Project, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024-2025 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

In Between The House Light And The Sun Rise, Xinyi Zhang

Honors Theses

In Between the House Light and the Sun Rise is a research project that includes a 20-minute performance and a written thesis. The research uses the framework of relationality to explore the relationship between humans and houseplants. Although houseplants live in a human-constructed environment, they have their own influences on people and the space around them. Learning from the ways plants move through time and space and the connections plants make with each other and with other living and non-living things, this project aims to use movement to reimagine the way we think about time, space, and community. This project …

Post Opera, Suzy Lykins

Theses and Dissertations

Post Opera is a spell and work of embodied research which explores medicalization, desire, labor, and belief. Through methods of performance, sound, text and installation, I facilitate encounters of trans-femininity, spiritual power and connectivity. An opening wound, a set of psychic scalpels, sutures and bandages prepare this text for your consumption, take care to digest her well.

Exploring The Shadows: How Taylor Swift's Music Embodies Dark Sound As A Popular Music Artist, Kristyn E. Cole

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

To challenge the conceptual matter of “dark sound”, this major research paper centers around the popular music artist, Taylor Swift to demonstrate an overarching feminist wisdom in an alternative style of music to identify how Taylor Swift presents and embodies qualities of “dark sound”. Research done by D. Ferrett, Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes and Paul C. Jasen are used to examine her popular music, and its intersections and influence on our culture and society. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis, this research paper discusses three of Swift’s songs; “willow” (evermore, 2020) for her sound, All Too Well: The Short …

“Windows For Witness: Dan Fishback’S Radical Access”, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

Dan Fishback’s Jewish crip aesthetic – art made within a framework of integrated access – is rooted in the human (or Jewish!) capacity to be generous and so much more. He expands our understandings of who is in the room, who is in the world, who is in our community, who lives at the same time as us but in a different way. This connection in his show between chronic illness and Palestine is not only about alienation it is about identification and solidarity.

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 …

Public Projection | What Is Public?, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

Public Projection | Intervention, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

Performance Assemblages | Wintersession 2025 Syllabus, La Samuelson, Movement Lab

Course Materials & Research

In this course, we will make solo and collaborative performance works. We will approach performance as the project of creating new contexts for interrelation–between beings, material, matter, the known, and the unknown–that allow both the performer and the viewer to learn and/or experience something we otherwise would not have access to. In other words, the work of this class is the work of listening in the direction of something you can’t quite yet hear, and taking the time to figure out: where you might stand, what device you might invent, what you might wear, and how you might work with …

Performance Assemblages | Research, La Samuelson, Movement Lab

Course Materials & Research

No abstract provided.

Public Projection | What Is Projection?, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

Public Projection | Wintersession 2025 Syllabus, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Course Materials

In this course, we will create site-specific projections that breathe new life onto the built environment. Working in the lineage of street art and guerrilla performance, we will explore the relationship between art, public space and the communities we inhabit. How is projection a tool of public communication? How can light and movement reshape architecture and human behavior? We will research sites, understand their stories, develop creative interventions, build prototypes and work collaboratively to design ephemeral public installations.

Telegraph Valley Performance, Installation, And Animation, La Samuelson, Movement Lab

Personal Work

"My fellowship project culminated in a 10 month exhibition and a series of 5 performances in Miami, presented by Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, the National Performance Network, with support from the RISD Movement Lab and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. The work was also included in Miami Art Week - 2025." – LA Samuelson

What Year Is It?, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Surveillance Studies, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Stereoscope Studies, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Public Projection | Found Footage, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

Public Projection | Typography, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

Rheology, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Stop Suffering For Your Art, Amanda Bryers

Theses and Dissertations

What does the process look like for an actor to disconnect from a circumstance that they take on during the course of a rehearsal or performance? And how does this disconnection process affect the actor’s mental, physical, and emotional health? This project consists of interviews of CSU student actors about their personal experiences in letting go of imaginary circumstances immediately following a performance, rehearsal, or actor’s exercise. The purpose of this project is to determine whether or not actor’s training provides sufficient tools for an actor to disconnect. Interviewees detailed their own personal methods, as well as whether or not …

Spatial Audio Studies, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

Listen to Hi Song audio recording.

Public Projection | Window, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

Theatre As Sanctuary: Queer Identity, Religious Trauma, And The Path To Healing, Casey Worley

Theses and Dissertations

Growing up as a queer individual in a deeply religious Southern Baptist community, I learned early that faith and identity could feel like irreconcilable forces. I sat in the pews, surrounded by voices that preached love but often excluded people like me. For years, I struggled with the question: Can I be both queer and faithful? This tension—between belief and belonging, between the church I was raised in and the identity I could no longer deny—became the foundation of my journey, my artistic practice, and this thesis.

Through this research, I explore the intersections of queer identity, religious trauma, and …

Queer-Keying: Performing Video Processes As [Trans]Gressive Resistance, Wren Tiffany

Theses and Dissertations

As part of the 2025 VCUarts MFA Thesis Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), I transformed the 'Sponge' gallery on the top floor of The Anderson, VCU’s historic thesis exhibition home, into The Green Room, a neon green, immersive video and performance space featuring mirrors, disco lights, a foam tile dance floor, makeup stations, and a functioning green-screen editing suite. This hybrid drag rehearsal and ‘Chroma-key’ green video production room deepened both my understandings of Queer performance art and process-based art making during the Spring of 2025, through two public performance activation …

The Page And The Stage: How Comics Perform, Elizabeth Buccella

Theses and Dissertations

Comics and theatre share several, often overlooked similarities, like their unique concept of the gaze, interpretation and execution of a script, and the curation of a distinct visual language. This makes comics a viable candidate for analysis using the field of performance studies and other theatrical forms of analysis. The process of comics and how they are read is discussed before a brief literature review of performance and comics studies scholarship. Two comics, one nonfiction and one fiction, are analyzed using the key concepts from the literature review.

Lend Me Your Hands: Engaging Waldorf Teachers In Pedagogical Puppetry For Student Growth, Corinna Rezzelle-Pennypacker

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Although puppetry has a long history as a holistic teaching tool, it remains an underutilized arts integration technique in elementary and secondary schools. To better understand Waldorf teachers’ perspectives on pedagogical puppetry and the necessary training to effectively implement the work, this explanatory mixed-methods dissertation sought to fill the gap in research on teachers’ views of puppetry and what training they believe is important to feel comfortable doing the work. Committed to using an action research approach, a professional development workshop and lesson plans were created for 1st-8th grade Waldorf teachers based on the feedback from this dissertation’s explanatory interviews …

The Survival Of An American Theater: An Intrinsic And Historical Case Study Of The Success Of Arena Stage, Kay Oliver

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Arena Stage was founded in 1950 in Washington, DC, by Zelda Fichandler, Tom Fichandler, and Edward Mangum. Today, Arena Stage serves a diverse annual audience of more than 300,000 people. It is the largest theater company dedicated to American plays and playwrights in the country. This study presents a single intrinsic historical case study of Arena Stage to examine the internal organizational structure and leadership dynamics that guided the theater through seven decades of turbulent American history. Arena Stage has provided world-class programming while the nation was grappling with the Vietnam War (1950–1975), Brown v. Board of Education (1954), political …

The Sounds Of Madame Geoffrin’S Salon, Melanie Conroy

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

Salons were core institutions of the eighteenth-century European social calendar, especially in Paris. Literary performances and philosophical conversation were the core activities of many of these gatherings. What did conversation and literary readings actually sound like at these events? To what extent were voices audible to everyone in the room, or too muffled or far away to be heard? What was the impact of the ambiance or of ephemeral sound on the reading or reception of the hearing? Using textual descriptions, paintings, and architectural information, I reconstruct two legendary readings of eighteenth-century texts, Voltaire’s L’Orphélin de la Chine and Marmontel's …

Teaching Ettingerian Matrixial Theory, R. Michael Fisher

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Utilizing an adapted scoping review of the literature on Bracha L. Ettinger and Education (2008-2024), the author reveals the specific ways that Ettingerian Matrixial Theory (EMT) and its pedagogies are taught and can be taught in the future. EMT is argued to be a new branch of Critical Theory. The current literature shows there is mostly engagement with EMT in academic settings. As well, the literature reviewed shows EMT is used readily in arts and with artists as teachers and teachings for adults. However, the author unveils diverse other possibilities of teaching EMT. A few major themes from the literature …

Gestating And Co-Becoming With Ettingerian Maxtrixial Pedagogy, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article seeks to infuse and enrich the spheres of Arts and Education through a nascent introduction of Ettingerian Matrixial Pedagogy. To articulate this, I weave together the practices of Gestare Art Collective, which we describe as “matrixial infused education,” the “placental thinking” of Nané Jordan with my own thinking, art making and teaching. This article unfolds through interlacing theory and reflections on teachings found within art practices of Ma Poses, Womb Walking, Nap-Ins, and Spontaneous Creation-Making, along with examples of pedagogical artworkings: Metramorphosis and Muted Colours of Grief. The article closes with a poetic métissage inquiry that became—a Matrixial …