Performance Studies Commons^™

Directing With A Historical Perspective For The Current World, John Reynolds Jr.

Senior Theses

This paper charts the path of directing This Is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan, which ran from March 24-27. It will explore using the history of the play's setting, New York City in 1982, to keep the production relevant for today's audiences. It also details casting, collaboration with designers, and the rehearsal process. I also give a summary of feedback about keeping the overall environment positive. This experience showed that by leaning into the specific time of the play, the themes resonated strongly with the audiences. A positive environment was also essential to the success of the production.

Program: The Sound Of Music, University Of Dayton, Teejai Dorsey

Dance and Theater Programs

Music by RICHARD RODGERS

Lyrics by OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II

Book by HOWARD LINDSAY and RUSSEL CROUSE

Suggested by "The Trapp Family Singers" by Maria Augusta Trapp

Music and Lyrics for "I Have Confidence" and "Something Good" by Richard Rodgers

April 8-9, 2022

Boll Theatre in Kennedy Union

Co-produced by the Theatre, Dance, and Performance Technology program and the Department of Music

Set in 1938 amidst the rise of nationalism, The Sound of Music is a story of being true to one’s authentic self in the face of social and religious division. Maria is a novitiate who struggles with the constriction …

Let The People Speak: How Verbatim Theater Allows Historically Marginalized Groups Tell Their Stories, Kalala C. Kiwanuka-Woernle

Theatre and Dance Honors Projects

motherhood: the good, bad, and ugly was born out of my research of Verbatim Theater, specifically the practices of Anna Deavere Smith, The Tectonic Theater Project, and Eve Ensler; and the lack of fully fleshed out mother characters represented in theatre. In my research, I focused on how these different playwrights crafted their plays, identified the topic or event they wanted to explore, and the selection of their subjects. During the pandemic, I had the idea to create a theater piece that would tell the good, the bad, and the ugly of motherhood because in the media especially in the …

A Trauma-Informed And Consent-Based Approach To Directing Undergraduate Student Actors: The Development And Execution Of Thea 351: Performance Practicum – The Revolutionists, Amanda Hallman

LMU Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

A Festival Of Form: Score, Anthony Elia

Bridwell Library Research

"A Festival of Form" was both an event at Bridwell and Perkins School of Theology and a conceptual piece of music that lasted several days. In this rendering, the "piece of music" was articulated in a fluid combination of activities that included works by other composers, including John Cage. The activities involved--from lectures, conversations, and meals to actual performances of both short works and especially the world-record breaking rendition of "Organ2/ASLSP" played by Christopher Anderson--comprise the entirety of "A Festival of Form" as performance piece. The challenge of this work is that unlike nearly any other music, it is purposely …

My Favorite Murder As Discursive Performance, Taylor Dawson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My Favorite Murder as Discursive Performance uses performance-centered discourse analysis to explore the major narratives informing the popular true crime comedy podcast, My Favorite Murder (MFM). Hosts, Karen and Georgia draw from podcast, comedy, true crime, feminist, and mental health discourse to create a unique discursive space where “murderinos” (fans of the podcast) express and explore aspects of their own life experiences. I explore the performative strategies MFM uses and the effects of those choices, drawing on some of my own experiences as a murderino. Ultimately I argue that a performance lens reveals some of the imperfect but powerful ways …

The 2022 Classroom Project: Land Of Ours, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2021-2022 Season Production

LAND OF OURS is a brand-new play devised in rehearsal by an ensemble of Otterbein University actors, designers, stage managers, and directors. The play explores the centrality of travel and journeying to human experience. Drawing on the ensemble's personal experiences, stories of mythical travel from legend and folklore, and travel explorations invented in rehearsal, LAND OF OURS is a theatrical journey that will transport you beyond the theater walls to a destination of the imagination.

Diary Of Anne Frank: Analysis And Design, Leeann Carol Wheaton Mueller

Master of Theater Production Graduate Projects

The script "The Diary of Anne Frank," by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, and its historical background were studied and researched. After analyzing the play and its given circumstances, a design concept was developed, goals were set, and then the play was directed and produced in a high school setting. The project notebook contains the documented dramaturgy, a written concept statement, the visual plans and materials, the production notes and journal, and production evaluations. The project goal was to implement the aspects of theatre production learned during the course of study, and to educate high school theatre students. The results …

Gay Boy And Playboy Revues: Constructing U.S. Queer Collectivities In Networks Of Peripatetic Burlesque And Nightclub Drag Performers, 1933–1939, Kalle Westerling

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Across the United States, in the mid-1930s, drag made a transition, along with much other entertainment, from vaudeville into night clubs. There, concomitant with developing notions of gender and sexuality, it became increasingly associated with the contemporary expressions of drag that we see today in popular television shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race and in gay nightclubs across the country. In short, it became the queer form of entertainment. But in the 1930s, with such developing notions of gender and sexuality, it was not as easy as saying that it was a gay art form. Rather, as heterosexuality and heteronormativity took …

Strength And Vulnerability In Maurice Ravel’S Sonata For Violin And Cello And Osvaldo Golijov’S Mariel For Cello And Marimba: An Analysis Through Performance And Composition, Andrea Casarrubios

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In order to “stimulate more ambitious performances,” as David Lewin writes in his Studies in Music with Text, this dissertation is meant to provide new perspectives into two preexisting works, Maurice Ravel’s Sonate pour Violon et Violoncelle, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Mariel for cello and marimba, through the active making of two original compositions written for similar instrumentations, La Libertad se levantó llorando for violin and cello, and Speechless for cello and percussion. Taking Lewin’s proposition into consideration, I share performance insights and discuss how the creation of these new compositions have influenced my interpretations of the two respective …

Queer And Trans Prison Voices: A Podcast Archive On Prison Abolition, Josefine Ziebell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project is located at the intersection of Critical Prison Studies, Gender Studies, Sound Studies, and American Studies. It highlights the importance of sonic modes of anti-carceral resistance by featuring the recorded voices of incarcerated people through the creation of a sonic archive of prison writings. By integrating that sonic archive into the podcast medium, this project functions as a digital archive for incarcerated voices, consisting of two tracks: a collection of short-spoken readings by queer and transgender incarcerated authors, and podcast-style interviews with activist scholars, organizations, and sound artists working towards prison abolition. In this paper, I establish …

A Girl Is A Thing: Dramaturgies Of Objects And Nature In Contemporary Choreography, Fidan Akinci

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the expansion of performative possibilities toward and through nonhumans in contemporary choreography as a feminist inquiry. I research the upsurge of performing objects and natural matter in contemporary choreography by questioning what kind of bodies other than humans can move, and what kind of affects and expressions they offer beyond more familiar and anthropocentric possibilities. I link this challenge to the humanistic limits of performance with the feminist interrogations on agency and objectification to fully explore the political stakes of mobilizing with the nonhuman. To that end, I put the feminist trajectories in posthumanism, new materialism, and …

The Body As A Means Of Cultural Awareness And Social Intervention: The Case Of Raymond Duncan And Penelope Sikelianos, Ekaterini Diakoumopoulou

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

Using the example of the Duncan family this article will explore the human body as an object of self-determination, a means of overcoming social boundaries, a field of racist shooting and phobic enforcement, a reference point of public outrage and the complex between sociality and corporality, but also as a tool of political vigilance and social intervention. Does a body dressed in a tunic resist the western way of life? Or is it a stereotypical outpouring of people unable to modernize? Is the body instrumentalized as a means of narrating exoticism? The bodies of the Duncan family members are an …

Women Of The Dalit Unrest: Rewriting Bodies, Reinforcing Resistance, Suddhadeep Mukherjee

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

The paper aims to take the scholarship on corporeal feminism and Dalit Studies forward by focusing on the Dalit woman’s body. The body is not treated as an inert surface in this paper but is considered as a transformative medium that can alter its embedded codifications and significations through transgressive performances in the face of systemic and systematized caste violence. In doing so the gendered body not only challenges to rewrite the Dalit epistemology from the vantage of resistance but also initiates a rethinking of Indian feminism. The paper begins with a discursive discussion on the importance of the gender …

Bodies And Expressions: Exploring The Aesthetics Of Disability Performance Art, Jaya Sarkar

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

No abstract provided.

Fluchtpunkt Magdeburg: Dokumentation Eines Integrationsorientierten Theaterprojekts Aus Theaterpädagogischer Und Sprachdidaktischer Perspektive, Mona Eikel-Pohen, Sarah Dolbier

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Macht, Prozess und Poetik/Sprache das theaterpädagogische Modellprojekt Fluchtpunkt Magdeburg 2015 bis2019, an dem dort lebende Jugendliche mit und ohne Fluchterfahrungen unter tanz- und theaterpädagogischer Leitung drei Theaterstücke und einen Film entwickelten mit dem prononcierten Ziel, soziale und sprachliche Integration zu fördern. Ziel dieser Dokumentation ist es, das Projekt systematisch zu beschreiben und gelungene Elemente herauszuarbeiten, die zukünftige Projekte nachhaltig und langfristig plan- und durchführbar gestalten

El Laboratorio Cinegráfico De Pedro Pietri, Rojo Robles Mejias

Publications and Research

En su relato “Lost in the Museum of Natural History” Pedro Pietri se inserta en la narración como personaje y como fuente de historias inspiradas en la violencia de los géneros del western, los biker films y los melodramas. Esta aproximación a la experimentación literaria, la alteración sensorial y fílmica escenifica una crisis en la enunciación y la representación que hecha luces sobre las relaciones entre las desigualdades sociales, la violencia y la subjetividad.

Internalized Misogyny As Displayed By Aunt March In Little Women, Sydney Lofton

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

It seems that more women fight against each other than for one another. Women have developed a reputation for gossiping to disparage the reputation of each other, leveraging terms like “floozie,” “bimbo,” and “slut” against one another. While women will rage against men who support the patriarchy, women are often some of the strictest enforcers of its standards. In Kate Hamill’s playscript Little Women, an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel, it is Aunt March, not a man, who places pressure on Jo to assimilate to society’s expectation of women. This push of conformity may reflect Aunt March’s own …

Autobiographical Elements In Elizabeth Robins' Review Of Sarah Bernhardt's Hamlet, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

This paper analyzes the review that the American actress in London, Elizabeth Robins, published in 1900 in response to seeing Bernhardt's Hamlet. I will demonstrate how the essay reveals significant information about Robins' career on the American stage, for she felt compelled to compare Bernhardt's performance with details from Edmund Booth's Hamlet, which Robins so very vividly remembered because she had such direct contact with his performances. Booth's Hamlet, as Robins reveals in an unpublished autobiographical novel, was the inspiration and salvation for the young Robins. When she first earned her way into the "bill-posters' seats," at the top of …

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 …

Something Rotten!, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2021-2022 Season Production

Something Rotten takes place in 1595 London, England. The Bottom brothers, Nick and Nigel are trying to find success by writing plays, but are outshined by the rock-star playwright of the Renaissance, William Shakespeare. Desperate to find success Nick gets help from a soothsayer for the next big hit.

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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Healing Through Mother Earth, Taylor A. Russell

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis deals with mental health, with a focus on Black women. Historically, Black women are often so compromised, being constant caregivers and helping everyone else, that they forget to help themselves, not having the time and financial means to do so. If we go back in the time of slavery, many Black women were taking care of slave owners' children and suckling the white women’s babies instead of their own. By the time they got home and after diligently caring for other people’s children they were focused on their own children, who they had been away from for hours …

¿Dónde Están? Latin American Representation In Theatre For Young Audiences, Ximena Gonzalez Toledo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

¿Dónde están los Latinos? As a Latina theatre practitioner born and raised in Venezuela now studying Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) in the United States, I perceive a generalization and oversimplification of Latin American culture or culturally specific pieces across available TYA dramatic literature and other forms of children's entertainment, with Mexican culture as a monolith for all Hispanics and Latin Americans. My thesis asks: What tropes exist within the representation of Latin American cultures? What might those tropes offer about authentic representation, and opportunities for broadened representation, within the field of TYA? My research pulls from two formative experiences …

Integration Of Video Game Play And Storytelling In Theme Park Environmental Design, Alexandria Marcello

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This thesis presents a visual design exploration of video game storytelling in physical themed environments, specifically, theme parks. The theme park industry has only recently begun to tap into the video game market, with seasonal attractions and events in parks, and the first fully video game dedicated land, Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan. As theme park companies further seek out the most popular and profitable video game Intellectual Properties (IP), it will be imperative to create the most authentic video game experiences possible. The guest experience will hinge upon the successful adaptation of gameplay; creating the story around …

A Virada Performativa Do Grupo Galpão: Presença E Acontecimento No Espetáculo Nós, Fernando Luiz Silva Chagas, Julia Guimarães

Teatro: Revista de Estudios Escénicos / A Journal of Theater Studies

Abstract: This paper analysis the performative extent present in the play Nós (Us), by Grupo Galpão (State of Minas Gerais, Brazil). The approach is through the idea of theater as event and presence, based on concepts of the aesthetics of the performative (Fischer-Lichte), performative theater (Féral), and theater as an ontological event (Dubatti). In this sense, performativity is presented as an instrument of reflection and analysis of the contemporary theater, which has been troubling the traditional paradigms of representation in the performing arts. We depart from practical elements of the theatrical phenomenon to approach the problematization subscribed to …

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 …

So You Think You Know Dance?: Fundamentals Of Dance, Mary Francis “Cissy” Whipp, Roshanda Spears, Susan Perlis, Vanessa Kanamoto, Peter Klubek (Editor)

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Los Fantasmas De La Imaginación En El Deseo Más Canalla De Arístides Vargas, Rojo Robles Mejias

Publications and Research

Como motivo del evento crítico teatral Un espacio seguro producido por Caborca y Teatro Público en el Teatro de la UPR en Octubre 2022, este ensayo revisita la obra de Arístides Vargas, El deseo más canalla (2001). El artículo argumenta que la obra divisa la posibilidad de transformar espacios y proyectar seres creativos por medio de la imaginación. La imaginación en la dramaturgia de Vargas es un mecanismo recurrente para establecer una relación entre la realidad interior y la exterior, entre una posible construcción del yo y la otredad. Esa metamorfosis del yo se alcanza por medio del juego literario …

Breaking The Mold: Haunted Attraction Mazes; A Study In Reducing Predictability & Increasing Intensity, Within Unconventional Halloween Attraction Experiences, Amy Avalos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Every enchanted Fall season, a segment of the public flocks to a multitude of haunted Halloween attractions across the U.S., to experience fear as a form of amusement and entertainment. Psychologists continue to research the physiological and cognitive behaviors that are associated with fear and the "fight or flight" responses that are triggered when individuals are engaged in a heighten sense of danger. However, as guests traverse through these haunted attraction experiences, it's commonplace for guests to enter into these typical modes of "fight or flight" behaviors very quickly. Once this response kicks in, the guests' instinct is to scramble …