Performance Studies Commons^™

Wait, She's Alive?! Playing Characters Based On Real, Living People, Courtney Jensen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is for the performance of Sara Jane Moore in Assassins and for development, contributions, and performance of a new play written for our graduating class, A Hamlet: West of Why. This thesis also consists of my statement of artistry, documentation of artistic materials, and thesis related performance materials.

St. Louis To Arizona: What Tom Wingfield Taught Me About Playing Myself, Christopher Scott Tennison

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of my statement of artistry/teaching philosophy, and documentation of artistic materials and thesis related performances.

Being In Performance: A Philosophical Account Of The Embodied Actor, Brad M. Krumholz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I present and analyze three distinct actor-training exercises primarily through the lens of the Embodied Cognition (EC) branch of contemporary philosophy, which attempts to frame human understanding as a fully embodied interaction with the environment. Drawing from neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, and other branches of philosophy, EC provides both an excellent set of tools and a strong theoretical framework to help explain how people encounter meaning in life. I apply its unique perspectives to this philosophical account of the embodied actor as I analyze the various elements at play in actor training praxis, which allows me to shed …

Party On, Derrida!: A Queer, Deconstructionist Look At Wayne's World, Glam, And The Losers Of Rock And Roll, Michelle A. Arp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What do you get when you mix a girl from Long Island, critical theory, a movie based on a Saturday Night Live sketch, David Bowie, and alternative rock of the early 2000s? A lot of losers, a lot of queerness, and plenty of room for deconstruction.

Part performance studies, part queer studies, and part memoir, this study is a cross-genre and experimental analysis of postmodern ideologies, rock and roll, and comedy. More specifically, I use Jacques Derrida’s notion of “the slash” (Of Grammatology, 1967) in relation to high and low culture via comedies, such that of Wayne’s World …

Takin' Care Of Business, Cody Levi Shelton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of my statement of artistry, and documentation of artistic materials and thesis related performances.

Beside Myself, Grant Hockenbrough

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of my statement of artistry, and documentation of artistic materials and thesis related performances.

Episode 12: All Things In Murderation, Tanner Elrod

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Episode 11: Blunt Force Drama, Michael Painter

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Shake My Hand, Karenna R. Versalovic, Whitney Bagley, Linwan Lewis, Sarah Hoffman, Vernae Gallaread, John Hammond, William Bernick, Clifford Phillips

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

The purpose of this project is to explore the inevitable intertwining of the worlds of dance and disability. It investigates what can happen when a group of people of all abilities use movement as a source of connection. This project was based on a nine minute dance piece created over a seven month period with rehearsals once a week for three hours sessions. The final piece consisted of seven dancers, five of whom had intellectual and developmental disabilities. The performance utilized improvisation, discussions, choreography, and contact work as tools for the creative process. The intent of the piece was to …

The Resistable Rise Of Arturo Ui

Theatre Programs

No abstract provided.

Episode 10: He's Come Undone, Kristen Daly

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Episode 09: Killer Heels, Rachel Collinsworth

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.

Episode 08: Ghost In The Rearview Mirror, Kate Devantier

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Episode 07: Flirting Under The Influence, Binglin Wu

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Episode 06: Forgive Me, Father, For I Have Ginned, Austin Williamson

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Episode 05: Who's To Blame, Laylah Funk

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Episode 04: Fresh Blood, Elizabeth Kyle

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Episode 03: Livin' La Vida Loko, Nancy Pertierra

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Planning A Year End Formal, Anna Volkman

Honors Theses

The intended outcome of this project was to create an event not only to celebrate the successes of the Department of Dance at Western Michigan University, but also to gain visibility for the student-ran organization, Orchesis Dance Society while emphasizing the power art has to unify communities. This project is an example for the organization and the Department of Dance as to how events like this are important for visibility, community involvement, and the celebration of art’s power. I created a year-end formal as an example of how art brings communities of people together and should be celebrated in order …

Episode 02: Fragmented Reality, Colleen Hehir

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Dramaturgical Research For The 2017 Production Of Tartuffe, Marie Phillips

Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Episode 01: Jack In The Box, Rachel Zinck

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Borderlands After Anzaldúa: Queer/Latinx Identity In Theory And Practice, Joshua Truett

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies (2015-2021)

The Latinx queer subjectivity complicates the racial and social discourses of the United States and Latin America, in both the academy and popular culture. The complex intersections of identity that marks the queer Latinx subject disrupts conventional narratives of race, ethnicity and culture, as well as gender and sexuality.

The Latinx identity breaks down the rigid construction of race as a biological “truth,” challenging the Black versus White racial binary that is the foundation of the United States racial mythology; the Latinx subject is constructed in the American racial imaginary as neither black nor white, but ¨brown.” This construction of …

Direction Of The Musical: Carrie The Musical, Scott Sumerak

Master of Theater Studies Theses

No abstract provided.

Re-Imagining The Theatre: Existence And Change, Andres Aguilar

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

With acknowledgement of Nicaraguan Theatre and its different dynamics, this research works to expose and create visibility of current Nicaraguan Theatre with relation to social change in Managua, Nicaragua. The microcosm of theatre is revolutionary in creating the necessary change to reach a state of consciousness that allows others to accept and understand society and others for what they are and what they can be. The theater is simply a tool. Intrinsically, all acts are political, therefore the theater is a political declaration. The theater is, and always will be, a political arena, when the aesthetics of the theater are …

The Fight Master, Spring 2018, Vol. 40 Issue 1, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

Theatrical Weddings And Pious Frauds: Performance And Law In Victorian Marriage Plots, Adrianne A. Wojcik

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study investigates how key Victorian novelists, such as Anne and Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy, emphasize performativity in their critiques of marriage. Given the performative nature of wedding ceremonies, this project focuses on wedding descriptions in select novels by the aforementioned authors. Such a focus highlights an interesting dilemma. Although we often think of Victorian novels as overwhelmingly concerned with marriage, the few wedding descriptions found in Victorian fiction are aborted, unusually short or announced after the fact. Those Victorian novelists who do feature weddings often describe them …

Tya Adaptations For The Theatre Educator, Laura Ashley Butler

Theses and Dissertations

Over the last century, adaptations in the field of Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) have been the subject of some debate. While adaptations are currently the most produced type of play by children’s theatre companies and professional theatre organizations, original TYA scripts are the ones that receive the majority of the praise and acclaim, In addition, theatre educators throughout the United States struggle to produce quality plays with the limited funds they have been allotted. This paper serves multiple purposes. It aims to give theatre educators the tools they need to overcome the stigmatized opinions of adapted works. Additionally, it …

How Drag Culture Resolves Tensions In Victorian Shakespearean Cross-Dressing; Or, Slay, Feste, Slay, Isaac Robertson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In 2017, Madame Le Gateau Chocolat, a black drag queen, sashayed onto the stage of the Globe theater to portray Feste in Emma Rice’s production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. This bold move not only gave anxiety to its investors (eventually leading to the stepping down of Emma Rice), but also raised questions about the validity of drag performance within Shakespeare plays. Shakespeare has historically been inseparable with traditional cross-dressing (both in performance and in the narrative itself), although the relationship has not always been cordial. In Victorian England, cross-dressing was often set equal to homosexuality or moral deviance, and …