Playwriting Commons^™

Encanto The Musical: An Exploration Of Translating Media From Film To Stage, Isabel Perez-Flores

Whittier Scholars Program

I’m going to be honest: I did not go into this project with the intent of radically changing Encanto. I had some points I wanted to expand upon, some improvements and edits that I felt the film could have utilized, but overall, I was satisfied with the way the story was told. The real change, I’ve come to realize, lies not in the story and the script itself, but in the way the story is told. The obvious change is that this version of Encanto, in an ideal world, would be performed in front of a live audience, in a …

A Very Important Nato Meeting, Elizabeth Johnson

LMU Theatre Arts Annual New Works Festival

A Very Important NATO Meeting is a slapstick farce about the futility of war. Fed up with the United States’ insatiable addiction to proxy conflicts, the rest of NATO calls an intervention to (hopefully) bring about world peace. Spoiler alert: it doesn't work.

Film Study, Zachary T. Scrima

LMU Theatre Arts Annual New Works Festival

What appears to be a normal film study class is a deep delve into the 2000's song Stacy's Mom. From there, things appear less and less like what they seem. A play that observes the cyclical nature of social politics within a classroom structure.

A Loon On Highland Lake, An Eco-Fantasy, Erin E. Bennett

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

A Loon on Highland Lake is a fantasy play, adapted from Tchaikovsky’s ballet, Swan Lake, itself an adaption of a Russian “swan maiden” folktale. In this retelling, the spirit of an invasive tree species, Alder Buckthorn, endangers the inhabitants of the small lake town of East Andover, New Hampshire. On the night of the 4^th of July, Buckthorn places a curse on an unfortunate news reporter, transforming him into a loon, the solitary black bird known in the northeast for its distinct, haunting call. Figgy, a shy ecologist living in East Andover, stumbles upon the knowledge that her …

The Theatre Of Math: The Stage As A Tool For Abstract Math Education, Blaine Hudak

Honors Projects

So often in the education of Mathematics does instruction solely consist of the lecture. While this can be an effective method of communicating the ideas of math, it leaves much to be desired in gathering the interest and intrigue of those who have not dedicated their lives to the study of the subject. Theatre, by contrast, is a tool that has been used in the past as means of teaching complicated and difficult to understand moral and emotional subjects. While Theatre and Mathematics have been used in combination many times in the past, it is most often done in the …

Beneath The Surface: A Memory Play On Asperger's Syndrome, Conner Case

Senior Honors Theses

While academic, formal research proves to give readers an intellectual understanding of Asperger’s syndrome, this thesis serves as an approach to understanding the psychology of an Aspie on an emotional level. Through both research from peer-reviewed studies and the personal perception of an Aspie writer, a playwright develops a script inspired by the psychological aspects of Tennessee Williams’ memory play, The Glass Menagerie, to create an informative, yet engaging story about an Aspie protagonist. The playwright seeks to express that Aspies, despite their stereotypically cold exteriors, are emotionally complex individuals beneath the surface.

Selections From & The Process Of Creating "My Blue Scarf: The Story Of Ruth, A New Play", Abigail Jane Ayulo

Honors Projects

My Blue Scarf: The Story of Ruth, A New Play, provides an adaptation of the Hebrew Book of Ruth that is focused on minority and female voices and experiences. It employs Hebrew poetic verse forms to pay homage to the story’s origins. This style contributes to diversity of voices in English-speaking theatre outside of Western poetics. My Blue Scarf shares a well- known and multicultural story to contribute to the diversity of contemporary American theatre and promote conversation about cross-cultural relationships in a time of division and prejudice. This project consists of eight selected scenes from the larger play and …

Limboland: A One-Act Play About Death, For Kids, Megan Huggins

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

LimboLand: A One-Act Play about Death, for kids

Megan Huggins

Thesis Director: James Al-Shamma, Ph.D

Thesis Committee: Shawn Knight, Jessica Mueller

A loose adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s epic poem Inferno, LimboLand uses Alighieri’s model of the nine circles of Hell to illustrate the five stages of grief. In a script designed for theatre for young audiences, Dante, a young child, travels through different rooms as he attempts to cope with and understand his sister’s death. Dante follows Virgil, an older child, who knows a lot about the afterlife system without understanding any of it. The play includes an appendix …

Rained In: An Original Musical, Naomi Krizner

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

This musical confronts the perception of mental illness in an allegorical story that recounts an encounter between Tate, an estranged man inhabiting a cave who is taunted by two demons, and Emsley, a young girl brimming with innocence and curiosity.

#Parlezvousfemme - A One-Woman Show, Victoria G. Lindbergh

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

#parlezvousfemme is a one-woman show set in 2018 that reimagines the lives of several infamous French women. Each character approaches modern life differently based on her given circumstances and reveals several universal truths about being a woman in today’s society. The famous military leader Joan of Arc is a 19-year-old youtuber criticizing the far-right for using her as their symbol, while revolutionary Olympe de Gouges is a modern-day women’s rights activist. Marie Antoinette is a housewife being interviewed by Vogue and scientist Marie Curie hosts a PBS telethon and addresses the lack of women in science. Designer Coco Chanel is …

Creating A Happy Ending For Socially Relevant Television, John Thomas Cunha

Senior Honors Projects

Television is accessible to millions from the comfort of their own homes and shapes the way we view the world. It has the power to bring people together, but often presents diversity with a strong emphasis on labels. Characters are defined by the one trait that, to the majority of viewers, is unrelatable. This maintains the separation of “us” and “them,” isolating those in the minority. Representation is essential for progress, but it’s more than just including diversity. Instead of dwelling on differences and indulging in stereotypes, characters should all treat each other equally.

The focal TV show of this …

Digging Into Playwriting, Gleason Holt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this thesis was to write an original play and detail the writing process. Themes dealt with in Jane (or, Dug In) are family, coping with grief, survivor’s guilt, and exploration (both literal and personal). In addition to the full script, this thesis explores the inspirations for the play and its title. The play’s genre is analyzed, and reasoning is given for this selection. Included are omitted scenes from the latest draft to offer additional insight into the playwright’s previous versions. A reading of the third draft was presented and detailed in this thesis. A section about future …

Three Damn Letters, Katherine Ammon

Honors Program Theses

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a terminal disease that destroys a patient's motor neurons. In the play Three Damn Letters, a sarcastic woman must accept her own ALS diagnosis while also balancing her relationships with her father, husband, and son. This seriocomedic play explores themes of family roles, disability, love, and death.

My Mind Made No Sound: The Downward Spiral Of Scholars In One Act, Jacob Lorrin Buechler

Student Theses and Dissertations

This is a one-act play on the world of academia. Set in a city during an academic conference, inside a bar, the characters are representations of my real life involvement in higher education. Told in a creative nonfiction style, using characters and stories that I have personally faced, this play brings to life the conflicts and tragedies inherent in our higher education process. Through the seven different characters, each with their own arrogance and prejudices, the play reaches into the ethos of what it means to be a scholar, what events lead to our toleration of what education means, and …

"V Is For Violin" - An Original Playscript, Brittany Taylor

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As and MFA playwrighting candidate, I was given the opportunity to witness a fully realized production of my work. For this academic opportunity I chose the "V is for Violin." I will discuss the genesis of the idea, the evolution of the play, research conducted, and what I learned in the production process of the show.