Theatre History Commons^™

The Mousetrap

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University's performance of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap.

Performed April 26-28 & May 3-5, 2019 at the Mitchell Theatre.

The Mousetrap is a classic murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. Set in the remote Monkswell Manor, the story begins as a group of strangers is stranded by a snowstorm. The guests include a newlywed couple, a retired army major, an architect, a mysterious foreigner, and a stern magistrate. Tensions rise when they learn that a murderer is among them, and a police sergeant arrives to investigate. As secrets are revealed and suspicions grow, the play builds …

The Modern Synthesis Of Josephine Baker And Carmen Amaya, Justice Moriah Miles

Theatre & Dance ETDs

The Modern Synthesis of Josephine Baker and Carmen Amaya explores how flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya and African American performer Josephine Baker utilized modern synthesis in their careers. I define modern synthesis as a synthesis of various ideas and identities that supports a modern fluid identity that points to the idea of an alternative space that is beyond definition and human categorization. Expanding upon the ideas of Brenda Dixon Gottschild and William Washabaugh, I propose that there exists a thread of a tragic/comic dichotomy in African American performance and simultaneous opposition in flamenco and that Baker and Amaya came out of …

Singin' In The Rain, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018-2019 Season

Singin’ in the Rain gives us the heightened reality of an MGM musical to highlight the ways in which we create our own realities. Whatever we believe can become true. If we just close our eyes and imagine, we can make anything happen, even a BROADWAY MELODY production number. The heightened reality of a musical allows us to witness what might be possible.

Metamorphoses

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman.

Performed February 22-24 and March 1-3, 2018 at the Mitchell Theatre.

Called by Time the “theater event of the year,” Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses brings Ovid’s tales to stunning visual life. Set in and around a large pool of water, Metamorphoses juxtaposes the ancient and the contemporary in both language and image to reflect the variety and persistence of narrative in the face of inevitable change. Nominated for three 2002 Tony Awards, including “Best Play,” Metamorphoses earned Zimmerman a Tony for “Best Direction of a Play.”

"Must Be Heavyset": Casting Women, Fat Stigma, And Broadway Bodies, Ryan Donovan

Publications and Research

This article surveys how contemporary Broadway musicals cast fat women and focuses on Hairspray. The use of fat suits and contractual weight clauses figure into the discussion of fat stigma and casting practices. Seemingly body-positive musicals both celebrate and undermine the identities staged in them.

Arts Integration In The Public Elementary School General Education Classroom, Norma Quinones

Theatre & Dance ETDs

ABSTRACT

In 2017, the U.S. Department of Education’s Nations Report Card disclosed performance trends among fourth and eighth grade students in New Mexico. Fourth graders were significantly below the national average in math and reading, while eighth graders were also performing below the national average (U.S. Department of Education). How can New Mexico public elementary school students fulfill their learning potential? Extensive research shows that arts integrated instruction is associated with student achievement. It outlines arts integration as a multidisciplinary form of teaching across the curriculum to transform teaching and learning at the elementary school level to change such statistics. …

The Launch 2018: A Senior Cabaret, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018-2019 Season

The senior Acting and Musical Theatre Majors will take their final bows on the Fritsche Theatre stage in this 90 minute program of songs, dance, scenes, and monologues. See performances from some the students' favorite productions, including Thoroughly Modern Millie, Dreamgirls, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Rumors, My Fair Lady, and Hamilton!

Into The Woods

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University's performance of Into the Woods. Book by James Lapine. Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

Performed November 9-11 & 16-18, 2018 at the Mitchell Theatre.

Into the Woods is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Lapine. It intertwines the plots of several Brothers Grimm fairy tales, exploring the consequences of the characters' wishes and quests. The story follows a Baker and his Wife, who wish to have a child; Cinderella, who wishes to attend the King's festival; and Jack, who wishes his cow would give milk. Their …

Arcadia, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1998-1999 Season

The Underlying theme throughout the show is Classicism vs. Romanticism. The Classic ideals of balance and intellect, seen in Greek Geometry and the ordered universe, become challenged by the emotion and chaos of the Romantic World. The tensions that two completely conflicting philosophies create drive Arcadia forward, making a potentially academic play fun and exciting to watch.

Place Of Joyful Gathering: The Story Of Cleveland's Karamu House, Jacey Kepich

Researchers, Instructors, & Staff Scholarship

Recognized as the oldest active African American theater in the United States, Karamu House is truly a ‘Cleveland collection’. Portions of its history are housed in several institutions: the Cleveland Public Library, Western Reserve Historical Society, and Cleveland State University. In 2021 Karamu donated its administrative and programmatic archives to Case Western Reserve University’s Kelvin Smith Library. CWRU is home to one of the first academic theater programs in the country, and given that the Karamu materials will live alongside KSL’s archives of Playhouse Square – a venerable institution that dominates the cultural spotlight – KSL will help make Karamu’s …

Macbeth...The Tragedy Of, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018-2019 Season

A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth

Big Fish, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018-2019 Season

When Edward Bloom becomes ill, his son, William, travels to be with him. William has a strained relationship with Edward because his father has always told exaggerated stories about his life, and William thinks he's never really told the truth. Even on his deathbed, Edward recounts fantastical anecdotes. When William, who is a journalist, starts to investigate his father's tales, he begins to understand the man and his penchant for storytelling.

The Amish Project

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University's performance of The Amish Project by Jessica Dickey.

Performed September 13-16, 2018 at the Mitchell Theatre. This was the 2018 Jason Francis Memorial Scholarship Show.

The Amish Project is a powerful and thought-provoking play by Jessica Dickey that explores the fictionalized aftermath of the real-life 2006 West Nickel Mines Amish School shooting. The play delves into themes of forgiveness, compassion, and community resilience in the face of tragedy. It portrays the complex emotional journey of the Amish community as they navigate their grief and the necessity of forgiveness to heal and survive.

The Pavilion, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2005 Summer Theatre

Hailed by critics as an "an Our Town for our time," this play is by turns poetic and comic, romantic and philosophical. Peter returns to his twenty-year high-school reunion with dreams of winning back Kari, the girl he left behind after an unexpected pregnancy ended their relationship. Standing in Peter's way is Kari's bitter-as-ever resentment, her husband and the fact that Peter still hasn't grown up. As the night progresses, both Peter and Kari are led, through their interactions with a host of characters all played by a virtuosic Narrator, to face the consequences of choices made long ago and …

Crimes Of The Heart, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2005 Summer Theatre

The three MaGrath sisters are back together in their hometown of Hazelhurst, Mississippi for the first time in a decade. Lenny, the eldest, never left Hazelhurst -- she is the caretaker of the sisters’ cantankerous Old Granddaddy. Meg, the middle sister, left home to pursue stardom as a singer in Los Angeles, but has, so far, only found happiness at the bottom of a bottle. And Babe, the youngest, has just been arrested for the murder of her abusive husband, Zackery Bottrelle. Under the scorching heat of the Mississippi sun, past resentments bubble to the surface and each sister must …

Rounding Third, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2005 Summer Theatre

Don is a coach who believes that winning is what is most important in baseball, and he is all about the game. Michael is his assistant coach, a businessman who believes that kids should have fun when they play baseball. These conflicting personalities instantly clash. Don's kid is the star pitcher of the team, and Michael's kid can barely remember to keep his shoelaces tied. In addition, there are extramarital affairs going on (though the truth of them is well-hidden), and Michael's job is not all that it seems.

https://stageagent.com/shows/play/1899/rounding-third

The Taming Of The Shrew, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1985-1986 Season

A ribald, raucous, rowdy look at the eternal “battle of the sexes.” The beautiful Catherine has acquired a reputation as “Kate the Curst” because she apparently does not like the kind of potential suitors encouraged by her father. Enter the swashbuckling but roguish adventurer, Petruchio, who wants both Catherine and her dowry. The father happily agrees to the match and the resulting “battle” ends up as one of Shakespeare's most famous love matches.

Snoopy!, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018 Summer Theatre

The musical sequel to YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN – deserves each of its three exclamation points. Based on the beloved Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schulz, the show sparkles with wit and warmth as it depicts life as seen through the eyes of Schulz’s unforgettable characters.

Voices Of Notators: Approaches To Writing A Score--Special Issue, Teresa L. Heiland

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

In this special issue of Voices of Notators: Approaches to Writing a Score, eight authors share their unique process of creating and implementing their approach to notating movement, and they describe how that process transforms them as researchers, analysts, dancers, choreographers, communicators, and teachers. These researchers discuss the need to capture, to form, to generate, and to communicate ideas using a written form of dance notation so that some past, present, or future experience can be better understood, directed, informed, and shared. They are organized roughly into themes motivated by relationships between them and their methodological similarities and differences. …

Oklahoma!, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018 Summer Theatre

Rodgers & Hammerstein's first collaboration remains, in many ways, their most innovative, having set the standards and established the rules of musical theatre still being followed today. Set in a Western Indian territory just after the turn of the century, the high-spirited rivalry between the local farmers and cowboys provides the colorful background against which Curly, a handsome cowboy, and Laurey, a winsome farm girl, play out their love story. Although the road to true love never runs smooth, with these two headstrong romantics holding the reins, love's journey is as bumpy as a surrey ride down a country road. …

Storytelling Through Movement: An Analysis Of The Connections Between Dance & Literature, Zoe Hester

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Movement and storytelling are the links between past and present; both dance and literature have the same artistic and primal origins. We began to dance to express and communicate, to worship and feel. We tell stories for the same reasons: to learn from the past and to be able to communicate in the present.

This work explores the many connections between literature and dance through examinations of six dance forms: Native American, Bharatanatyam, West African, Ballet, Modern, and Post-Modern dance.

Disney And Cameron Mackintosh's Mary Poppins: The Broadway Musical

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of Disney and Cameron Mackintosh’s Marry Poppins: The Broadway Musical.

Performed April 27-29 and May 4-6, 2018 at the Mitchell Theatre.

Young Jane and Michael have sent many a nanny packing before Mary Poppins arrives on their doorstep. Using a combination of magic and common sense, she must teach the family members how to value each other again. Mary Poppins takes the children on many magical and memorable adventures, but Jane and Michael aren't the only ones upon whom she has a profound effect. Even grown-ups can learn a lesson or two from the …

Holding On/Letting Go: Situating Trauma And Memory In Theatrical Spaces, Caroline T. Graham

Theatre & Dance ETDs

In this essay, I review my development as a playwright in the MFA Dramatic Writing program and examine the shifting, overlapping goals of playwright-as-educator and playwright-as-entertainer. In Part One, I position my academic exploration of trauma in relation to ethics in journalism, embodied knowledge, and intersectional feminism and outline my creative experiments in staging trauma through the process of witnessing, retelling, and abstraction. In Part Two, I detail the artistic and personal roots of my dissertation play, The Great Maverick Adventure of 2007, and the structural and dramaturgical tools I employed to rebuild a sense of play and theatricality …

Thoroughly Modern Millie, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2017-2018 Season

The year was 1922 and to live in Manhattan meant, for many, an era of wild optimism, carefree abandonment of antiquated social constraints and for women, unprecedented advancement in how they were perceived by those around them. Everything was lovely and in this age of liberated sensibilities, our heroine, Millie Dillmount enters with just such a need to rewrite her personal narrative. Thoroughly Modern Millie is, to me, a valentine to optimism and a love letter to love itself.

Thom C. Warren, Director

Why We Must Die So Young: The Story Of The White Rose Martyrs

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of Why We Must Die So Young: The Story of the White Rose Martyrs by William Gebby.

Performed February 23-25, 2018 at the Mitchell Theatre.

During the darkest days of WWII, a handful of German college students distributed thousands of anti-Nazi leaflets and worked toward unifying resistance across Germany. They called themselves the White Rose, and their faith drew them to engage in a fight that would cost them their lives. William Gebby’s brand new play celebrates the lives of these brave young people who would not and will not be silent. The TU …

Dance Concert: Move Me, Otterbein University Department Of Theatre And Dance

2017-2018 Season

No abstract provided.

Cyrano De Bergerac

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of Cyrano de Bergerac, based on the translation written by Anthony Burgess of the play written by Edmund Rostand.

Performed November 10-12, 17-19, 2017 at the Mitchell Theatre.

Dashing, proud, and romantic, Cyrano is one of the most memorable figures in theatre history. Known throughout Paris for his unmatched bravery and the charm of his verse, poet Cyrano de Bergerac has one problem—his enormous nose. During an age of gallant musketeers and extravagant lifestyles, this beautiful soul is damned by his marred appearance. Not one to give up, Cyrano joins forces with the handsome …

Adding Machine: A Musical, Otterbein University Department Of Theatre And Dance

2017-2018 Season

Mr. Zero is the eternal "little man," shallow yet possessing some dignity, who murders his boss when he learns that, after twenty-five years of being a bookkeeper, he is to be replaced by an adding machine. Condemned to death despite his piteous stream-of-consciousness appeal to the jury, he is executed and appears next in the Elysian Fields, where he meets and enjoys a brief idyll with Daisy, his deceased co-worker, whose love he had secretly desired.

http://www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com/shows_a/addingmachine.html

Moments

Taylor Theatre Playbills

Taylor's first-ever dance production is review of our musical history. It includes numbers from past shows, such as Oklahoma!, current works that have come out of dance classes, and previews of upcoming performances, such as The Pirates of Penzance and Mary Poppins. Don't miss this incredible night of storytelling through dance!

Performed October 6-7, 2017 at the Mitchell Theatre.

Clybourne Park

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s performance of Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris.

Performed September 28-30, October 1, 2017 at the Mitchell Theatre.

Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for Best Play, Clybourne Park is a razor-sharp satire about the politics of race. In 1959, Russ and Bev are moving to the suburbs after the tragic death of their son. Inadvertently, they’ve sold their house to the neighborhood’s first black family. Fifty years later, the roles are reversed when a young white couple buys the lot. In both instances a community showdown takes place, pitting race against …