Theatre History Commons^™

“Anything Can Have Life”: An Interview With Everett Quinton About Charles Ludlam’S Ridiculous Puppetry, Jungmin Song, John Bell, Everett Quinton

Ballard Institute Publications

This Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry conversation, via Zoom, with

Everett Quinton, Dr. John Bell, and Dr. Jungmin Song was recorded March 21,

2021, and edited by Tom Tuke and John Bell. Everett Quinton (1952-2023) was an

actor, director, and—after the death of his partner Charles Ludlam (1943-1987)—

the leader of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, the landmark ensemble which

helped define queer theater in the late 20th century. While mostly known for his

acting, playwriting, and directing, Charles Ludlam was also an active puppeteer

and ventriloquist. Many of his puppets are now part of the Ballard Institute and

Museum …

Theatre And Dance As Divine Purpose: Liberating The Christian Performer In Pursuit Of Artistic Worship, Abby Owen

Dance (MFA) Theses

This study examines the historical relevance of theatre and dance alongside religious forms of worship, with a particular emphasis on their integration into Christian churches of the Middle Ages, in comparison to the current Western era. Beginning with their origin, this research examines the creation of theatre and dance in Ancient Greece as a means of connecting with spiritual deities, tracing their recorded transition into accepted acts of everyday worship by Christian leadership. At the same time, this research scrutinizes contemporary congregations’ lack of artistic incorporation, denouncing the rise of restricted worship in response to present-day condemnation of the female …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

"You Know The Rules": A Dramatic Experiment In Aromantic Literary Theory, April Chronowski

English

This paper proposes a new literary theory framework based on the zine "an aromantic manifesto" by yingchen and yingtong, as well as the work of Erving Goffman, using theater as a device to examine romantic relationships. Blending English and sociology, I focus each chapter on a different literary period and examine two plays each: early modern (Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing), modern (Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Djuna Barnes' "To The Dogs"), and contemporary (Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9 and Margaret Edson's W;t). In tandem with analysis of formal elements---like …

Deuce Redemption: Grindhouse Cinema, Moral Panic, And Urban Renewal, Robert Brenner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

If you consult standard histories of the “redevelopment” of 42^nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, AKA “the Deuce,” you will read that it was filled with nothing but criminals and pornographers, that decent people avoided it at all costs, and the only way the block could be “saved” was by seizing it via eminent domain, evicting all the current tenants, and replacing them with Disney and its fellow entertainment corporations.

The purpose of this thesis is to offer a more nuanced alternative to these standard histories. I will argue that the Deuce was a lower-class, multiracial, queer entertainment …

Rainbow Road To Prismatic Playwriting: Black Women's Dramatic Praxis In Practice, Taren Wilson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the lived experiences of Black women in academia, uplifting those interested in non-traditional or creative scholarship. Underrepresentation and attrition due to exclusionary academic practices is a systemic problem. What can Black feminist playwriting as research do for Black women in academia hoping to resist and connect to themselves and their community? What can playwriting as a Black woman doctoral student elucidate about the utility of playwriting as research, culturally informed epistemologies, and African American women's drama? By merging African American women's drama, Black feminist epistemologies, Practice as Research, and playwriting as research, I developed an onto-epistemological method …

Coming Out, Letting Go, Getting Naked: A Community Engagement Arts Based Project, Tim Aumiller

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Creating a healthy sexual minority identity remains a challenge in the 21^st century, despite significant advances in social acceptance and civil rights. Sexual minorities are more likely than cis gender heterosexuals to be exposed to traumatic events, and experience shame and mental and physical health symptoms as a result. Despite this, sexual minorities do overcome obstacles to develop resilience. While the coming out process looks different depending on the background of the individual, many gay men find connection and build community through this often difficult process where even rejection may play a part. The author found connection and community …

Bedeviled Beauty: My Journey Through White American Theater Institutions, J'Aila C. Price

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Game console: Oculus Quest

World: American Theater Institutions

Player: Minority

Place: United States

Level: “Ain’t no way.”

This thesis explores the contrast between the Westernized philosophies ingrained in my education and my identity as a Black female artist. It sheds light on the difficulties of pursuing higher education in the arts and the gaps that arise from limited exposure to culturally diverse Black resources, revealing the systemic issues in Western performance education. The paper also discusses the insights gained from my journey as a Black female artist, focusing on my thesis performance of Blood at the Root, which is …

Writing, Performance, Resistance: Examining Feminist Ideology And Theory In Theatre Since The Second Wave, Olivia Cross

Theater Honors Papers

This project seeks to identify and analyze how feminist theatre is informed by theory and activism in its resistance against white, heteronormative, and patriarchal hegemony offstage through onstage representation. By identifying three consistent themes of gender & sexuality, race, and trauma and the methods used to effectively convey them to an audience, feminist theatre displays how advocacy takes unique forms to uproot the status quo. Furthermore, this research highlights how theatre is a viable and rich outlet for feminist intellectual history, displaying its versatility as a frame of analysis.

Beatrice Harraden (1864-1936), Molly Mcclain

History: Faculty Scholarship

This is a brief biography of Beatrice Harraden (1864-1936), an Anglo-Indian writer who achieved fame at the start of the age of mass-market fiction. She was part of a community of women working in and around Bloomsbury.

Sibelius’S Scaramouche: A Comparative Production History Of A Tragic Pantomime, 1913–1977, Karl E. Toepfer, Eija Kurki

Open Educational Resources

The book describes the historical context for the Scaramouche tragic pantomime created by Poul Knudsen and Jean Sibelius in 1913. The pantomime had numerous productions in various European countries between 1922 and 1977, and the book examines all of them according to all available evidence. The text explains the historical and cultural significance of the pantomime and how it uniquely explores a dark and complex intersection of female sexuality, marriage, and class control of erotic desire. The authors examine all productions of Scaramouche from the premiere production in Copenhagen in 1922 to the last major production in Karl-Marx-Stadt, East Germany …

I Was Crazy Once: An Examination Of Elizabethan Insanity In Shakespeare’S Work, Hope L. Kobus

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

William Shakespeare wrote numerous works, diving into the common motifs of love, revenge, power, but most importantly, madness. While Elizabethan audiences were more accustomed to seeing madness as a ploy for comedy, Shakespeare changed the appeal through shows such as King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth. He presents the power and ambition of women, as well as the failings of the upper-class, but he disguised them through the idea of insanity. At a time when the public had little understanding of mental health, it was easy to blame madness on gender, social status, and even the supernatural. Through …

Smokebox: Writing Into Embarrassment, Julia Storch

Theatre & Dance ETDs

Engaging with theoretical concepts and dramaturgical tools, this essay follows my journey through The Dramatic Writing MFA program at the University of New Mexico, focusing on the production of my thesis play, Smokebox. In Part I, I give the background and development of my journey as a playwright, exploring the obstacles I faced and overcame through my engagement with coursework and staged readings. I map out the development of Smokebox, from its humble beginnings as a class assignment, to its transformation through workshop, and finally its realization through an intense rehearsal and production process. In Part II, I …

An Arbitrary Aesthetic: Cultural Reproduction And Hegemonic Canonical Formations In The Western Theatrical Academy, Sim C. Rivers

Theses and Dissertations

Theatre as an artistic practice has often been celebrated as an art of and for the people, being a modality that in theory the common person has access to learn, explore and experience. In recent years I have become preoccupied with the growing rarification and privileging of this art form, particularly in how it is cognized and taught in the academic world. As such, I set out to investigate the mechanisms at work at levels structural, artistic, and personal that determine how theatre is taught and understood within the western academy.

This thesis seeks to examine and unpack the perceived …

Asexual Dramaturgies: Reading For Asexuality In The Western Theatrical Canon, Anna Maria Ruffino Broussard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Asexuality has recently gained recognition and visibility as a legitimate sexual orientation and identity standpoint that is usually defined as lacking sexual desire for any gender. Popular culture and the academy have both seen the emergence of a robust conversation about the definition and import of asexuality, recognizing the term as an umbrella concept covering an ever-diversifying array of identities. Within the nascent critical discourse on asexuality, theorists have sought to identify asexuality as a sexual orientation, to rethink our society’s sexual normativity, and to question compulsory sexuality, or the assumption that sexual desire is intrinsic to all people, thus …

Rendering Documentary Portraiture: An Interrogation Of Archival Discourse Through A Critical Exploration Of Nineteenth Century Stage Actress Charlotte Cushman’S Material Memory, Skyler Sunday

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Visual depictions of nineteenth century stage actress Charlotte Cushman, such as photographs, engravings, and painted portraits assist researchers in re-envisioning her both as an actress and as a person, but what do her remaining archival possessions further reveal to researchers about her memory? How do different objects operate as portraits that allow the researcher to tap into and remember specific moments and memory? How does the effort to preserve memory take different forms? This project argues that, when viewing the archive through its stored objects, our collective notion of portraiture can be expanded and used to interrogate existing methods of …

Sexing The Stage: Designing Sets For Queer Plays, Elliot Cetinski

Theater Summer Fellows

How can we design queer plays in a way that acknowledges challenging content and celebrates queer theater history? How does a set designer use the research on a play’s challenging content and its historical relevance to influence the design and aid in telling the story? What are the tools and processes indispensable to a scenic designer’s creative process? Answers to all of these questions are the goal of my project, where I am exploring the queer plays of 1920s’ playwright Mae West and designing the set for her play The Pleasure Man through a modern queer lens. As a queer …

A Weapon For The People To Wield, Olivia Sonell

Student Theses

This paper describes an applied theatre project facilitated in winter 2022 with an intergenerational group of LGBTQ adults based out of a large advocacy non- profit in the northeastern united states. The purpose of the project was three-fold, to explore LGBTQ intergenerational unity, the efficacy of applied theatre work in non-profit settings, and whether applied theatre has compromised itself ideologically.

Our project team met with participants over a period of four weeks, entirely over the ZOOM app. During these sessions we used applied theatre practices drawn from Augusto Boal and Helen White to explore connection and disconnection, and challenge dominant …

Staging Retro-Perspectives: Performing Age, Memory/Loss, And Queer Desire In The Later Works Of Split Britches (2009–2020), Benjamin Gillespie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project investigates the later works of the celebrated New York–based lesbian-feminist performance troupe Split Britches made up of founding members Peggy Shaw (b. 1944) and Lois Weaver (b. 1949). Revealing how the duo consciously interlaces aspects of aging and age-based identity into the very fabric of their later performances in both form and content, this project analyzes how Shaw and Weaver integrate an explicitly anti-ageist and overtly queer representation of aging on the experimental stage. Their later performances serve to challenge narratives of decline and debilitation that come with (hetero)normative representations of old age and the life course in …

"My Two Ears Can Witness": Feminist Pedagogy From Rehearsal Hall To Classroom, Ben Long, Noah Long, Laura Grace Godwin

Feminist Pedagogy

Given that university rehearsal halls are a natural home for feminist pedagogy, this paper addresses professors across campus under the contention that the signature pedagogy of theatre offers a model for faculty in other disciplines. The essay adapts a series of rehearsal hall techniques for traditional classrooms as efficient ways of fostering subjectivity, empowerment, community, and reflection in service of socio-cultural ends. The original teaching activities outlined herein do not require theatrical performance, but they nevertheless draw upon the power of live witnessing and interactive response that make theatre a powerful pedagogical tool. The authors conclude with an illustration of …

Lesbian Visibility And Censorship In Early Twentieth Century New York City, Aimee Clouse

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

On the brisk night of February 9th, 1927, New York City Police crammed the casts of two Broadway plays, one of which Edouard Bourdet's The Captive, into the back of a paddy wagon. These arrests and the legislation that enabled them were just one step taken by institutions to hide lesbians from the public. The eclectic nature of New York City in the early twentieth century fostered a growing scene of gender and sexual expression unlike anywhere else in the United States. Here, lesbians found freedom to express their sexuality and explore a growing subculture.

Interview With Jenny Cavenaugh, Jennifer Jones Cavenaugh, Wenxian Zhang

Oral Histories

Growing up in New York City, Jennifer Jones Cavenaugh earned her BA in Policy Studies from Dartmouth College in 1982, and her MFA in Dramaturgy from Brooklyn College in 1992. After receiving her PhD in Theater History and Dramatic Criticism from the University of Washington in 1995, she served as Assistant Professor of Theater at the University of Denver for three years before joining the faculty of the Louisiana State University, where she earned her tenure and was promoted to Associate Professor of Theater in 2003.

In 2005, Dr. Cavenaugh was named the Winifred Warden Endowed Chair of Theater at …

Mei Lan-Fang: The Masculinist Idealization Of Femininity, Yangzhou Bian

Theatre Student Scholarship

Mei Lan-fang was the most well-known Beijing Opera practitioner specializing in the impersonation of historical and mythological female characters. His captivating performance style is known as “The School of Mei”. It balances the external stage presence and internal precision and attends to the minutiae. His performances were drawn predominantly from the classic repertoire, and they have won him the position that “no other Chinese actor attained and retained” (Scott ii). Despite the general perception of Mei’s contribution to the emancipation of women through his work and his self-assertion of sympathy towards their suffering, the underlying motivation may not be as …

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 …

Authenticity And Humanity: Women In Ming Dynasty Theatre, Sarah Rogers

Symposium of Student Scholars

Since the dawn of theatrical performances, women had very limited opportunities for participation and presence in productions, often being portrayed onstage by male actors in untruthful, borderline degrading drag, which fortunately was not the case for the Ming Dynasty. My research investigates the societal roles and customs that women in the Ming Dynasty were initially assigned to and the shift they experienced in these roles; this shift empowered women to have more agency in every aspect of their everyday lives, especially in participating in performances. Methodologically, I consider the feminist/gender lens of Karl Marx’s Critical Theory and the opera The …

The Conscience Of Little Women: Beth's Epic, Mcewen Baker

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

From its conception, and through countless retellings, there is no doubt that Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is an American classic that has stood the test of time. Kate Hamill’s stage adaptation affirms and extends this legacy; the playwright adopts a contemporary feminist approach that defies gender norms and exclusivity in casting and encourages an actor-centered approach. This essay explains the importance of this adaptation and its influence on my portrayal of Beth March in Belmont University’s Fall 2021 production. It touches on the often overlooked significance of the second youngest sister as well as how my personal battle with …

Thomas Middleton And The Plural Politics Of Jacobean Drama, Mark Kaethler

Late Tudor and Stuart Drama

Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama represents the first sustained study of Middleton's dramatic works as responses to James I's governance. Through examining Middleton’s poiesis in relation to the political theology of Jacobean London, Kaethler explores early forms of free speech, namely parrhēsia, and rhetorical devices, such as irony and allegory, to elucidate the ways in which Middleton’s plural art exposes the limitations of the monarch’s sovereign image. By drawing upon earlier forms of dramatic intervention, James’s writings, and popular literature that blossomed during the Jacobean period, including news pamphlets, the book surveys a selection of …

Harlots And Hooligans: The Representation Of Women In Hogarth’S Strolling Actresses Dressing In A Barn (1738), Hannah Arnold

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

The Licensing Act egregiously hindered the English theatrical community when it was placed into effect by King George II in 1737. Strolling actors were thereby forbidden to perform in new plays for profit, forcing acting troupes to disband. This act was widely protested throughout England at the time, most notably by artist William Hogarth in his etching titled Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn. This etching cleverly protests the Licensing Act as well as a myriad of quandaries that plagued 18^th-century English society, namely, gender roles both on and off the stage. Yet, what exactly is the …

Embodied Performance As Queer Theatre Historiography: Translation, Gender, Identity, And Temporalities In Mikhail Kuzmin's The Dangerous Precaution, Keenan Shionalyn

All Master's Theses

The “World of Art” and “The Tower,” two groups of symbolist artists in St. Petersburg at the turn of the 20^th century, are often noted for their contributions to queer art in poetry, literature, and the visual arts. However, the theatrical record has yet to acknowledge the significant contributions by these groups, largely ignoring their queer dramatic writings. Mikhail Kuzmin, a notable contributor in both groups of symbolists, is recognized for having contributed music to Meyerhold and Blok’s The Puppet Show but is less known for his multitude of plays. Seeking to remedy this problem, I examine one of …

Distribution, Bars, And Arcade Stars: Joe Anthony’S Entrepreneurial Expansion In Houston’S Gay Media Industries, Finley Freibert

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This article develops the concept of "gay useful media" to explore a case study of gay entrepreneurship in Houston, Texas, of the 1970s. A father and son developed a gay media empire in the city, which spanned bars, bookstores, distribution, and vending. One of the pair's key establishments was Houston's legendary gay bar Mary's at 1022 Westheimer (also known as Mary's Lounge, Mary's, Naturally, and Mary's…Naturally).