Browsing by Subject "Theatre"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    “Baroque Venetian Theatre: dialectics of excess and discipline in the sixteenth and seventeenth Centuries.”
    (2010-06) Daddario, William
    This dissertation analyzes the theatre practice of Angelo Beolco (aka Ruzzante) and the pedagogical strategies of the Society of Jesus (aka the Jesuits) in order to forward a theory of the Baroque as a space of critical tension produced by the clash of disciplinary regimes of governance and excessive artistic expressions. I read Venice through a sceno-historiographical lens and theorize it as a staging area from which acts of Baroque composition unfolded. With a dialectical and philosophical-historical methodology (derived from the work of Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Michel Foucault), I assemble archival traces of Venetian theatre prior to the construction of permanent theatre buildings in order to contribute to the writing focused on sixteenth and seventeenth-century Venetian theatre, of which currently little exists. Theatre, then, appears in this dissertation as more than mere entertainment; it becomes an active political practice embedded within an epicenter of cultural production in early modern Europe.
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    A Change of Perspective: The Pre-Graduate Expectations versus Post-College Experiences of Theatre Arts Majors
    (2018-05) Darg, Julie
    Though there has been a great deal of research on the transition into college, there has been relatively little research on the transition out of college. This is particularly true in relation to theatre arts majors. Though recent graduates face many challenges post-college, there has been minimal exploration done on how graduates experience discrepancies between their pre-graduate expectations formed in college versus their actual post-college experiences. This qualitative study sought to explore the post-college transition experiences of 20 recent theatre arts baccalaureates (12 males and 8 females) and the discrepancy between their pre-graduate expectations and post-college experiences based on Schlossberg’s Transition Theory (1984) as a conceptual model. This model posits the type of transition (non-event), and four coping resources (situation, support, self, and strategies) for managing individual transition experiences. The results of the study identified four primary themes which impacted the post-college experiences of the study participants: (a) Undergraduate Preparedness, (b) Career, Finances, and Other Factors, (c) Discrepancy between Pre-Graduate Expectations versus Post-College Experiences, and (d) Artist Identity. In addition, the results of the study revealed that each of the 20 participants encountered a discrepancy between their pre-graduate expectations versus post-college experiences. The results of the study provide support for adding a new dimension to Schlossberg’s Transition Theory model as it relates to a psychological response that occurs within an individual when they encounter a discrepancy between what they thought would happen after college and what actually occurred post-college. A micro-transition is the psychological “change of perspective” (COP) by an individual regarding the macro-transition experience that results from the realization of a discrepancy between expectations and actual experiences. Implications for this study address undergraduate programming, faculty preparation, and alumni and theater organizations to better prepare theatre arts baccalaureates for the transition to post-college life.
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    Implementation of Robotics in Costumes and Theatre
    (2015) Bockbrader, Hannah; Bias, Kelsie
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    Performing Corporate Bodies: Organizational Theatre in Global India
    (2019-05) Saddler, Sarah
    This dissertation examines the use of theatrical performance in the corporate workplace, with a focus on post-liberalization India. In major multinational corporations, dramatic skits and simulations drawn from theatre for social change repertories have become a popular training tool used to teach the cultural competencies, social norms, and behavioral skills now deemed essential to job success in the international work economy. This dissertation is a critical examination of this trend (“corporate theatre”) that examines how corporations deploy theatre in the service of profit, and demonstrates the transformative impacts corporate theatre is having on employees, creative economic growth, and the landscape of postcolonial arts practice in urban India. Drawing on 23 months of ethnographic research in India from 2012-2018, I analyze how theatre has become a key technology of 21st century management ideology through detailing case studies from leading sites of India’s global work ecology that provide a nuanced look at how dramatic repertoires are teaching employees to embody the entrepreneurial ethos of a globalizing Indian nation-state. Alongside detailing the ways corporate theatre functions as a technology of worker discipline which exacerbates the precarious labor conditions and gender, caste, and class dimensions of global software work, I highlight the small-scale, intimate ways individuals use the dramatic tools these trainings provide to create new ways of moving, feeling, and being together in India’s competitive work cultures. In so doing, this dissertation demonstrates how performance functions as a prime technology of human capital formation in contemporary neoliberalism, at the same time as it opens pathways for individuals to express their struggles, identities, and aspirations in the context of corporate power.
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    Performing the Oregon Trail: Belonging, Space, and Historical Representation in Settler Colonial Oregon
    (2022-05) Rorem, Jacob
    This dissertation examines the role that performances of the history and mythology of the Oregon Trail have had in securing the power and futurity of a settler colonial Pacific Northwest at the expense of other social, political, and spatial possibilities. It primarily focuses on how these practices naturalize particular modes of inhabiting and territorial belonging, as well as positions settler colonists as the rightful people of Oregon. To do so, I focus on a range of practices throughout the 20th and 21st centuries which celebrated, represented, and interpreted the Oregon Trail, the primary vehicle for settling the Pacific Northwest by the United States in the mid-19th century. These practices include trail marking, museums and interpretive centers, historical pageantry and parades, and nostalgic reenactments of a popular educational video game. My investigation teases out the role of both representation and performance within my objects of study, grounding both elements within the fundamental reality of settler colonialism: the expropriation and occupation of Indigenous lands by non-Indigenous settlers.
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    Scenic shifts upon the Scottish rite stage: designing for Masonic Theatre, 1859-1929.
    (2009-05) Waszut-Barrett, Wendy Rae
    Nineteenth-century secret societies often shared a similar ceremonial format, yet offered distinct themes and subject matter - frequently revising their ritual to attract potential candidates. This dissertation proposes that the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry captivated members and offered a unique fraternal experience when they completely and successfully staged their fraternal ceremonies, moving portions of their ritual from the lodge room floor to the elevated stage. Exploring Scottish Rite degree productions as fraternal imitations of mass-produced optical entertainments, this study argues that American Victorian theatre and nineteenth-century spectacle provided the vehicle that catapulted the Scottish Rite to the forefront of the American fraternal movement. The extant scenery collections currently housed in many Scottish Rite theatres depict and aesthetic shift in the field of scenic art from an itinerant to a study style, providing a primary source for both theatre scholars and practitioners to explore historical painting techniques and color palettes otherwise unavailable. The commercial theatre typically discarded or repainted scenic backdrops at a production's close, leaving only secondary source material in the form of playbills and theatre reviews to illustrate theatre aesthetics. Through the analysis of extant fraternal backdrop collections, historical scene designs, Scottish Rite ritual, Masonic legislative proceedings, fraternal supply catalogs, personal manuscripts, and archival documents, this dissertation examines the multifaceted fraternal, theatrical, social and economic ideologies facilitating the theatrical interpretation of Scottish Rite degrees between 1859 and 1929. The significance of this study lies in the present availability of complete backdrops collections and their perilous condition. Furthermore, it recognizes the imperative need to preserve our theatrical and fraternal heritage through documenting the origin and importance of Scottish Rite scenery, understanding the availability of historical scenic art, and preventing the further deterioration of this primary resource.
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    Le théâtre comme processus d’humanisation.
    (2009-02) Crépon, Pascale
    In my thesis, I examine the role and interrelation of the body and language in modern cultures and study the often problematic interaction between the individual and the collective. I use various interdisciplinary approaches such as Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, anthropology and phenomenology of theatre to discuss the challenges of constructing identity while facing dehumanizing elements of our everyday life. I define theatre as a paradigm of analysis of human interactions and thus a process of humanization. Theatre acts to negotiate between language and body, while addressing and confronting the self in its inscription within language, culture, and environment. I first study the mirror effect in psychoanalysis as well as in cinema and theatre in order to define the human subject as a spectactor. I then study the problematic of violence as a revealing tool for defining identity using the work of the French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltès. I continue with a discussion of identity as a fluctuating concept and question the role of psychological and physical violence in the construction of identities with the work of the francophone playwright Marie N'diaye. My dissertation moves toward a new discourse on the relationship between identity and violence, by articulating that the necessary condition for cognition is embodiment. In doing so, I situate my research between the phenomenology of the subject and that of theatre, which reaffirm together the place and responsibility of the self in relation to himself/herself and to the others.
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    Undergraduate Business Schools Should Require Theatre to Develop Soft Skills and to Better Employees
    (2017) Quinn, Kallie
    Rather than discussing how theatre has been recognized in a current business setting to improve soft skills after employment, this paper will build on this recognition to address how theatre can be used to foster those skills prior to employment by providing undergraduate business students with theatrical education specializing in soft skills development. Although all aspects of theatre can help with developing much needed work skills in some way, this paper will focus specifically on actor training. Acting will be the focus due to the unique person to person interactions and skills developed in these classes. By helping students develop these tools via a required class in acting before entering the work-force, students will be more successful and emotionally intelligent individuals. Businesses can save money and time with soft skill training by employing students who not only have business degrees and business experience, but those who have theatre experience as well.