Theatre & Dance Scholarly Works

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Public Speaking as Performance: Practicing Public Speaking in the Theatre & Performance Classroom
(University of Kansas Libraries, 2023-04-15) Leon, Mechele
Public Speaking as Performance: Practicing Public Speaking in the Theatre & Performance Classroom, written by theatre educators, presents the essential elements of speechwriting with the skills that actors use to communicate to an audience. In chapters such as “Actor Tools for Public Speakers” and “From Page to Stage,” the textbook provides students with a creative and accessible approach to delivering speeches. Drawing on the tradition of teaching public speaking in theatre and drama departments, this textbook emphasizes the performative nature of communication.
Stages of Whiteness: Marking Power and Privilege in U.S. and German Popular Performance
(University of Kansas, 2019-12-31) Martin, Christopher; Hodges Persley, Nicole; Barnette, Jane; Bial, Henry; Roediger, David; Rovit, Rebecca
Stages of Whiteness: Marking Power and Privilege in U.S. and German Popular Performance examines white, male playwrights, television evangelists, and game show hosts and producers on what I am defining as three “performance stages” found within 21st century American and German popular theatre and entertainment. These performances have remained unmarked as white to white people; they remain opaque to them and have persisted into this century as spaces not affected by constructions of race. They remain “just performances.” The dissertation explains how everyday people— audiences— learn to see, hear, and protect whiteness as a universal subject position, as represented through the patterns of storytelling, narrative structure, and binaries of winning and losing. Each “performance stage” has specific audiences that encapsulate lower, middle and upper-class white consumers. These stages, I contend, are used to distribute narratives that warn new audiences against the changing racial, economic, and socio-cultural conditions that have challenged white male patriarchy. This project is a result of four trips to Germany to visit theatre spaces in Berlin, multiple visits to New York archives and theatre spaces, a visit to Joel Osteen’s Lakewood church in Houston, Texas, and a visit to Los Angeles to attend tapings of game shows, including The Price is Right, on which I was a contestant. Methodologically, as I engage with archives and live performance, I lean upon auto-ethnography where I use my own subject position as a white, Queer man from Southeastern, Pennsylvania to see these places anew and to describe how whiteness, once invisible to me in work as a theater artist, emerging scholar and consumer, became racialized to me as “white.” I am marking my position as a white, Queer male to unsettle impulses towards objectivity and universality associated with white male playwrights and their stories which dominate American and German theater landscapes . In addition to my own subject position, I analyze these performances through theories of race and performance and dramatic analysis. The dissertation identifies comparable sites in theater, religious television programming, and game shows in the U.S. and Germany that source their values in tropes from the Germanic Enlightenment. I track how totalizing Enlightenment binaries of good and bad, inside and outside, God and the Devil, and ultimately winning and losing migrate across national borders and have become reproduced and preserved in new spaces.
The Realization of Terrence McNally's Ragtime
(University of Kansas, 2019-08-31) Zimmerman, Taylor Jo; Christilles, Dennis; Bennett, Leslie; Bohon, Jason; Vogel, Kelly
The story of Ragtime is testament to the heartbreaking truth that the America of the early 1900’s has far too many similarities to the America we live in today. The book was written in 1975, and in 1990, a Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty collaborated on a musical adaptation, which premiered in 1996. It tells the story of three groups of people who live in strikingly different worlds. Their worlds eventually collide and the characters are forced to the ugly truths rampant in the America in which they live. This story is relevant in today’s world, where people ignore their commonalities and instead focus on the differences, creating a turbulent environment. People are judged based on their skin color, their financial resources, their class and religious differences. These kinds of judgments have not, in so many ways, improved over time. People seem to lack the appropriate introspection to identify the common threads between others, even though they aren’t easy to initially recognize. Ragtime is a period show that feels all too familiar.
An analysis of the physiological assumptions in vocal instructional systems for actors
(University of Kansas, 1997-12-31) Hanson, Anne Marie LaLonde
Vocal instruction for actors is a growing specialization within college theatre programs in the United States. Theatre voice has typically been taught by master teachers, some of whom eventually publish texts which outline their instructional systems. These published theatre voice texts have become standards in the discipline of theatre voice over the past 10-30 years and a mere handful of them are the primary required texts used in a large number of theatre voice classes in U.S. colleges and professional training schools. For the most part, these texts (along with their authors) have been accepted without question as the undisputed authorities in the field of theatre voice without serious critical discussion or assessment of their objective, methods, procedures, or efficacy. This study examines eight of the most popular vocal training texts used in theatre voice classes in American colleges and professional training programs from the perspective of vocal anatomy and physiology. These include Edith Skinner's Speak with Distinction, Evangeline Machlin's Speech for the Stage, Arthur Lessac's The Use and Training of the Human Voice, Kristin Linklater's Freeing the Natural Voice, Cicely Berry's Voice and the Actor, J. Clifford Turner's Voice and Speech in the Theatre, Michael McCallion's The Voice Book, and Patsy Rodenburg's The Right to Speak. Instructional methodology, functional descriptions, and exercises relating to the physiological processes of respiration, phonation, resonance and articulation are examined and compared to current literature about those functional processes in the field of voice science. Additionally, each system is examined to assess the degree to which it advocates vocal health and the manner in which it recommends that vocal health be pursued. Recommendations for selecting an appropriate vocal training system are proposed based on a student's desired learning outcomes, possible methodological preferences, and preferred mode of learning.
A History of Theatre Activities at the University of Kansas
(University of Kansas, 1959-05-31) La Ban, Frank K.; Crafton, Allen
The purpose of this study has been to trace the growth and progress of theatre and drama activities at the University of Kansas. It will not be a survey of the progress of the academic work in these fields, although mention of curricular work will be made now and then. It will concern itself primarily with the extra curricular work, the production and presentation of plays. It has been discovered that sources for acquiring information for this study are not entirely satisfactory. The investigator has recourse to the Lawrence paper (The Journal World), the University yearbooks and the University newspaper. These are about all. The records in these publications are not complete and in some instances are contradictory. Rather than include material (dates and productions) which are contradictory or questionable, only the facts which seem to be well substantiated have been included. This has made for a brief, but it is hoped, a fairly accurate record. It will be seen that the name of Professor Allen Crafton appears numerous times in the footnotes. Professor Crafton was most closely connected with the theatre activities from 1923 to 1952, and the writer has found it helpful, in some instances necessary, to consult him upon certain matters. He himself was unable to answer all the questions asked and because of this there have been omissions which it would be necessary to fill if this record were to be complete. Probably the most valuable and important part of this study will be found in the back pages under the heading Appendix A: a list of plays presented at the University. This list has been checked and rechecked and in so far as it has been possible to make it, the list is accurate and complete. The six preceding chapters endeavor to take up only the more important beginnings, innovations and changes throughout the years. The study arbitrarily concludes with the beginning of the work in the new University Theatre. The study, therefore has no actual end or conclusions; the work is still going on with increasing interest.
The Performance of Intersectionality on the 21st Century Stand-Up Comedy Stage
(University of Kansas, 2018-12-31) Blackburn, Rachel Eliza; Hodges Persley, Nicole; Tucker, Sherrie; Bial, Henry; Batza, Katie; Zazzali, Peter
In 2014, Black feminist scholar bell hooks called for humor to be utilized as political weaponry in the current, post-1990s wave of intersectional activism at the National Women’s Studies Association conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her call continues to challenge current stand-up comics to acknowledge intersectionality, particularly the perspectives of women of color, and to encourage comics to actively intervene in unsettling the notion that our U.S. culture is “post-gendered” or “post-racial.” This dissertation examines ways in which comics are heeding bell hooks’s call to action, focusing on the work of stand-up artists who forge a bridge between comedy and political activism by performing intersectional perspectives that expand their work beyond the entertainment value of the stage. Though performers of color and white female performers have always been working to subvert the normalcy of white male-dominated, comic space simply by taking the stage, this dissertation focuses on comics who continue to embody and challenge the current wave of intersectional activism by pushing the socially constructed boundaries of race, gender, sexuality, class, and able-bodiedness. Utilizing performance analysis, gender theory, queer theory, critical race theory, and humor studies, this dissertation unpacks the ways that stand-up performers engage the comedic stage as their own form of public intellectualism and social critique in the #BlackLivesMatter era. This dissertation is driven by a central question: what performative strategies – defined throughout as ways in which comics structure the content, delivery, and space of their performances in specific ways that convey meaning – do stand-up comedians use to invite audiences to see them as intersectional subjects that live in the wholeness of their identities? Throughout the dissertation, I examine how comedians are using specific tactics of performance that reflect a fullness of identity as intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, and (dis)ability. The first chapter examines the work of specific performers to demonstrate ways in which stand-up comedians blend public intellectual work with social activism through their comedy to convey intersectional standpoints in the 21st century. The second chapter explores the work of Black female American stand-up comedians as a challenge to the ways in which the normative whiteness of fourth wave feminism fails to acknowledge the labor of women of color, despite its purported ethos to do so. Chapter three considers the work of performers examining gender, sexuality, and (dis)ability from a white positionality and critiques such work in terms of ways it does or does not engage with race and whiteness as a core component of intersectionality. The final chapter ponders how the use of humor, as a tool of intersectional activism, loses or gains efficacy when performed from transnational perspectives. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that 21st century stand-up answers hooks’s call, serving as a site to address and perform social justice activism by using humor as the connective tissue between these spaces of social discourse, comedy, and traditional street protest.
Otherwise, The Gap: Performing Identities in Iranian Contemporary Art and Performance
(University of Kansas, 2018-05-31) Esfandiary, Rana; Hodges Persley, Nicole; Bial, Henry; Christilles, Dennis; Barnette, Jane; Robert Lindsey, William
Otherwise, the Gap: Performing Identities in Iranian Contemporary Art and Performance explores the intersections between race, performance, and politics within and without the so-called Middle Eastern region. I use theories of race, gender, performance, and ritual to investigate the performativity of what I call strategic acts of repair in the context of four case studies: Shadi Ghadirian’s Like EveryDay photo collection; 84Theatre Company’s productions of Endless Monologue and Mountain Language; and the underground Iranian instrumental and electronic music movement. Through the framework of strategic acts of repair, I intend to theorize the performativity of constant attempts made by Iranian artist-activists in raising awareness as well as facilitating a platform for addressing the political violence imposed on Iranian identity on its legal top-down and everyday bottom-up level, domestically and internationally. I argue these artworks from theatre, performance, visual and sonic art are vital sites capable of articulating and resisting the exclusion that Muslims encounter in the Middle East as well as the United States of America. By interrogating these artworks produced in the spaces of the theatre, Internet, and underground performance venues in the Muslim diaspora, I am able to analyze scenographic, performative, and architectural strategies used by contemporary artists to build new artistic vocabularies of resistance. I argue that these artists and their works orchestrate interactions between the oppositional fronts, e.g., official and unofficial sectors, and provide spaces where people can better understand and interpret their collective and individualistic identities within and beyond the Middle Eastern official narrative.
Time is of the Essence: The Centrality of Time in Science Plays and the Cultural Implications
(University of Kansas, 2017-05-31) Tiehen, Jeanne Peggy; Rovit, Rebecca; Baringer, Philip; Smith Fischer, Iris; Leon, Mechele; Gronbeck-Tedesco, John
Time is of the Essence: The Centrality of Time in Science Plays and the Cultural Implications examines how time operates within the narrative and structure of science plays. Combining analysis of play texts and production critiques with phenomenological theories of time and embodiment, and also exploring related theories about time in physics and philosophy, I extrapolate what science plays may illuminate about our cultural relationship to science because of how we experience time—both in and out of the theatre. In the dissertation I investigate three groups of science plays: 1) contemporary plays that display time in innovative ways, such as Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (1993), Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51 (2011), Shelagh Stephenson’s An Experiment with an Air Pump (2000), and Nick Payne’s Constellations (2012); 2) plays about the atomic bomb that presented apprehensions mankind made a scientific device to end time as we knew it, seen in Robert Nichols and Maurice Browne’s Wings Over Europe (1927), Arch Oboler’s Night of the Auk (1956), Lorraine Hansberry’s What Use Are Flowers? (1969), Arthur Kopit’s The End of the World (1984), and Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen (1998); and 3) plays about climate change that demonstrate how mankind may be running out of time to change the course of events, including Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner, and Jack Thorne’s Greenland (2011), Mike Bartlett’s Earthquakes in London (2010), and Stephen Emmott’s Ten Billion (2012). I compare these plays to other representations of science in film, museums, and literature, contrasting the phenomenological experiences and positioning theatre as a rare, time-oriented art that can reveal important scientific ideas. By investigating science plays, I argue that theatre, because of its own phenomenological and temporal particularities, enables us to examine how we as a culture view our scientific past, present, and future in ways few other experiences can compare.
Performing National Identity, Civic Resistance and Cultural Memory in Costa Rica's Masked Traditions
(University of Kansas, 2017-05-31) Sandi-Diaz, Gina; Bial, Henry; Hodges-Persley, Nicole; Barnette, Jane; Zazzali, Peter; Day, Stuart
“Performing National Identity, Civic Resistance and Cultural Memory in Costa Rica’s Masked Traditions” studies two performance traditions that date to the 17th century: Las mascaradas del Valle Central and El juego de los diablitos in Boruca. The project was developed during twenty months and included three research trips to Costa Rica ranging three to six weeks each, to witness performances, conduct interviews and recollect bibliographical resources. Methodologically, this project borrows from observant-participatory ethnography and historiography to analyze these two performance traditions through the lenses of Performance Studies and Cultural Studies. This dissertation examines the process of appropriation of popular culture by colonial authorities and later by the Costa Rican state to shape, disseminate and legitimate a national identity project based on an assumption of whiteness and of a heteronormative, Catholic, European-descended nation. This construction is based on the ideals and values of 19th century’s dominant class and excludes large portions of the population such as Indigenous, African and Asian communities that have resided in the nation, –in many cases prior to colonial time–actively contributing to the economy, social development and cultural heritage of the country. The study traces the origins and development of masked performance traditions parallel to the construction of a national identity project in Costa Rica, unveiling the points of contact suture and rupture between popular culture and the state and unpacking the ways in which the performances are complacent or subversive to the official narrative of Costa Rica’s national identity. The discussion of these points of contact, suture, and rupture emphasize the crucial role of embodied practice and oral tradition in the transmission of cultural memory, and the potential these traditions offer to develop coded performances for their communities that mock and subvert authority while appearing to be complacent to the status quo. This dissertation contributes to the fields of Performance Studies, Latin American Studies, Central American Cultural Studies and Performance Ethnography.
RABINAL ACHI. Scenographic Design of a traditional Mayan Play
(University of Kansas, 2017-08-31) Rodríguez-Montero, Pamela; Reaney, Mark; Unruh, Delbet; Hodges Persley, Nicole; Vogel, Kelly
The Mayan dance-drama Rabinal Achí is one of the most important remaining pre-Columbian artistic expressions today. The script of the play is written in the Mayan language of K’iche’ and is performed every year at the end of January in Rabinal, Guatemala. Believed to have first been written and performed during the Mayan Postclassic Era (AD 900-1524), the play expresses the issues that concerned the inhabitants of the region of Rabinal at the time—myths of origin, popular and political actors—through masked dance and music. This thesis is intended to explain the design process and research needed to create a scenographic design of the Rabinal Achí. The design elements created for this project include: set, lighting and costumes and are aimed to reach a contemporary North American audience in Lawrence, Kansas.
Titus Andronicus: The Material Effects of Sexual Assault and Trauma as Represented Through Design
(University of Kansas, 2017-05-31) Mazur, Leah; Reaney, Mark; Christilles, Dennis; Vogel, Kelly; Zazzali, Peter
William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus was written between 1588 and 1596. The revenge play focuses on the cycle of retaliation between Titus Andronicus and Tamora, Queen of the Goths. While the themes of Roman Militaristic Society and Gender and Politics are all at the forefront, the themes of the Sexual Objectification of Women and Sexual Violence Against Women can all be examined within in the text. Because of the latter two themes, the piece had fallen out of audiences’ favor by the end of the 17th century, being considered too sensationalist. But the same themes that classify this as sensationalist are the exact themes that speak to its relevancy today. The sexual objectification of women is not exclusive to current day. Walk through any fine art museum and sculptures by Bernini, painting by Reubens and Degas, as well as drawings by Picasso show the same tendencies as Durex condom ads and Axe Body Spray commercials. This sick obsession with the reduction of women to their sexuality has effectively, over time, stripped them of their humanity, therefore making the violence committed against them akin to breaking a coffee mug or having a flat tire. It has turned women into a commodity; one to be bought and sold and consumed. The World Health Organization estimates that between 20% and 35% of women have suffered some sort of sexual violence, with numbers changing dependent upon the intersection of a woman’s race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and physical ability. Lavinia, Titus’s daughter in Titus Andronicus suffers the brunt of violence throughout the show. This design tells her story because like Lavinia, so many women suffer the same fate.
Signaling Through the Flames: Theatre Fires and Disaster Sociology
(University of Kansas, 2015-05-31) Devlin, Daniel; Gronbeck-Tedesco, John; Leon, Mechele; Mielke, Laura; Bial, Henry; Rovit, Rebecca
“Signaling Through the Flames: Theatre Fires and Disaster Sociology” re-examines archival evidence relevant to three of the most destructive and deadly fires in American theatre history: Richmond, Virginia in 1811, Brooklyn, New York in 1876, and Chicago, Illinois in 1903. Through the use of the theories of disaster sociology, “Signaling Through the Flames” positions disaster as an inherently theatrical process of disruption, after which various parties, constructed as “grass-roots” communities and “elite-level” institutional groups, compete to gain control of the narrative of the disaster event and, in doing so, contribute in significant ways to creating and disseminating an “official” history of the disaster. This official history often comes at the expense of the memories and experiences of the grass-roots group; “Signaling Through the Flames” works to make these acts of remembering and forgetting visible through reclaiming historical accounts that dispute or resist the accepted record. “Signaling Through the Flames” argues that the narrative and rhetorical tropes used to construct these official histories reinforce and reinscribe the systems of social order that were disrupted and made visible by the disaster event, and thus contribute meaningfully and importantly to the necessary negotiation of sociopersonal identity in the post-disaster paradigm. The dissertation is organized chronologically in three parts, each of which is broken down into chapters. Each part provides an analysis of pre-disaster culture, and a recounting of the disaster event; however, the majority of each chapter focuses on cultural production in the post-disaster paradigm, and how that production either serves or resists social or political acts of remembering and forgetting.
Do These Jeans Make Me Look Fat? Adolescent Eating Disordered Behaviors and Body Image Dissatisfaction as Examined in Linda Daugherty's Eat (It's Not About Food)
(University of Kansas, 2016-12-31) Fleming, Adrienne Ann; Klein, Jeanne; Barnette, Jane; Bennett, Leslie
Western culture maintains an intense obsession with body image. The sheer volume of diet and performance-enhancing products, as well as weight loss and exercise plans; prove dizzying in an intensely mediated culture. Moreover, the equation of thinness as physical perfection permeates these mediated messages. Teenagers have a particular vulnerability to the concept of body image. Teenagers battle internal as well as external physical pressures surrounding the thin-ideal on a daily basis. Yet, too often these struggles remain unspoken, leading to the development of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia nervosa. I propose that a theatrical experience which presents the dark and tortured world of body image and eating disorders provides the necessary spark for positive conversation as a means to challenge the mediated thin-ideal. Through analysis of Linda Daugherty’s 2008 script, Eat (It’s Not About Food), alongside the medical literature, the potential for such conversations becomes evident. Considerations of eating disorders, body image as a construct and the mediated forces at work behind this notion provides a more thorough analysis of the production elements. Furthermore, the reflection on theatre as a methodology provides insight into ways to utilize dramatic procedures to assist those teenagers struggling with body image. I organize my analysis of Daugherty’s illustrations of the side effects of anorexia and bulimia nervosa into five areas: psychological, mediated, behavioral, social, and physical. This allows the accuracy of the portrayals major focus. Also, the inclusions of a study guide and interactive forum designed for the production serve as conduits for deeper processing of the presented dramatic themes. Placing these topics in the theatrical space allows the pathway for fruitful conversation to unfold. In doing so, teenagers can confidently challenge the enforced thin-ideal and fearlessly claim their own distinctive characteristics.
Embracing the "Foggy Place" of Theatre History: The Chautauqua/Colloquia Model of Public Scholarship as Performance
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015-09) Barnette, Jane
In her December 2013 Slate polemic “The End of the College Essay: An Essay,” Rebecca Schuman calls for the end of assigning and grading papers in required courses. Since “the baccalaureate is the new high-school diploma” and “students (and their parents) view college as professional training,” professors should “declare unconditional defeat” and abandon the dated notion that writing essays is a necessary part of a decent undergraduate education.1 As a theatre historian with training in rhetoric and composition, I have incorporated numerous student-centered writing strategies in theatre history, literature, and theory courses, but ultimately I have taken a similar stance when discussing departmental curricula with my colleagues: I question the value of traditional (that is, reader-oriented and paper-based) research/writing assignments within the major.
Toward Revising Undergraduate Theatre Education
(Theatre Topics, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015-09) Klein, Jeanne; Zazzali, Peter
The Bucket Brigade: ATHE President’s Address, 2013
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014-06) Bial, Henry
An Experiment with Digital Lighting in Adding Machine: A Musical
(United States Institute for Theatre Technology, 2014) Esfandiary, Rana; Reaney, Mark
Good and evil as represented in Massinger’s plays
(University of Kansas, 1915) Tucker, Bertha Charlene
Interviewing Children after Performances
(Trentham, 2012-03) Klein, Jeanne
Klein charts the ways in which she has used interviews to engage with children's responses to TYA performances, thus providing a methodology for researchers in reception studies.
The Semiotics of Action Design
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996-09) Christilles, Dennis; Unruh, Delbert

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