"A Spectacle to the World": The Performance of Christian Virgins and Monks in Late Antiquity
Year of Dissertation:
2010
A commonplace in the history of western theatre is the antipathy of the Church towards the "theatrum," long evident in the writings of the Greek and Latin Fathers. In this dissertation I argue that although "theatre" was anathema to Orthodox Christianity, the idea of performance was embraced, albeit covertly, as a means by which late-ancient Christians could express a new kind of subjectivity, of which the first exemplum is Paul. Activated by their "Christian subjectivity," the Fathers of the early Church constructed Christian identity in terms of behaviors and habits that would make orthodoxy "visible," and thus performative. The practices of virginity and monastic asceticism represent the border of the performance of Christian identity as live, embodied praxis during this period. Based on my close reading from a performance-theoretical perspective of select early Christian apologetics, polemics, and vitae, the dissertation demonstrates that performance was essential to the formation, expansion, and "triumph" of orthodox Christianity in late antiquity.
Synesthetic Landscapes in Harold Pinter's Theatre: A Symbolist Legacy
Year of Dissertation:
2010
In the light of recent interdisciplinary critical approaches to landscape and space, and adopting phenomenological methods of sensory analysis, this dissertation explores interconnected or synesthetic sensory "scapes" in contemporary British playwright Harold Pinter's theatre. By studying its dramatic landscapes and probing into their multi-sensory manifestations in line with Symbolist theory and aesthetics, I argue that Pinter's theatre articulates an ecocritical stance and a micropolitical critique.
THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN IMPROVISATION: PLAY, PROCESS, AND PEDAGOGY
Year of Dissertation:
2011
This dissertation examines the ways in which the art of American improvisation, as it developed in Chicago, operates as a catalyst for liberating creativity in the individual. I have traced its historical roots to the work and theories of three first-generation American women: Neva Boyd, Viola Spolin, and Josephine Raciti Forsberg. Boyd was a kindergarten teacher at the beginning of the twentieth century who championed the significant role that "directed play," particularly in the form of games, takes in the personal and social development of the individual. Viola Spolin, also known as "the high priestess" of improvisation, was trained as a social group worker by Boyd. Spolin built on Boyd's theories and created games, known as the "Spolin Games," for teaching improvisation. In 1963, she published Improvisation for the Theater, a foundational text for acting and improvisation teachers. Josephine Raciti Forsberg, who was trained by Spolin, is a theatre practitioner and teacher, whose contributions to the art of American improvisation have been greatly overlooked. Forsberg also established the first, and for many years the only school, dedicated to teaching the art of American improvisation, The Players Workshop of The Second City.
"This Theatre is a Battlefield": Political Performance and Jewish-American Identity, 1933-1948
Year of Dissertation:
2012
"THIS THEATRE IS A BATTLEFIELD": POLITICAL PERFORMANCE AND JEWISH-AMERICAN IDENTITY, 1933-1948
Contemporary Site-Specific Theatre in New York City: Performance, the City, and Spatial Politics
Year of Dissertation:
2010
This project examines contemporary site-specific theatre (works intimately connected to the spaces in which they are performed) in New York City and asks: Can site-based theatre have an impact on the transformation and development of cities? Can this kind of theatre change our perception and use of public space? The dissertation explores how site-specific artists use alternative urban spaces outside the traditional theatre building and engage the experience of space and place as integral to their work's content. By formulating an understanding of site-specific theatre as inherently linked to urban spatial practices and politics, I argue that site-specific theatre reveals the inner workings of a city's spatial politics (and therefore who gets access to space and when), and the power dynamics involved in the creation and use of space as a public forum. How can we engage in a conversation about the city via site-specific theatre? By examining urban site specificity in contemporary theatrical practice in New York City, I address its connections and potential contributions to the urban setting, to urban dialogue, and to urban space. I discuss site-specific theatre's potential to engage with city space in ways that can actually affect-- positively and negatively-- urban planning, real estate values, and gentrification. My purpose in this dissertation is two-fold: (1) to highlight a genre within theatrical performance that should stand on its own (within the field of theatre studies); and (2) to provide a theoretical framework in which to discuss this genre in the conversations regarding theatre and urban studies, and therefore problematize theatre's potential for intervention in both private and public space in the creation of cities.
Without Papers: Legal Identity, Legal Consciousness, and Performance
Year of Dissertation:
2011
Advisor:
Jean Graham-Jones
The undocumented immigrant is a recurring figure in the legal and cultural fields. By examining various stagings of this figure in contemporary US theatre, I analyze the intricate relationship between cultural and legal production and also observe law's capacity to shape identity and practices of belonging. My dissertation relies on developments in legal anthropology and employs concepts of legal identity and legal consciousness to consider theatre's engagement with unauthorized immigration. An explicit focus on law and its material consequences allows me to problematize theatre scholarship's privileging of ethnic/racial categories when approaching the overdetermined issue of identity. Importantly, as I investigate theatre's contribution to the immigration debates, I theorize how performance intersects with legal categorization and, in particular, how performance can counteract the legal nonexistence that characterizes life without papers.
The Urban Geography of Theatre in a New South City: Memphis, 1890-1920
Year of Dissertation:
2012
This case study of theatres in Memphis during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reads the local history of theatre with and against larger narratives of national theatre history that emphasize the industrialization of U.S. theatre and its geographical centralization in New York City. Key questions include: What roles did the building and establishment of theatres play in the urban geography of period Memphis, and vice versa? And, how did the consolidation of the national theatre industry affect theatres in Memphis? A narrower geographic focus on a mid-sized U.S. city allows for a detailed investigation of several different types of theatres--including legitimate, vaudeville, and African American theatre--and their relationships to and contradictions with the bigger picture of U.S. theatre during the period, which would be more difficult to do with a larger city. It also provides for more thorough descriptions of the social and cultural contexts in which these theatres were created, particularly with regard to class and race. The structure of the argument is guided by Henri Lefebvre's dialectical triad of perceived, conceived, and lived space. After laying out the plan of the dissertation in the first chapter, the second chapter maps out the city of Memphis, locating the places of performance within its urban landscape in order to reveal the spatial networks--or perceived spaces--involved in theatre-going at the time. In developing the stories of the theatres themselves throughout the last three chapters, I have employed two specific, time-bound conceptions of space--"the New South city" and "the Road"--to discuss the establishment of local theatres and national touring circuits. In this way, I have attempted to show the connections and tensions between local and national events and developments. If I have succeeded, the reader will have a better idea of the relationship of theatre and urban space in Memphis during this period as it was directly, palpably lived. This dissertation provides a complex picture of U.S. theatre in microcosm during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--one that can help to both broaden and challenge larger narratives on the subject.
Sensation, Spectacle, and Reform in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Theatre
Year of Dissertation:
2009
By the second half of the nineteenth century, the rhetoric of sensation had fully permeated U.S. popular culture, surfacing in advertisements, criticism, and other forms of commentary. Its ubiquity suggests that sensation operated as a kind of capital, negotiated and exchanged in actual and metaphorical economies. Simultaneously, individuals and institutions worked to discipline American subjects through the establishment of social conventions and behavioral norms. In this project, I investigate the rapid perpetuation of both sensationalism and normalization during the mid-nineteenth century by exploring the relationship between spectacle and reform. Specifically, I study how "sensation scenes"--climatic moments in melodramas, usually featuring elaborate scenery and special effects--reflected and sometimes challenged ideological positions associated with temperance, abolition, and women's suffrage.
Devouring Metaphors: Neoliberal Consumption in Argentine and Brazilian Theatre
Year of Dissertation:
2011
Advisor:
Jean Graham-Jones
My dissertation studies the points of contact between theatre and neoliberalism, focusing on the consumption of labor power for the production of commodities. By tracing the mechanisms of capital exchange in the production of three late twentieth- and early twenty-first-centuries South American performances, I claim that, within the social field of theatre, the circular systems of cultural production operate by cannibalistically consuming corporeal labor power. To that end, I propose to place in the theatrical field of production questions rooted in conceptual and material matrices of bodies, work, consumption, exploitation, and violence.
A Quest Beyond Enlightenment: Buddhism as Counter-Enlightenment and Modernity's Other Being in the Practices of Antonin Artaud, John Cage, Tatsumi Hijikata, Kazuo Ohno, and Xingjian Gao
Year of Dissertation:
2009
I use this idea that a single term (Enlightenment) can incorporate contradictory meanings, to argue that counter-enlightenment inspiration is itself the imbedded "other being" of modernity and had already emerged not only in the East but also in the West. In this project, I use examples from the works of Artaud, Cage, Butoh, and Gao, in order to argue that although they originated in different contexts of modernity, West and East, and studied the philosophy of Enlightenment rationalism, all these theatre artists have pursued an Enlightenment "beyond" and realized and practiced insights of oriental religious thinking, similar to or exactly be Buddhist transcendent illumination and Zen enlightenment as the token of redemptive awakening that is cross-genre and trans-cultural. The theories and practices of Artaud, Cage, Butoh, and Gao concerning transcendence are at the same time similar to yet different from each other. The chief similarity among these four cases is that they all endeavor to emancipate the ultimate poetic truth of the genuine theatre or essential aesthetic transcendentality of performance from the confinements of discursive logic, dramatic/literary representation, and explanatory linear narrative.