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The purpose of this culminating project is to start translating quality Mexican and Latin American dramatic literature in order to provide to educators and theatrical directors a fundamental collection of plays. The author worked with her San Gorgonio High School students to conduct a dramaturgical study of the setting and political background of Rojo Amanecer by Xavier Robles, a play which outlines the events leading to the 1968 student massacre at Mexico City's Plaza de Tlatelolco. The author then directed the play in her role as San Gorgonio High School's new theater teacher.

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Cette thèse explore le leitmotiv de la prostitution dans l’oeuvre de Tennessee Williams et soutient que la plupart des personnages de Williams sont engagés dans une forme de prostitution ou une autre. En effectuant une analyse formaliste des textes de Williams qui illustrent toute forme de prostitution, avec une attention particulière à quatre grandes pièces, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Suddenly Last Summer (1958) et Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), cette présente étude fait valoir que le dramaturge utilise un mode de fiction—le gothique—en lien avec une pratique transgressive—la prostitution—pour relier les classes sociales et troubler les catégories de prostitution. Ce faisant, Williams offre une vision plus représentative et nuancée de la prostitution. Théoriquement, cette thèse repose sur des oeuvres critiques portant sur le genre, la sexualité et l'histoire de Michel Foucault, David Savran, et Michael Paller afin de situer la dramaturgie de Williams dans le contexte historique et culturel des années 1940 et 1950. La première partie de cette thèse (chapitres un et deux) fournit de nombreuses informations autobiographiques et biographiques qui expliquent pourquoi la prostitution est devenue le thème de prédilection pour Williams. Cette section met l’accent sur sa préoccupation constante à l’égard de sa prostitution artistique (en prostituant son art pour le succès commercial) et sexuelle (en payant pour des prostitués). Cette partie présente également un inventaire détaillé des prostituté(e)s, que je divise en trois catégories: 1) la prostitution des enfants, 2) la prostitution masculine et 3) la prostitution féminine. La deuxième partie de cette étude, composée des chapitres trois et quatre, identifie les personnages de Williams qui s’engagent dans une forme de prostitution morale. Ce groupe comprend ceux qui tirent directement profit de la prostitution des autres ainsi que ceux qui se marient uniquement pour un gain financier ou une promotion sociale ou les deux. L’oeuvre de Williams résiste la représentation stéréotypée de la prostituée en littérature comme étant uniquement de sexe féminin ou provenant des classes sociales défavorisées ou les deux. La prostituée de Williams n’est ni une figure romantique ni une rebelle menaçant la société. Cette thèse conclut qu’en représentant des enfants prostitués, des femmes de rue, des prostitués de sexe masculin, des souteneurs, des proxénètes, des propriétaires de bordels, des leaders corrompus et des personnes qui se prostituent en concluant des mariages de convenance, Williams a effectivement et incontestablement dramatisé la prostitution sous toutes ses formes. / This dissertation explores the leitmotif of prostitution in the work of Tennessee Williams and provocatively contends that most Williams characters are engaged in one form of prostitution or another. Performing a close reading of relevant texts by Williams that illustrate any form of prostitution, with special attention given to four major plays, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Suddenly Last Summer (1958), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), this study argues that the playwright uses a transgressive mode of fiction—the gothic—in conjunction with a transgressive practice—prostitution—to link the social classes and to blur the boundaries between the literal and the figurative prostitutes. In so doing, Williams offers a more calibrated, nuanced view of prostitution. Theoretically, this dissertation reposes on critical works on gender, sexuality, and history by Michel Foucault, David Savran, and Michael Paller to fully contextualize Williams’s work and to discuss the attitude towards, and place of, prostitution within the cultural zeitgeist of the 1940s and 1950s. Part A (chapters one and two) provides ample autobiographical and biographical evidence to explain that Williams’s use of prostitution as a recurring theme results from his lifelong preoccupation with, and indulgence in, an amalgam of prostitutions: artistic (prostituting his art for money) and sexual (paying for sex). It also presents a detailed inventory of the playwright’s literal prostitutes, whom I classify into the following three categories: 1) child prostitution, 2) male prostitution, and 3) female prostitution. Part B, comprising chapters three and four, engages with theory and history and identifies Williams characters who qualify as moral prostitutes. This group includes those who directly profit from prostituting others and those who marry exclusively for financial gain, social advancement, or both. Williams’s work eschews the stereotypical representation of prostitutes in literature as lower-class streetwalkers or morally bankrupt females or both. The playwright neither presents the prostitute as a romantic figure of transcendence nor as a rebellious one who threatens society. This dissertation concludes that by depicting child prostitutes, female streetwalkers, male hustlers, gay-for-pay studs, pimps, procurers, brothel operators, the morally compromised powers that be, and those who prostitute themselves by entering into loveless marriages, Williams has effectively and incontrovertibly dramatized whoredom in all of its forms.

This work analyses the American family in context of society and its demands. It focuses on the cannonical works of the Modern American drama, namely plays of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard and David Mamet. The playwrights are analysed in two distinctive groups according to similar themes they share. Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller depict the family under increasing pressure from the outside as well from the inside. The unit disintegrates, members of the family escape and thus the unit loses its funtions. The pressure is imposed by the tenets of the American mythology that governs the society, which, in turn, influences the family. The common theme of the first group of playwrights is the feeling of loss. This comprises of two dimensions - spatial and tempoval. The second group of playwrights share the same theme of loss with its spatial and temporal implications. They are characteristic by their distinctive use of language that depicts the prevalent sense of doom, apocalypse, futility and sterility. The search for identity is also implied by the restlessness of characters. The detrimental effect of harsh business environment on the family is explored with regards to masculinity. The work shows the family in the context of the 1950s, an era when the family was elevated to...

This dissertation examines a range of musicals to understand how and why the features that make a musical a musical are used to tell history. I argue that the historical musical is a distinctive historiographic mode that intertwines these affordances to include multiple histories. In Soft Power (2018), a musical I explore in this dissertation, David Henry Hwang introduces the idea of the “delivery system” of the musical as a particularly effective way to tell stories in both cognitive registers and affective registers. As one of the characters in the musical states, “once those violins start playing, these shows go straight to our hearts.” Many of the most beloved and most experimental musicals from the canon depict and deal with historical events. I argue that the musicals I study interpret important historical events, and do so by means of their formal properties, often intertwining several layers of history which can be experienced simultaneously by an audience.This dissertation close reads two musicals per chapter based on their historical contexts, both when they are set and when they are written. These musicals are paired together based on their shared thematic/historical and formal concerns. Soft Power responds directly to the imperialist attitudes and multiple histories at work in The King and I (1951), while both musicals consider what it means to be an American across a wide expanse of time. I focus on 1776 (1969) and Hamilton (2015) and their responses to issues such as slavery, the role of women, and war as these responses are shaped by the politics and contexts of the moment in which they were written. I pair two shows by John Kander and Fred Ebb, Cabaret (1966) and The Scottsboro Boys (2010), due to their formal similarities in using the entertainment styles from the period in which the shows are set to comment on both entertainment and history. My final chapter pairs Pacific Overtures (1976) and Assassins (1990), shows co-written by John Weidman and Stephen Sondheim, both of which critique American mythologies of historical progress. Because of the many layers that make a musical (choreography, song, orchestrations, text, and stars to name a few) there are many possibilities for layering multiple histories into any one musical. In conclusion, musical theatre is often considered fun and pleasurable, which it absolutely can be, but it also does complex historical and political work using a surprisingly sophisticated historiography to do that work.

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The family trilogy, Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and True West, presents Sam Shepard's strong bond with his culture and his people, illustrates an intense connection with the land, and reveals a deep longing for the traditions of the past, through the dramatisation of the betrayal of the American Dream. Although obviously part of the American tradition of family drama, Shepard never completely conforms, subverting the genre by debunking the traditional family in order to make a statement about the present disintegration of the bonds of family life and modern American society. In the trilogy Shepard decries the loss of the old codes connecting with his despair at the debasement of the ideals of the past and the demise of the American Dream. Finally, the plays insist on the importance a new set of tenets to supplant the sterile ethics of modern America / M.A. (English)

The family trilogy, Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and True West, presents Sam Shepard's strong bond with his culture and his people, illustrates an intense connection with the land, and reveals a deep longing for the traditions of the past, through the dramatisation of the betrayal of the American Dream. Although obviously part of the American tradition of family drama, Shepard never completely conforms, subverting the genre by debunking the traditional family in order to make a statement about the present disintegration of the bonds of family life and modern American society. In the trilogy Shepard decries the loss of the old codes connecting with his despair at the debasement of the ideals of the past and the demise of the American Dream. Finally, the plays insist on the importance a new set of tenets to supplant the sterile ethics of modern America / M.A. (English)