In this thesis, I explore applied theatre and site-specific performance workshops as methods for public participation in city planning. “The Ghosts of Waller Creek” program worked to foster interest in and facilitate dialogue around the redevelopment of an abandoned urban creek area in Austin, TX. I explore three guiding questions: How does an applied theatre practitioner foster collaboration with non-theatre artists on a creative project that achieves common goals? How can applied theatre and site-specific performance workshops and events foster place attachment and engage citizens in city planning? How does an applied theatre practitioner translate participatory, applied theatre workshops into an artifact that is useful to city planners? Using reflective practitioner research processes and qualitative coding methods, I examine these questions through an analysis of surveys, interviews, performances, discussions, field notes, and observations. I first explore the role that goals, communication, and reflection played in my partnership with an urban designer. I then use place attachment theory to examine how the workshops and events shifted participants’ interest in, and engagement with, Waller Creek and city planning. Next, I investigate how performative artifacts such as audio maps and interactive performances can communicate participants’ opinions about Waller Creek to city planners and to the general public. Finally I discuss how the project situates in the field of arts-based civic dialogue and address guidelines for future projects. This thesis invites applied theatre practitioners to consider how their work can contribute to arts-based civic dialogue in their own communities. / text

How can a playwright share authorial control with a group of actors when creating a new play script? How does the individual playwright address matters of genre, form, style and structure to create a unifying theme, while remaining true to the dramatic intention and aesthetics of the group? What impact will the collaborators have on a playwright's work? Will they help or hinder the writing process? This exegesis closely follows the creation of a new play, The Woods, in a process where the playwright intended to facilitate a collaborative process with the actors rather than act as sole author. Issues arising in this mode of working include the real meaning of sole authorship, aesthetic integrity and creative power balance. The analysis of these issues will have relevance for theatre practitioners working in collaborative contexts.

This explication seeks to frame a practice-led research project that explores the scenographic elements of place and object as an intermediary device between body and narrative in devising theatre. A focus of this work is scenographics as a mediating moment between traumatised body and painful narrative; using objects and place as a means of safely exploring and un/recovering memory to make theatre. The research also explores wider applications of scenographics in their formative and generative potential in devising theatre. The practical research is underpinned and located in various conceptual frameworks. Place is guided by Rachel Hann's work Beyond Scenography (2019) with a focus on place orientation, as well as terminologies of space and place introduced by Gay McAuley in various texts. Object is primarily considered through assemblage, semiotics and phenomenology with a focus on a disruption of the subject/object hierarchy as a means of facilitating a scenographic mediatory stand-in during the devising process and in the final theatre piece. The final practical output is process-orientated and focuses on devising a piece of theatre, Hallways, with other participants using place and object. This will be achieved through sets of exercises, activities and games developed throughout the research process; these will be expounded on in the paper.

In this research I have explored the performance making process of world renowned director Robert Lepage. This exploration informed my own process, creating an original performance called GAIJIN, where my roles included producer / director / designer and co-writer. The practice-led research strategy employed in this research has allowed me to navigate the sometimes slippery slope of connecting various performance discourses with the pragmatics of the performance making process. The reason for this research is my strong interest in the director’s role and my affinity with the practice of Robert Lepage. My observation of the performance making process of Robert Lepage prompted the creation of a conceptual framework informed by Hans-Thies Lehmann’s work Postdramatic Theatre. These theoretical concerns were then further investigated in the creation of my own show. This research process has uncovered a performance making process that foregrounds the working principles of simultaneity and synaesthesia, which together offer a changed conception of the performance text in live performance. Simultaneity is a space of chaotic interaction where many resources are used to build a perpetually evolving performance text. Synaesthesia is the type of navigation required – an engagement consisting of interrelated sense-impressions that uniquely connect the performance makers with the abundance of content and stimulus; they search for poetic connections and harmonious movement between the resources. This engagement relies on intuitive playmaking where the artists must exhibit restraint and reserve to privilege the interaction of resources and observe the emerging performance. This process has the potential to create a performance that is built by referential layers of theatrical signifiers and impressions. This research offers an insight into the practices of Robert Lepage as well as a lens through which to view other unique devising processes. It also offers a performance making language that is worthy of consideration by all performance makers, from directors to performers. The significance of this process is its inherent qualities of innovation produced by all manner of art forms and resources interacting in a unique performance making space.

Submitted by Natália Guimarães null (natalia_guimaraes@hotmail.com) on 2016-07-13T20:00:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO DE MESTRADO CORRIGIDA PÓS DEFESA PDF.pdf: 3173876 bytes, checksum: 0ce3b75089bac621092964a17f1a4cb7 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Paula Grisoto (grisotoana@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2016-07-15T20:14:30Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 guimaraes_n_me_ia.pdf: 3173876 bytes, checksum: 0ce3b75089bac621092964a17f1a4cb7 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-15T20:14:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 guimaraes_n_me_ia.pdf: 3173876 bytes, checksum: 0ce3b75089bac621092964a17f1a4cb7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-05-16 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Esta pesquisa propõe uma análise das referências estéticas das práticas teatrais da Cia. Artehúmus de Teatro, grupo paulista fundado em 1987. Nas pegadas do teatro contemporâneo, esta companhia teatral mobiliza múltiplos elementos estéticos ao longo de uma experiência artística que dá a mesma importância a todas as etapas do processo criativo. Diante de tamanha pluralidade, a pesquisa aqui projetada mobiliza um instrumento metodológico também plural – a “crítica genética” – que se notabiliza por desvelar a gênese criativa da obra artística ao invés de se prender ao espetáculo finalizado. Contudo, como a “crítica genética” ainda se prende a um referencial exclusivamente estético e, considerando que nenhuma obra vaga num vácuo social, esta pesquisa também propõe a “sociologização” do processo criativo, isto é, propõe desvelar as escolhas estéticas que engendram a obra, conectando-as às raízes sociais dos artistas e do grupo. Em suma, se o espetáculo final é um ponto de condensação da experiência criativa, esta, por sua vez, é a condensação das múltiplas experiências sociais dos artistas envolvidos no processo criativo. / This research suggests an analysis of the aesthetic references of the theatrical practices of Cia. Artehúmus de Teatro, a theatre company founded in São Paulo in 1987. Following the paths of contemporary theatre, this company has applied several aesthetic elements throughout its history based on giving equal importance to each stage of the creative process. In order to address such a wide variety, the present research employs an equally plural methodological instrument – the ‘genetic criticism’ – known to be effective in unveiling the creative genesis of a work of art, instead of simply evaluating the final performance. Nevertheless, once the ‘genetic criticism’ grantedly focus on a merely aesthetic referential and considering that no work of art operates in a social vaccum, this research also proposes a deeper look over the social roots of the artists and their work, in order to understand their aesthetic choices. In a nutshell, if we consider the final performance to be the ‘condensation point’ of a creative experience, this last one is the epitome of multiple social experiences lived by each and every artist involved in the creative process.

abstract: Those who are in or have aged out of foster care, most of whom are queer, Black, brown, and low-income, are represented by social workers, educational advocates, behavioral health specialists, and the mainstream media as “at-risk” for criminal behavior, teen pregnancy, homelessness, and lower levels of educational attainment. Current and former residents of foster care and their experiences must be understood beyond these deficit models in order to restore humanity to and bring about positive change for this population. This project traced the strategies for survival of those in and aged out of foster care in Arizona through artmaking and critical qualitative methods. Using borderlands theory and medicinal histories, I demonstrated how system involved youth paint a picture of foster care as a dehumanizing borderland creating una cultura mestiza – a hybrid culture that youth learned to navigate as both healers and healing. Additionally, I argued the foster care system is inherently disabling by way of the processual (re)narrativization the system dictates in order to make those in the system legible to the State through the labeling of mental and physical disabilities. Lastly, I explored insights garnered about foster care through ensemble-based devised theatre. I found it is important to have systemic representations of foster care in tandem with embodied experiences of said system. Collage-making served as an accessible mechanism for relationship building, material generation, and material knowledge. I discovered meaningful ways of representing absent presences of system involved people through feeding forward their artistic creations into the devising process. Taken together, I found foster care system involved people survive through art and creativity, connection to people and places, and keen resourcefulness cultivated in the system. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Women and Gender Studies 2020

Dramaturgs have been struggling to define themselves and assert their raison d'être in the American theatre for the past four decades. In an evolving theatrical landscape that includes expanding new play development processes and new modes of collaborative interdisciplinary theatre-making, the role of the dramaturg must be reexamined in order for it to stake a new artistic claim in the field. Devised theatre-making processes rely on dramaturgical practice as an integral part of generating, editing, and structuring performance material and offer a fertile artistic avenue for dramaturgs to utilize their skills. To explore the role of the dramaturg in devised theatre, I chose to curate a festival of three new devised works entitled Beyond the Horizon. This thesis describes in detail my role as curator in the planning, creation, and execution of the festival, as well as my role as a dramaturg within the devising process of one of the three works. To encompass both the idea of the dramaturg as an active co-creator of performance and an empowered facilitator of change, I proposed a new title for the role: artistic instigator. Drawn from my conclusions and discoveries while working on the Beyond the Horizon festival, I have formed a description about how the dramaturg-as-artistic-instigator might function within devising ensembles, propose changes to current new play development practices, and advocate for expanded methods of play-making.

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Theatre Triad is a new approach to devising collaborative ensemble theatre starting with the three main components of Performance: Voice, Movement, and Text. These components were deconstructed and reconstructed in pairs as the basis for the devising process. The performance process begins with creating an ensemble followed by four steps: exploring the theatrical genres affiliated with the pairings of Voice and Movement, Movement and Text, Voice and Text, and completed with reintegrating all three components. Through this process many things occur, a new play is created, ensemble members focus on exploring the elements of acting and performance, and a strong foundation of acting skills is laid for young actors. Theatre Triad can also be used as a method for teaching a number of courses in Devising Theatre or Acting classes. In this paper you will learn how Theatre Triad works as both a production approach and method in actor training.