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.

“What shows itself is a proposed world, a world I may inhabit, and wherein I can project my ownmost possibilities” (Paul Ricoeur). This research investigates devised biblical drama as an alternative hermeneutic for orally focused churches, whose practical problems in engaging with Scripture leave them at the unintended margins of the global churches’ world of assumed literacy. The work builds on a Ricoeurian perception of Scripture as a dynamic of time, telling and tradition that offers a drawing invitation to Christians to enter and inhabit its proposed worlds of anticipative and participative remembering, beckoning towards life in the now-and-not-yet of the kingdom of God. A telling case is offered by the orally focused Anglican Churches in Gambella (Ethiopia), through the reflective voices of their church leaders, and through the illustration of their dramas: seen within the innovation of fresh interpretation, and also through the sedimentation of their tradition of drama. Firstly, the nature and interpretative process of devising biblical drama is investigated, demonstrating that this holistic, creative, and communal, contextualized approach to Scripture entwines aspects of criticality and orality through its conversational questioning and imagining of Scripture that is enhanced through practical embodiment. The research proposes that the embodied, enacted, mimetic form of drama offers a liminality that enables participative inhabitation of the proposed worlds of Scripture. Secondly, the developing tradition of Anglican biblical dramas in Gambella is investigated. These dramas inherit, form, participate in, and hand on the tradition of Christian cultural memory on which these churches are founded, through a proclamation of Scripture that is made manifest within present event. This research argues that both forms of drama offer participative possibilities for faithful and formative, hopeful inhabitation of the proposed worlds of Scripture, and so could offer potential gifts to the wider church.

abstract: In this document I detail the inception of the community service learning program, Flashback, that I created for Actor's Youth Theatre of Mesa Arizona. I first provide the organization's history and then expound upon my beliefs and how the ASU theatre for youth program, along with the needs of AYT, led me to create the program. I then describe the goals and processes of implementing the community based project. I also define service learning and why the program was designed around its principles. Finally, I describe the program's curriculum, devising process and Flashback's first trial run, and then continue, evaluating the performance and reflecting upon the process. The appendix includes the devised script, photos of the performance and interaction with the community, some of the planned curriculum and portions of my journals written during the process. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Theatre 2012

abstract: Performing the Electrical traces the histories and futures of electrical discovery and knowledge through cultural performances, socio-political assemblages, and the more-than-human worldmaking functions of energy in general and electricity in particular, or what I refer to as energy-as-electricity. This project seeks to transform how energy-as-electricity is perceived, and thereby to re-vision the impact that energy-rich relationships might have ecologically—in both the social and environmental senses of the word. As a practice-led inquiry I use my scenographic sensibilities in combination with performance studies and energy humanities lenses to identify how energy-scapes form through social performances, material relations, and aesthetic/ritualistic interventions. This approach allows me to synthesize vastly different scales of energy-as-electricity performatives and spatialities and propose alternative framings which work towards decolonizing and re-feminizing energy-rich relationships. This research considers the way power flows, accumulates, and transforms through performance as embodied expression, practice and eventful doings of human and more-than-human agents. It asks: if place is practiced space (Henri Lefebvre), how can decolonizing and re-feminizing energy-rich relationships transform normative power relationships (or power geometries, as cultural geographer Doreen Massey refers to such globalized interconnections)—which are formed through electricity, technologies and colonial-capitalism? I ground this inquiry as an ecological intervention in order to investigate how performing with electricity differently (both in collective imaginations and quotidian interactions), can change the ways that electricity is produced and consumed in the time of the Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and Plasticene. The following study produces written and tacit knowledge that expands the framing of energy-rich relationships shared between human and more-than-human performatives. My provocation is that experiential encounters are critical for expanding the ontological plurality of energy-as-electricity with ecological a/effect. Drawing on the insights of performance scenographer Rachel Hann, I demonstrate that scenographic methodologies in an expanded field, along with embodied sensing, provide productive insights into this endeavor of expansion. This project both serves as a space making/space keeping provocation and offers a methodology for devising more desirable futures. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Performance 2020

Syftet med min uppsats är att undersöka hur leken som ett arbetssätt i undervisning i scenografiskt arbete upplevs av deltagarna. För att undersöka detta används material från två empiriska studier. Material till studierna består av fokusgruppsamtal, deltagande observationer samt en skriftlig enkät. Med hjälp av teorier kring lek och lärande och litteraturstudier om lek i undervisning, analyseras materialet utifrån hermeneutikens syn på del och helhet samt en abduktiv förståelse och förklaringsansats. Analysen beskrivs med hjälp av teman som genererats utifrån livberättelseforskningens idéer om vida och snäva teman. Leken i ett specifikt undervisningsmoment ses som ett snävt tema medans det vida temat kan beskriver lekobjektets betydelse i ett specifikt lekfullt undervisningsmoment.Mitt arbete visar att studenter och deltagare i de två studierna, i olika grad lärt sig om scenografi med hjälp av lek. Detta gäller både det praktiska skissande i modell och rum samt mer teoretiskt, i form av en förståelse för scenografins påverkan och betydelse för helheten. De lekobjekt som har använts i undervisningen har på olika sätt hjälpt deltagarna att återupptäcka sina lekminnen och använda sin lekförmåga för sitt lärande. Det visar sig även att deltagarna i undervisningen har upplevt den som lustfylld, kreativ och prestigelös.

This thesis explores various artistic and ritual practices of martial arts in relation to its presentation on stage. As a martial artist and actor I believe there are complementary practices in both crafts interdisciplinary of each other. For a martial artist, the individual’s performance and execution of martial arts techniques can be enhanced through emotional availability and characterization. For the actor, the martial arts can help condition the body physically, mentally and emotionally to create a grounded presence of connectivity to the earth. However, sometimes the martial arts are viewed as a militaristic discipline and not as artistic expression. I believe that the martial arts can be both discipline and artistry. Over the past three years of my graduate studies I have explored different methods to merge these methodologies. This thesis examines a successful devised show conceived by students and myself at our martial arts studio (dojang), at Martial Arts World of Powhatan, in Powhatan Virginia. This thesis’ examination describes and evaluates the production we titled M.A. Cirque: the Evolution (Martial Arts Circus: an evolution of martial arts). The M.A. Cirque is a theatrical martial arts performance expanded out of a ten minute competition routine to become a thirty minute production performed in Las Vegas, Nevada. Secondly, an exploration for further analysis of a supplemental martial arts demonstration titled Battle at Olympus: A new martial arts super show, describes the revisit of the theatrical process that was developed when devising the M.A. Cirque.

The purpose of this enquiry is to challenge and add a further dimension to cultural management, through an empirical exploration of what cultural managers do in a particular domain (theatre) and scale of organisation (micro-) within the (subsidised) cultural sector, in South West England. Working from a sensemaking perspective (Weick, 1979, 1995a, 2009), it focuses attention on what these practitioners do, rather than what they could, should or do not do. It draws on literature from cultural management, theatre and performance studies and organisation and management studies to help address the following questions: • What do cultural managers do in micro-scale theatre organisations (in South West England)? • Why do they do what they do? • How do they do what they do? • In what ways might an analysis of what they do inform talk in and about cultural management? • To what other theoretical conversations might such an analysis contribute? The subjects are three cultural managers running micro-scale contemporary theatre organisations in Bristol, Plymouth and Redruth. The study adopts a qualitative, ethnographic, multi-case study approach, with data collected through non-participant observation, informal interviews and documentary sources. Analysis is inductive, deductive and abductive. The thesis concludes with a conceptual and epistemological re-framing of cultural management as cultural managing, suggesting that what the cultural managers studied do is not only vocationally dedicated to the purpose, values and work of their organisation, but is also isomorphically inflected by them in the doing. Furthermore, it offers (a) an adjusted perspective on “high reliability organising” (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2007) orientated more towards making the best than mitigating the worst; (b) a focus on organising in theatre to colleagues pursuing the relationship between management and the arts; and (c) a challenge to traditional notions of divide between theatre managing and theatre making, particularly at the micro-scale. This is an interdisciplinary study with cross-disciplinary implications.

In this dissertation, I advance the question of what it means for applied theatre artists to give voice to the community members with whom they work. The study engages with some of the ethical and aesthetic tensions that emerge when one group of people (artists) is entrusted with giving dramatic form to the lived experience of another group (community members). The central premise of the dissertation is that when community participants increase their independent capacity to devise dynamic and compelling theatre, they achieve greater agency. Using a grounded theory analysis, I theorize qualities and characteristics that contribute to the staging of aesthetically arresting theatre, organized into a conceptual lexicon. This praxis-based study is intended to enable applied theatre practitioners to more directly give voice to their community partners. The dissertation presents a vocabulary that offers community participants and professional artists a mutually understood language with which to engage the power of the theatrical event. / Graduate

This dissertation entitled CROSSOVER, between the layers of my own staging experience, on the boundaries of forms, genres and not only those, is divided into three parts. All sections are primarily based on my own theatre experience and are interlaced with numerous examples from performances and theatrically performative thinking of selected foreign ensembles. Given the subject matter, the first part primarily deals with Gob Squad and Shunt ensembles and the director Mike Leigh. In the second part, Rimini Protokoll and again Gob Squad are mentioned. The third part is dedicated mainly to the director Tim Etchells and his Forced Entertainment ensemble. My theatre experience is presented in the introductory part of this dissertation; starting with complex shows which represent a symbiosis of all components and are linked by their staging style and formerly discovered drama methods to authorial/devised projects to theatre which implements documentary and technological elements. In the first part of this dissertation, differences and subtle nuances between authorial and devised theatres are examined with focus on the specific devising creative method. The second part of the dissertation is focused on documentary and technologies. The third part consists of subtopics introduced in the previous chapters with respect to crossing boundaries between forms, genres and methodologies, which are more closely related to the phenomena of boundaries between theatre performances/events, fiction/reality, spectator/witness, actor/performer. The methods or the optics with which I work are based on the phenomenon of the mentioned areas and topics. The manner of addressing the issue can be likened to a phenomenological insight.

abstract: Guided by Clifford Geertz's notion of culture as symbolic stories people tell themselves about themselves, the purpose of this study is to examine how youth in an urban area of Phoenix, AZ experience collectively creating and performing original documentary theatre. I pay attention to the ways youth participants--also known as artist-researchers--construct, perform, and/or perceive their identities as they practice drama techniques including improvisation, physical theatre, and Theatre of the Oppressed for the purposes of making docutheatre for social justice. First the artist-researchers chose the topics for their play. Next, they learned and applied drama and research skills to gather and examine data sources used to construct a script that explores hiding and exposure. In the process of sharing and gathering true stories our unique docutheatre-making culture was created. This multimodal qualitative research case study draws upon the genres of arts-based research and visual ethnography as primary modes of data collection and interpretation. Narrative description and the ethnodramatic mode of representation are used in conjunction with still images and this study's companion website (www.meant2see.com) to report research findings. Primary data sources include participant observation fieldnotes, over twenty hours of recorded video footage, photographs, and the project's original script and performance of To Be What's Not Meant to See . Further data include journal entries, drawings, and social media. All data were coded using In Vivo and Process Coding methods and analyzed through a cultural studies lens. Codes were sorted into phenomenological categories representative of recurring ideas and themes. Assertions were then solidified once specific key linkages were constructed. This study's key assertions are: Key Assertion 1: Participation in devising documentary social justice theatre influences and affects the construction, perception, and/or performance of urban youth identities through profound connections made with interviewees during the interview process and through the collection of true stories that provide new information and rare opportunities for self-reflection and self-realization; Key Assertion 2: Portions of the roles urban youth play in their identity narratives are disguised or hidden--purposefully, reluctantly, and/or subconsciously--in order to appeal to friends, families, or the codes of dominant culture. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Theatre 2014