This project is about my directing a Readers Theatre play about the Civil Rights Movement. It covers the period from 1619 to the present. The script is written by Professor Bobby Funk of the Theatre and Dance Department of ETSU. I have only been in several plays and that as an actor. This will be first my first experience as a director. As this is my first time, I will endeavor to relate an exact as possible account of this experience. I will in my first chapter tell you about the play, the characters, and my research in preparing for the project. I have kept a journal of the things that occurred during the audition process and rehearsals. Finally, I will report on the culmination of all these steps, what worked and what did not.

Richard III is regarded as one of Shakespeare's longest and most complex plays, with a complicated plot, and a character that is a Machiavellian villain. After a workshop of Act I as an MFA Directing Project, I was granted by Temple University to stage a full production of Richard III as my thesis. Approaching the play proved difficult for me due to my lack of experience with Shakespearean text. However, by analyzing Shakespeare's text, and approaching the adaptation with the goal to make the story as clear as possible, I desired to create a production that embodied the idea of "now." The designed team and I created a world that was a-historic pulling from classic and modern forms that provided the necessary landscape for the play to occur. Through a series of seven chapters I explain my process from conception to production. I also evaluate my growth as a director during this artistic achievement. A Director's Script, Actor's Lexicon, Program Note, Design Renderings and Production Photos support my journey to opening night of Richard III. / Theater

An in depth reflection of the development of my approach to directing theatre as seen through the production processes of co-creating and directing The Psyche Project, directing Our Town by Thornton Wilder, and the journey of becoming a wife and a mother. / text

During his fifty-year career, the Italian director Giorgio Strehler (1921-1997) staged more plays by Shakespeare than by any other playwright, but only a few of his most recent and successful Shakespearean productions have received international critical attention, and The Tempest he directed in 1978 is among them. Thirty years before however, in 1948, he directed a first, completely different production of the same text. Starting from the theoretical assumption that a theatre performance, as object, exists only in the moment in which it is actually produced, that is, in its reception by the audience, this dissertation has a twofold purpose: to explore the different contexts in which the two productions directed by Strehler were staged, and to underline how, from the beginning of his career he developed a crucial attention for interpretative techniques culminating in the 1978 Tempest. Aside from being based on the same text and from being produced by the same ensemble, the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, though with two radically different acting and technical troupes, the two productions of The Tempest directed by Strehler enlighten the variety of dynamics – from historical, political, and cultural, to more specifically theatrical, technical, and dramaturgical – which interacted within him while he was working at the staging of the play, and emphasizes the centrality of the director in contemporary theatre. Finally, this dissertation examines how the pragmatic process of rehearsal might modify the director's theoretical approach to a text, and shows how the study of a performance consists not just in the quest for its meaning, but in the investigation of how the text is brought to the stage, to that coalescent point that, in order to materialize, demands active participation and involvement from both interpreters and spectators.

My thesis will explore the role of the female director. The two plays on which I will focus, Neil LaBute’s medea redux and Frank McGuinness’s Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, call for quite different casts. The former involves a woman in a police interrogation room; the latter involves three men in a Lebanese prison. Despite the overt masculinity of these plays, traces of femininity permeate. Indeed, my status as a female director provided one of the clearest paths into these plays when I directed them last year at Virginia Commonwealth University. My gender also greatly influenced my direction of the actors. My experiences working on these shows provided a backdrop from which to reflect on my role as a female director in a male-dominated field. In my thesis I will reference notes I took during the rehearsal process. I will also include much of my dramaturgical research. Finally, throughout my writing process, I will attempt to define “masculine” and “feminine” both with regard to theatre and to theatre direction. This document was created in Microsoft Word 2003 for Mac.

Notes on Solace is a reflection on my process as a director. In this writing I am tracing back all my inspirations from film, stage, and lived visual and sonic landscapes.

The dissertation is a 'critical edition' of a system of actor training based on three main sources: a vocabulary of movement analysis developed by Rudolf Laban in the last years of his life; C. G. Jung's theory of psychological functions and types; and the acting system of C. Stanislavski and his main followers. The three strands were brought together by the dancer and acting teacher Yat Malmgren (1916-2002), who taught his system for over forty years to some of the major figures of world theatre and film: Peter Brook, Pierce Brosnan, Simon Callow, Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins, Adrian Noble among others. The dissertation is presented in two volumes: - Volume I sets the system in context, historically as well as in terms of current discourses about the nature of acting. It includes a survey of its origins, followed by an in-depth examination of its three main sources, focusing on the central concept of energy in acting. Further chapters describe: a. a systematic, step-by-step psychophysical approach to analysing character, the actor's own self and to ways of bridging the two in the process of transformation. The author captures the salient features of a method of work which informs aspects of Western acting practice. b. the light thrown by the system on the idea of theatre character. The author puts forward the idea of a character 'independent' of both actor and text. c. the applications of the system in training and professional practice, based on interviews with a number of prominent British actors and directors. - Volume II consists of a detailed, annotated description of the system. It is based on a free transcript of recordings of Yat Malmgren's teaching and amounts to a 'manual' for those interested in studying and/or teaching the system. The volume is illustrated throughout. Appendices include original materials derived from Laban's last years of work, published here for the first time.

During his fifty-year career, the Italian director Giorgio Strehler (1921-1997) staged more plays by Shakespeare than by any other playwright, but only a few of his most recent and successful Shakespearean productions have received international critical attention, and The Tempest he directed in 1978 is among them. Thirty years before however, in 1948, he directed a first, completely different production of the same text. Starting from the theoretical assumption that a theatre performance, as object, exists only in the moment in which it is actually produced, that is, in its reception by the audience, this dissertation has a twofold purpose: to explore the different contexts in which the two productions directed by Strehler were staged, and to underline how, from the beginning of his career he developed a crucial attention for interpretative techniques culminating in the 1978 Tempest. Aside from being based on the same text and from being produced by the same ensemble, the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, though with two radically different acting and technical troupes, the two productions of The Tempest directed by Strehler enlighten the variety of dynamics – from historical, political, and cultural, to more specifically theatrical, technical, and dramaturgical – which interacted within him while he was working at the staging of the play, and emphasizes the centrality of the director in contemporary theatre. Finally, this dissertation examines how the pragmatic process of rehearsal might modify the director's theoretical approach to a text, and shows how the study of a performance consists not just in the quest for its meaning, but in the investigation of how the text is brought to the stage, to that coalescent point that, in order to materialize, demands active participation and involvement from both interpreters and spectators.

"The Worlds Behind the Worlds" documents the process of directing "A Midsummer Night's Dream," presented October 2008 in the McLeod Theater at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Specifically, this document details the development of the director's vision for the play from initial readings through post-production evaluations. The work is structured chronologically, beginning in Chapter One with a discourse on the director's initial response to the play followed by a preliminary statement of vision. The second chapter analyzes key research through which the preliminary statement of vision was filtered and discusses the director's conclusions. A revised statement of vision and concept is presented, followed by a proposed production process and projected results. Chapter Three explains the execution of this production process, and the final chapter consists of the director's evaluation of the production. Appendices follow including visual research, production documents, the director's approach to heightened language, a rehearsal journal, an external evaluation, and production photos.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OFJennifer Caudell, for the Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre, presented on April 10, 2020, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.TITLE: A WHITE WOMAN’S VIEW INTO AFRICAN AMERICAN FEMALE OPPRESSION: DIRECTING DysFuNkTiOnAl? BY TERESA MCKINLEYMAJOR PROFESSOR: Olusegun Ojewuyi “A White Woman’s View into African Amerian Female Oppression: Directing DysFuNkTiOnAl? by Teresa Mckinley” delineates the process by which the script was proposed, produced and performed as part of the Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s Big Muddy Play Festival for the Spring semester of 2020. It was presented in the Christian H. Moe Theatre in the Communications Building on the Southern Illinois University Carbondale campus on March 26 and 28, 2020. Chapter one details the research and analysis work completed by the director, Jennifer Caudell, before the pre-production phase of the project. Chapter two describes and analyzes the pre-production process from deciding to direct DysFuNkTiOnAl? to the beginning of the rehearsal process. In chapter three, the discussion will segue into the rehearsal and production process; this chapter will discuss challenges faced, problems solved, tactics and agendas used to create a fully realized and unified production. The final chapter, chapter four, will lay out the post-production process, including the performances of the show and the director’s evaluation of the final project and process.