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The South is a region of mystery, of tradition, of shifting identity. As a cultural region within the United States, the South has always defined (and redefined) itself in such a way that it remains distinctive from, even oppositional to, mainstream American culture. All too often, however, this identity redefinition casts the South as an outsider culture, a comic extreme, or a tradition-bound cultural backwater. In recent years, this process has stagnated within Southern culture and the theatrical arts that simultaneously shape and reflect Southern identity. This dissertation reinvigorates the South's historical process of redefinition in the face of the postmodern complexity facing the region. As dramatic representations of the region are limited to a select historical canon, the first element of this reinvigoration is the need for contemporary representations of Southernness in the theatre and festivals of the region. Thus, this dissertation identifies several new Southern playwrights (including Hilly Hicks, Steve Murray, Shay Youngblood, Elizabeth Dewberry, Bob Devon-Jones, Glenda Dickerson, and Breena Clarke) and their plays' construction and reconstruction of Southern culture. These plays are then examined through framework of the New Southern Gothic (NSG) mode, a model of community representation that places seemingly contradictory or oppositional elements in a flexible structure of community and potential for social, cultural, and political development The characteristics of this NSG genre are then looked at in the larger cultural context of Southern history and the issues facing the region today. They are used to evaluate the limited potential of existing Southern representations (such as that put forth by the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival.) Then, newer, more flexible models of Southernness are drawn from NSG plays. These NSG models provide the basis for envisioning a future cultural identity for the South that preserves its distinctiveness while avoiding the trap of homogenization, fetishization, and historicization that characterize traditional representations of the region. These new models also provide a communal basis for Southerners to join forces while acknowledging their differences. From the stage to regional festivals to the public arena, these models can then be used to enact social and cultural change within the region. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2004. / March 26, 2004. / Southern Gothic, Drama, Community, South / Includes bibliographical references. / Carrie Sandahl, Professor Directing Dissertation; Jean Graham-Jones, Outside Committee Member; Anita Gonzalez, Committee Member.

published_or_final_version / abstract / English / Master / Master of Philosophy

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published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Arts

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Fiktion der Handlung? This highly conventional genre can, I claim, through both embracing and problematising its very conventionality express itself with irony and subtlety that is at least as effective as open self-praise by poets in comic genres that allow it.

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This thesis' focus lies deep within the Filipino immigrant's "home" in the U.S. and offers an investigation of how different Filipino/Filipino-American homes in the texts examined challenge and confront the seeming viability and stability of U.S. boundaries that exclude them. Using postcolonial theory, critical scholarship on the "idea of home" and transnationalism, and guided by the metaphor of the local Philippine custom of the bayanihan, I argue that Filipino-American playwrights, rather than writing homes solely rooted either as a point of origin or relocation, activate the Filipino-American home by rendering the home as open, mobile, and unfixed and constantly enacting the process of home-making. Chapter One focuses on Chris B. Millado's PeregriNasyon, a historical drama that provides an elaboration of how Filipino domestic space was invaded and managed during the earliest stages of U.S. occupation. By looking at how Millado's dramaturgy urges for an oscillating investigation of the two foregrounded homes in his play, I focus on how the domestic space gets activated in order to evince the relationship of the Philippines and the U.S. Chapter Two of my discussion looks at how the central Filipina maternal figure in Ralph Peña's Flipzoids, opens up the Filipino-American home as a provocative site where constitutive racial dimensions of "belonging" in the U.S. for Filipino immigrants may be interrogated. I argue for the rethinking of the Filipino-American home to foreground how home-making for Filipino immigrants involves a constant process of building and rebuilding. In Chapter Two, I then examine Han Ong's play Middle Finger, a differential assessment to Flipzoids. I examine how the play entraps the Filipino-American family and de-activates the home despite its attempts to highlight the systems of social control that negatively affects its young, male Filipino-American characters. The plays discussed in my thesis re-present homes marked by their transit from the Philippines to the United States. These plays stage the challenges in rebuilding new homes caused by the immigrants' uprooting and their struggles encountered as minorities in the U.S. As I argue, not only do these plays paint a picture of home as one that is constantly harrowed by its colonial past, ultimately, they ask what lies ahead for the Filipino-American home. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2010. / March 29, 2010. / Filipino American Theatre, Home Philippines, Ralph Pena, Chris Millado, Han Ong, Filipino American Drama / Includes bibliographical references. / Irma Mayorga, Professor Directing Thesis; Natalya Baldyga, Committee Member; Kris Salata, Committee Member.