The study elucidates the relation of Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to Hamlet on the one hand and to the Theatre of the Absurd on the other. The two plays chosen to represent the Theatre of the Absurd are Samuel Beckett1 s Waiting for Godot and Harold Pinter* s The Caretaker. Since Stoppard is admired as a master craftsman of language, the emphasis is on his use of language. The extent to which the use of the cliché characterizes the three absurd plays is examined. It is found that the language area covered by the term cliche is not clearly defined and that the term is not uniformly applied. The inquiry centres on finding features, such as repetition, music-hall passages and "ready-made" language, that could explain why the dialogue in the three plays might appear cliche-ridden and on comparing the three plays in respect of these features. 　 The study further draws parallels between Stoppard's play and Waiting for Godot in the use of various techniques, such as misunderstandings, anticlimax and afterthought. It is found that there is often a conscious adoption by Stoppard of Beckett's techniques. To clarify the relation of Stoppard's play to Hamlet various aspects of the two plays are studied. These aspects include changes introduced into stereotyped expressions, punning, the use of parody and the handling of two specific motives, madness and death. Parallels are found in spite of the fact that several centuries separate the two plays, not least in respect to style, technique and language. / digitalisering@umu

This essay examines the grotesque in Samuel Becketts wellknown play Waiting for Godot. The play is primarily seen as an icon of absurdism, and it is such not appropriate to examine the play as if it belongs to the litterary genre of grotesque. The primary purpose of absurdism is to reveal the pointless- and emptiness of existence. In order to illustrate these points absurdism will often make use of the common characteristics of the grotesque. With this in mind I present, within this essay, an eximination of whether Samuel Becket makes use of these characteristics to assist his portayal of emptiness in Waiting for Godot. A prior understanding of absurdism is required and i have as such primarly used Martin Esslins famous studies. The studies of the grotesque are mainly represented by two theorists. Michail Bachtin's theory is based around the medieval carnival culture, whose archetype was the duality of the body expressed through the pregnant death. Bachtin seeks to highlight the grotesques close connection with laughter as a relief and covers it's use during the middle ages and the renneissance. Wolfgang Kayser studies the term as it is used during the romanticism and modernism. Kayser describes the grotesque as "cold" and alienating. He describes the word as an ”estranged world”. The analysis relies mostly on Bachtin's theories and examines the play from the viewpoint of the picture of the grotesque body, sense of time, the logic of the upside down world and the connection to the carnivals culture of laughter but also examines if Kayser's theories of the ”estranged world” are compatible. Finally, I reach the conclusion that even though Bachtins theory treats the grotesque in a time long before Beckett's, a reading of Waiting for Godot from the perspective of the carnival culture is interesting.  The laughter and the open, grotesque body, plays as expected a large role in the handling of the emptiness, the cyclic sense of time is found in the play and never ceases to repeat, the upside down world's logic and it's abolition of hierarchies is significant and the world in the play seems alien to itself.

Submitted thesis follows up clowning as phenomenon that can be approached in different ways and understood from different points of view. The perspective depends on a theoretical base and methodological tools, including a conceptual apparatus. Because the viewpoint of the phenomenon is the core of submitted theses, I have decided to use as a methodological tool discoursive analysis, particularly bakhtinian analysis. Theoretical background is provided by Mikhail Bakhtin's theories and concepts (dialogism, heteroglossia, speech genres) and Julia Kristeva's theory of intertextuality (that was inspired by bakhtinian thinking). One of key terms of this theses is the concept of transgression which relates to supposition that transgression is one of principal features of clowning. The theses submits confrontation of two different approaches to the phenomenon of clowning. First one is provided by structuralist model by Paul Bouissac. Bouissac describes clowning as an abstract system, relatively static and closed code, which is builded of stabilized signs. His conception presents clowning as a phenomenon firmly tied up with the circus structure. Although Bouissac defines transgression as a characteristic feature of clowning, from his point of view is this transgression limited by borders of circus. Crossing...

There have been an increase of certain health risks since more and more people sit infront of their computer for longer periods of time. Studies show that there is a need of morephysical activity for people who are living a more sedentary lifestyle. This thesis suggesta solution, the design of an exergame where people can take a 2-minute brake to preventa decline of their health. This thesis researches how to design an exergame in such a waywhere high scores will lead to more movement while playing the game. The creators of thegame collects data by playing the game for 100 play sessions each where the collected dataconsists of total movement, different jumps and high score.

The modern office environment requires employees to perform stationary work. This can cause them several health issues due to being sedentary for long periods of time. An exergame was developed with the aim to remedy these issues by encouraging short motion controlled game sessions during breaks. The game was a farming game developed using the Godot game engine and the ML based skeletal tracking software Mediapipe. The game was played for 86 two-minute sessions where data was collected to evaluate how to use farming game tropes within the design for more movement to yield better results. It was also used to evaluate how the game mechanics could be distributed throughout the game session to promote sustained exertion during an average session. It was concluded that for farming exergames, if the goal is to reward players who exert themselves more, the in-game rewards should not make the game easier to play effectively as they generally do in typical farming games. Furthermore, it was also concluded that interactions happening in a sporadic order help with keeping the average exertion consistent, in addition to the aspect that players always have something to do during the allotted game session time.

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Sedentary lifestyles have bad health implications and are common amongst office workers. Therefore, exergames has risen to attention to assist with these issues and is a suitable alternative for those that find regular exercise boring or are seeking to complement regular exercise with short breaks to keep the blood flowing during office hours. Thus, the exergame Cart has been developed to assist in a less sedentary lifestyle with a 2-minute game to play during breaks. In this paper a discussion will be held about how an exergame can be created and will be evaluated by how the game encourages movement and what correlation the movement has compared to the score. As the score is the primary indicator of player performance and is the incentive for the player to keep better themselves. The findings show promising results indicating that the game does encourage movement and has a solid correlation to score, however not in a linear fashion.

"Sitting is the new smoking" and is one of the major causes of human health problems today. Swedes train the most in the world but are also among those who work  mostsedentary. Proper movement while taking 1 minute of active short breaks helps to preventfurther health problems. Cameras can detect body movements and this information can beused to do motion analysis and skeletal estimation. Furthermore, this can be used to create games that can use this detected movement and force the user to be more active whiledoing something fun.This thesis is about designing and implementing two mini-games in Godot for particular body movements using MediaPipe. Game designers for the mini-games use heuristicsfor motion-based control in games presented by Hara and Ovaska. This thesis focuses ondeveloping game control using motion control for the mini-games. The game controls areevaluated by calculating the sensitivity of how well the controls work for the games.