This thesis is an account of my directorial process for the Spring 2023 production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods. I begin by illustrating how this show speaks to the contemporary political and social moment in the United States through a libretto and score that insists the only way to battle the giants brought on by the pursuit of individual goals is for a community to take responsibility for its errors and work together. I put Into the Woods in conversation with the cartoon series Over the Garden Wall to ground the show in an American context, discussing how our designers drew inspiration for the cartoon’s use of 19th Century American folk aesthetics and distorted images of monstrous figures to develop a unique approach to the world of the play. I then chronicle the audition and rehearsal process, including the incorporation of Michael Chekhov technique into character creation as well as the paths individual actors took to know and embody their characters. I offer an account of some of the unique problems we faced during tech week and how we, like the very characters in the story we were telling, came together to overcome the difficulties we faced. I conclude with an account of the performances and how I have taken the lessons from this process into the professional work I have undertaken since.

In 2008, the American Academy of Teachers of Singing released a paper in support of further research and training in the teaching of non-classical music or Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM). CCM can be defined as encompassing (but not limited to) the following genres: musical theatre, pop, rock, gospel, R&B, soul, hip-hop, rap, country, folk, and experimental music. Despite the increase in number of musical theatre and CCM degree programs at American universities, and the that national voice pedagogy organizations have begun to include musical theatre competitions and masterclasses, such academic training for future voice teachers has not met the demand. A 2003 survey by LoVetri and Weekly to evaluate the levels of training and experience of voice teachers in CCM styles of singing showed that while 71 schools offered Bachelor’s degrees in Musical Theatre, there were no schools offering CCM voice pedagogy training. In a 2009 follow-up, Weekly and LoVetri found that only 19% of those surveyed had any training to teach Musical Theatre. Additionally, many teachers indicated they were only classically trained and had no idea how to sing in any other style. For this study a three-part survey containing 27 questions was used to survey voice teachers who had been enrolled in or completed graduate-level (MM or DMA) voice programs since the publication of Weekly and LoVetri’s most recent survey. The purpose of the survey was to discover the pedagogical training of recent graduate voice students in CCM. The data is collected from a population in which n=66. While this study did show an increase in pedagogical training in CCM at the graduate university level (26%) as well as an increase in the number of CCM teachers with both graduate-level training and performance experience, this increase was small, and the majority of those who reported having received training did so through private instruction or independent study. / Music Performance

Questions surrounding queer subjectivity—including shame, the closet, and celebration—are at the core of my interests as a painter and image maker. Mining the history of religious iconography, including annunciation paintings, scenes of the crucifixion, and other notable works of this ilk, my paintings seek to explore the intricacies of sexuality and the workings of shame and celebration at play in the life of the queer-identified.

M. Tech. Drama / Sources on musical theatre training by experts Rocco Dal Vera, Joe Deer, Tracy Moore and Allison Bergman, give the impression that there is a lacuna in training when teaching acting skills for singing in musical theatre. This dissertation, in an attempt to fill this lacuna, constructs a strategy of engagement by using cognitive science, together with Stanislavsky's acting techniques and music theory to explain the process from text/sheet music (the 'digital' domain) to performance (the 'analogue' domain). In this dissertation the 'digital' is seen as a metaphor for bounded, specific and singular phenomena (such as a written word or music note), and the 'analogue' is seen as a metaphor for a continuous, undulating and unbroken line of an event. The aim of this dissertation was achieved by conducting a critical literature study on the subjects of second generation cognitive science, Stanislavsky's acting techniques, and music theory and analysis.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-84). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Estudo do texto teatral O Mambembe, a partir dos contextos em que foi criado, em 1904, e depois reabilitado, para o público e para a crítica, 55 anos depois. A ótica da recepção destaca esta peça do conjunto da obra de Artur Azevedo, deixando entrever, principalmente a partir de uma possível ideologia de um teatro educador dos sentidos, as contradições do texto com o mundo da diversão teatral na entrada do século XX carioca, sua tentativa de certa forma de escapar a sua massificação, apelando ao passado e à promessa de um futuro mais artístico para o teatro. Na primeira parte se discutem as ideias inaugurais para o teatro de formação na modernidade, e como estas são catalisadas no Brasil em torno de um teatro que civiliza pela formação de almas, até a época de Artur Azevedo. Depois de explorar alguns aspectos históricos da época de O Mambembe, expõe-se um pequeno painel e algumas considerações teóricas sobre a indústria e a estrutura do teatro ligeiro da entrada para o século XX.Na segunda parte do trabalho, ligadas às questões teóricas sobre recepção teatral, são discutidas as noções de teatro e cultura de cada época, através de comentários e críticas de jornais. Depois de uma pequena exposição das mudanças ideológicas e culturais que se passaram no intervalo dos 55 anos entre uma montagem e outra, o trabalho termina com uma proposta de metaforologia do texto a partir das informações colhidas e resultados experimentados / The study of theatrical text O Mambembe, viewed from the contexts in which it was first created, at 1904, and then rehabilitated, for public and critique, 55 years later. The reception sight detaches this play from Artur Azevedos other work, allowing a glimpse - mostly considering theatre for him as educator of the senses - of the text contradictions to the world of theatrical entertainment at the beginning of XX century in Rio de Janeiro, its attempt to in some way escape from the massification of this world, by appealing to the past, and to a promess of a more artistic future for the theatre. The first part discusses the inaugural ideas for the theatre as education in modernity, and how these ideas were catalyzed in Brazil around a theatre that civilizes by souls education, until Artur Azevedos time. After exploring some historic aspects of O Mambembe epoch, there is a small panel and some theoretical considerations about the comedy-musical theatre structure and industry in the beginning of XX century. In the second part of this work, linked to theoretical enquiring into theatre reception, notions of each of the two epochs are discussed through dailies and magazines news and chronicles. After a small exposition about ideological and cultural changes in society during the 55 years between one perform and the other, the work ends with a proposition of a metaphorology of the play, taken from collected informations and experimental results

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Estudo do texto teatral O Mambembe, a partir dos contextos em que foi criado, em 1904, e depois reabilitado, para o público e para a crítica, 55 anos depois. A ótica da recepção destaca esta peça do conjunto da obra de Artur Azevedo, deixando entrever, principalmente a partir de uma possível ideologia de um teatro educador dos sentidos, as contradições do texto com o mundo da diversão teatral na entrada do século XX carioca, sua tentativa de certa forma de escapar a sua massificação, apelando ao passado e à promessa de um futuro mais artístico para o teatro. Na primeira parte se discutem as ideias inaugurais para o teatro de formação na modernidade, e como estas são catalisadas no Brasil em torno de um teatro que civiliza pela formação de almas, até a época de Artur Azevedo. Depois de explorar alguns aspectos históricos da época de O Mambembe, expõe-se um pequeno painel e algumas considerações teóricas sobre a indústria e a estrutura do teatro ligeiro da entrada para o século XX.Na segunda parte do trabalho, ligadas às questões teóricas sobre recepção teatral, são discutidas as noções de teatro e cultura de cada época, através de comentários e críticas de jornais. Depois de uma pequena exposição das mudanças ideológicas e culturais que se passaram no intervalo dos 55 anos entre uma montagem e outra, o trabalho termina com uma proposta de metaforologia do texto a partir das informações colhidas e resultados experimentados / The study of theatrical text O Mambembe, viewed from the contexts in which it was first created, at 1904, and then rehabilitated, for public and critique, 55 years later. The reception sight detaches this play from Artur Azevedos other work, allowing a glimpse - mostly considering theatre for him as educator of the senses - of the text contradictions to the world of theatrical entertainment at the beginning of XX century in Rio de Janeiro, its attempt to in some way escape from the massification of this world, by appealing to the past, and to a promess of a more artistic future for the theatre. The first part discusses the inaugural ideas for the theatre as education in modernity, and how these ideas were catalyzed in Brazil around a theatre that civilizes by souls education, until Artur Azevedos time. After exploring some historic aspects of O Mambembe epoch, there is a small panel and some theoretical considerations about the comedy-musical theatre structure and industry in the beginning of XX century. In the second part of this work, linked to theoretical enquiring into theatre reception, notions of each of the two epochs are discussed through dailies and magazines news and chronicles. After a small exposition about ideological and cultural changes in society during the 55 years between one perform and the other, the work ends with a proposition of a metaphorology of the play, taken from collected informations and experimental results

This qualitative dissertation identifies musical strategies that black theatre singers use when presenting and representing music that integrates western classical vocal aesthetics with stylistic genres of traditionally black forms like gospel, jazz, and blues. This study investigates the use of the voice by five black opera and musical theatre performers and the approaches that they take in the representation of music that requires integrated vocality, which integrates elements from western classical traditions with those from black popular and folk idioms. Data were collected through audio/visual analysis, interviews, and video stimulated recall, presented through narrative analysis. Three emergent themes are explored are as follows: Authenticity is rooted in the singer’s experience of cultural traditions and expression; technique is a means of personal and cultural expression and provides the opportunity for personal liberation, and; a singer positions themself at the nexus of their cultural legacy as a learner, exemplar, advocate, and transmitter of culture. The implications for educators at the tertiary level are discussed in the final chapter. Alignment of technique, personal expression, and identity infuses a singer’s sound with meaning; fostering the black singer’s use of their cultural capital helps them transform their life experiences into artistic interpretation. Representation, the use of signs that link a person to their cultural circles, is an act of re-humanization, combating dehumanization caused by systematic and societal exclusion by placing positive images at the center of their cultural legacy. In higher education, pre-professional training becomes humanizing when expression is viewed as a means of critical understanding of a student’s lived experience. Also, inspiring persons with marginalized identities requires re-centralizing power toward those who can imagine themselves transforming the entertainment industry into a more inclusive artistic space.

In the years since 2010, themes of mental illness on the musical theater stage have increased dramatically, most notably with the Broadway premiere of Dear Evan Hansen in 2016, which quickly became a popular and critical success, winning six Tony Awards the following season. Despite scope and reach of the modern American musical, relatively little musicological scholarship has explored this area, and of that literature, even less has examined contemporary musicals. In this thesis, I will begin to fill this gap in the literature through the application of emerging critical musicological lenses to modern musical theater, both on and off Broadway. This thesis puts forth a set of representational models to explore how mentally ill characters are represented in contemporary American musical theater. Through six case studies of twenty-first century shows employing these models, this thesis examines how these models intersect with narrative critiques and theories put forth by disability studies scholarship to analyze the representations of mentally ill characters onstage. I examine the shows Next to Normal, Be More Chill, In the Green, Preludes, Dear Evan Hansen, and Bandstand to analyze how the internal experience of mental illness is externalized and shown onstage in each of these shows, evaluate which underlying narratives and ideas about mental illness that these representational models contain, and investigate how ideas from disability studies scholarship can illuminate some of the strengths, weaknesses, and failures of these shows in their portrayal of mental illness. Although this thesis relies extensively on ideas, language, and scholarship from disability studies, it is not a disability studies thesis; rather it will demonstrate how scholarly lenses provided by disability studies can be fruitfully applied to musical and theatrical representations of mental illness. In addition to touching on themes of genre, characterization and narrative theory, therapy and treatment for mental illness, and modern marketability of musical theater, this thesis demonstrates that the theories from disability studies scholarship can be fruitfully applied to other depictions of non-normativity, such as mental illness.

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