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A retired actress and her quirky family trap four guests in elaborately woven games in Noel Coward’s Hay Fever. Within the concept of “playing house,” the glamour of Coward’s work lives on through scenery, costumes, and lighting, while his quirkier side is highlighted in hopes of making his Comedy of Manners accessible to a new audience.

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AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OFZachary Alley, for the Master of Fine Arts degree in Technical Direction, presented on March 27, 2022, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: I HAVE A FEVER FOR MORE PEACOCKS: TECHNICAL DIRECTION FOR HAY FEVER MAJOR PROFESSOR: Thomas FagerholmThe Hay Fever production was produced on December 2, 2021 at Southern IllinoisUniversity Carbondale’s School of Theater and Dance. This thesis will pull the reader through the ideas, planning, and construction of the realized scenic design that composed the work of the technical director on this production. Focuses on how the technical director maintained open communication between the production team throughout the process. The technical director strived to bring clear interpretations of the scenic elements into their drafting to be used by the build crews to make the set a reality within the time and budget. Hopefully by presenting this thesis to the reader they can have a more extensive understanding that the work of technical direction is even more involved than just the material world of set construction.

Despite the broadening of the subject matter of English drama in its ???new wave??? period from the late nineteen fifties, it is striking to see how much of enduring mainstream English drama has a domestic focus. The purpose of this thesis is to provide the first full-length study of marriage on the English stage from 1930-1990. The thesis examines the way in which a number of important playwrights have fashioned drama from the conflict between the public, or institutional, functions of marriage and the private, or relational, functions of marriage. The thesis places this conflict into historical context. This will show that the conflict between the private and public aspects of marriage is not one of clearly opposed opposites but one that is made dynamic by significant social and legal changes to the status, function and conventions of marriage. The thesis also demonstrates that this conflict is further complicated by class considerations and by the particular circumstances of each marital partnership. From the wealth of material available, I have chosen to examine in detail the work of seven playwrights who have made significant contributions to domestic drama or domestic comedy. Playwrights have been selected because their plays gained a strong audience on first performance and because, through numerous revivals and through publication of scripts, they have earned an enduring place in English drama. John Osborne???s Look Back in Anger, which in 1956, ushered in the ???new wave???, is pivotal play for discussion. The previous generation is represented by Noel Coward, J. B. Priestley and Terence Rattigan. The ???new wave??? and its aftermath are represented by Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and, finally Alan Ayckbourn. Despite a wide variety of approaches to the topic of marriage, these writers tend to assume a middle class audience and to follow or adapt the traditions of realism or comedy of manners. This thesis argues that despite real, even radical, changes to marriage, to accepted sexual practices and to the status of women in the sixty years under discussion, the mainstream theatre has tended to be conservative in its presentation of marital and sexual matters, especially in continuing to reinscribe a public/private opposition determined by gender.

Despite the broadening of the subject matter of English drama in its ???new wave??? period from the late nineteen fifties, it is striking to see how much of enduring mainstream English drama has a domestic focus. The purpose of this thesis is to provide the first full-length study of marriage on the English stage from 1930-1990. The thesis examines the way in which a number of important playwrights have fashioned drama from the conflict between the public, or institutional, functions of marriage and the private, or relational, functions of marriage. The thesis places this conflict into historical context. This will show that the conflict between the private and public aspects of marriage is not one of clearly opposed opposites but one that is made dynamic by significant social and legal changes to the status, function and conventions of marriage. The thesis also demonstrates that this conflict is further complicated by class considerations and by the particular circumstances of each marital partnership. From the wealth of material available, I have chosen to examine in detail the work of seven playwrights who have made significant contributions to domestic drama or domestic comedy. Playwrights have been selected because their plays gained a strong audience on first performance and because, through numerous revivals and through publication of scripts, they have earned an enduring place in English drama. John Osborne???s Look Back in Anger, which in 1956, ushered in the ???new wave???, is pivotal play for discussion. The previous generation is represented by Noel Coward, J. B. Priestley and Terence Rattigan. The ???new wave??? and its aftermath are represented by Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and, finally Alan Ayckbourn. Despite a wide variety of approaches to the topic of marriage, these writers tend to assume a middle class audience and to follow or adapt the traditions of realism or comedy of manners. This thesis argues that despite real, even radical, changes to marriage, to accepted sexual practices and to the status of women in the sixty years under discussion, the mainstream theatre has tended to be conservative in its presentation of marital and sexual matters, especially in continuing to reinscribe a public/private opposition determined by gender.