A disassembling of the Virginia Theatre Machine (VTM), LLC and its annual restaging of an adaption of Charles Dickens’ novella, A Christmas Carol. The VTM is a custom-built trailer theater that combines the performance energy of street theater with the magic and wonder of a fully designed theatrical production. I provide a historical context for this 21st century revising of mobile theater that switches the paradigm of the traditional theater experience by bringing the stage to audiences, for free. I draw from critical social and cultural theory to make sense of the audience impact in public and private outdoor spaces. I examine how each new performance environment brings its own resonance to bear on the wonder of the presentation at hand. I present the VTM as an alternative business model and form of theater outreach to inspire a new generation of theater-makers to rethink the traditional constraints of producing theatre.

This thesis details the evolution of my scenic design for VCU’s 2018 production of Into The Woods. The document explains key factors for my design concept featuring a unit set instead of implementing traditional staging methods for James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s classic musical, based on the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm.

This thesis explores the costume design for Theatre VCU’s 2018 production of Into the Woods. It outlines my concept for the design focusing on the origins of these archetypes. This concept is further expanded on by discussing Cinderella and the Witch characters and analyzing the choices within their costumes. This thesis also includes renderings, swatches, and photos.

After working over twenty years in theatre and the entertainment industries, I began teaching high school level stagecraft and looked for a textbook geared towards those students just stepping into the world of technical theatre. What I found was that there is no one single source textbook for high school level students. The textbooks were either too elementary or had too much information that was written for college level students. I begin my teaching career using a textbook I thought would serve the purpose, but found my students were frustrated with the text as much as I was. I began incorporating material from other sources to cover the various components of the class; construction, rigging, lighting and sound, to name a few. After a couple of years having my students telling me that I should just write a stagecraft book, I thought maybe I could. After talking and sending out a survey to other technical directors, or the alike, in high school theatre, I found I was not alone in the way I had to cover the content of the course. Therefore, I decided to take my students challenge and write a textbook for them. I hope this will be a good resource for both students and teachers like me.

This thesis explores the current state of voice and speech education to discover if there is a standard of learning from university to university. By examining the history of voice and speech, discovering basic skills, breaking down teaching methodologies, and taking a look at current university and conservatory acting programs, the thesis discovers there is not a standard way of teaching, but there is a standard set of skills that should be upheld when planning voice and speech curriculum.

This thesis analyzes one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies from the perspective of its costumes, and chronicles the start-to-finish process of the costume design for the April 2012 production of Othello held at Pomona College. Incorporating the Pre-Raphaelite art movement with high fashion’s late Alexander McQueen, this thesis brings to light Othello’s predominant themes of race and honesty by means of luxurious textiles and distinct silhouettes.

This is me comparing my first experience as a stage-manager to my second experience as a stage-manager. I learned more during my first time around then my second.

This written portion of my thesis documents my process as a director in composing the Performance of Ōto Shōgo’s The Water Station in collaboration with a creative team of designers, dramaturgs, stage managers and performers. I share with the reader my processes toward fostering cohesion and collaboration among a team while composing a theatrical experience that departs from many theatrical conventions. I discuss significant learnings from several areas of dramaturgical and performance research that dovetail within the performance: aesthetics of divestiture, dramaturgy of simultaneity and composition of psychophysical score, and how I used this research to support the communication with my design, performing and managerial collaborators. This thesis includes dramaturgical research, production design process, documentation of the training and rehearsal process, and documentation of audience perception.

This study is a breakdown of what auditioning is in the world of professional acting and how I (the subject) have developed my own technique through my undergraduate journey.

THESIS: An investigation into my handling of the production’s key challenges, and into what came of those efforts, will reveal a pattern: decisions made from trust – trust of myself as a leader and of my collaborators – yield a better, more satisfying harvest than do decisions made from fear. KEYWORDS & PHRASES: The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, by Naomi Wallace; theater; theatre; stage; directing; director; process; challenge; time; ritual; live music; heightened language; movement; physicality; casting; actors; designers; lighting; deviant sexuality; audience; conscripting; growth; lessons learned; depression; railroad; train; trust; faith; artistic process; collaboration; leadership.