While large performance spaces fulfill important cultural, civic, architectural and artistic needs, few performing artists begin their careers playing in large halls. As in professional sports, the “minor leagues” play a critical role for professional performing artists by allowing them to both reach out to new audiences and hone their performance skills. Niche and emerging performing artists, therefore, rely on small performance spaces as their principal means exercising their craft. In addition to size, one important difference between large and small performance spaces is the criticality of the social experience. Small performance spaces are often informal, with entertainment being secondary to social functions - as in the case of the neighborhood coffee house, bar or restaurant that offers periodic performances in addition to their standard fare. The hybridization of social and performance functions offers a “ready-made” audience for niche and emerging performing artists, engendering the new and random audience-performer connections that are so critical to nurturing performing artists and the performing arts in general. The disparate social and attentive programmatic functions of these hybrid spaces offer a challenge to architects and designers. Providing a hybrid social/performance space that is optimized for niche and emerging performing artists is the central design problem that this thesis seeks to address.

Date: 2023-05-31 Level: Bachelor thesis in Business Administration, 15 cr  Institution: School of Business, Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University  Authors: Ahlqvist Malin, Fredmark Ida Xing and Pirani Shervin (93-03-11)          (96-06-05)        (98-07-02)                                           Title: Exploring sustainability performance in small and medium-sized enterprises from a triple bottom line perspective Supervisor:  Edward Gillmore  Keywords: TBL, Sustainability, Initiatives, Environmental performance, Economic performance Research questions:  RQ1: What are the characteristics of sustainable initiatives in SMEs? RQ2: How do the sustainability initiatives affect the economic performance and the environmental performance within SMEs? Purpose: This study aims to explore the characteristics of initiatives that an SME is undertaking regarding sustainability and how it affects their economic and environmental performance. Method: This study has an inductive approach and one case study. Four qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted, and secondary data was collected. Conclusion: In relation to TBL, numerous environmental initiatives were detected, while fewer economic initiatives and social initiatives were detected. An inconsistency was found regarding the effect sustainability initiatives have on economic performance and environmental performance. If an SME wishes to operate sustainably it is suggested that emphasis should be directed towards the integration and improvement within areas of waste management, resource management, and optimization of transportation.

In my PhD thesis I investigate the relationship between corporates' financial and environmental performances. The concept of quantitative environmental performance measures was introduced to enable to compare and analyse environmental impacts of different socio­economic units e.g. companies, countries, regions. In my dissertation, I use environmental performance measures to examine their effect on the financial performance of different companies. In the first chapter, I apply a meta­analysis to examine the results of the previous studies which investigate the impact of firms' environmental performance on their financial performance. The outcomes propose that it is important to account for the omitted variable bias such as unobserved firm heterogeneity. The results suggest that it takes time for the environmental regulation to materialize into the financial performance, too. In the subsequent two chapters I study Czech firms over 2004­2008. First I study the intertemporal effects of corporates' environmental performance on financial ...

Within the discipline of Performance Studies there is a debate about what is included within the ontology of “performance.” Peggy Phelan suggests that performance can only be experienced in the here and now, and any recording of a performance makes it “something other than performance.” Phillip Auslander argues the exact opposite, claiming that mediatized performance is not only valid, but also preferable to the live. This thesis is about performance in sports broadcasting, and states that performance, like sport, can be valid in both live and mediatized forms. The thesis also details how sports broadcasters perform and how their performance changes based on the time frame of the sport they're talking about: past, present and future. When sports are televised the process of broadcasting creates voids and gaps in the viewing experience that must be filled by the sportscasters. For past sporting events SportsCenter, and highlight shows like it, cut entire sporting events down to segments that only last a few moments. A need is created for these sportscasters to fill in the gaps with their performances, which explain what is happening, analyze how the game was played, and give humor and fun to the images. When announcers and analysts perform over live games they attempt to make up for the gap in broadcasting by narrativizing the event and turning a contest into a story. They do this by giving background information and histories about the game and players, explaining how the game is played, why events unfolded the way that they did, and bringing excitement to the game by how excited they themselves become. When Sportscasters predict outcomes of future events they usually do so by first looking to the past, and then making prognostications based on either statistical data, or on their own “gut” feelings. These predictions are very rarely accurate, and mostly have as much validity as guesses. Through these performances the sportscasters can sometimes greatly enhance a viewing experience of a game, but sometimes these performers take away from the enjoyment and the essence of the sports they broadcast. Viewers need to be aware of how performers can manipulate, or attempt to manipulate, an audience to keep them tuned in.

The vocal performance database is a tool by which BYU vocal performance faculty and students may practice, assess, and review vocal performances, including practice juries, recitals, and end-of-semester juries. This document describes the process and results of designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating the vocal performance database. By using this tool, vocal performance professors are able to give faster, more quality feedback to students following the jury. Students are able to receive legible feedback from their professors in a timely manner.

Although the present revival of interest in the lute and its music began in the late nineteenth century, it was not until the early 1970s that the historical method of lute playing in the Renaissance are paintings, woodcuts, old lutes, and lute books.

I propose to study the role of Professor Muller in The Visit as my thesis role because of the challenge that it presents, not only as a translated work, but also because of the character shift for me - Professor Muller is a 72 year old man and has now been changed to a woman in her thirties. Professor Muller is the only person to stand up to the antagonist, Claire. The confrontation between Claire and Muller takes on a certain tone when it is between a woman and a man, and has a completely different outlook when it becomes woman vs. woman. The director has taken this play and set it in an abstract time and setting, loosely basing it in a post WW2 era in perhaps Switzerland, or even Germany, although the location will never be actually specified by the director. It is merely a suggestion of where we should begin the process of characterization. The town gives off an appearance of desolation, but we must retain the knowledge of better times. This challenge of not having specifics almost grinds at me to place specifics on the character, but I will attempt to refrain from this. This role will not only challenge my training here in movement, voice and character analysis, but will allow me to pursue a new kind of development in character, one that does not have to be mapped out. This character can be created only through the other characters on the stage. There are no clues in the script, really, because of extensive cuttings and re-workings through this translation. The Professor is defined by relationships, not by words, and this new process excites me. After the show has closed, I would like to explore the play in its entirety and look to see if I have remained true to the author's work while working in a new concept from the director. I think it is possible to still hold to the origins and maintain the message of the play even through such large changes. This is going to be one of the most challenging roles that I have faced. I think that at the same time that I am going to apply my training, I also need to let it go and explore her through my body, my heart. At home, outside the theatre, I can go through the analytical parts - the "who am I" and "where do I come from" questions. My journals will be exceptionally useful for this knowledge. However, in rehearsals, I want to "let it all go" and "fly by the seat of my pants" to uncover answers that might be lost to me if I use only my brain. This is my biggest weakness as an actor - allowing my brain to take over. The problem with over-analyzing is that I look to deeply into the words and the script for the clues that my body may already be telling me, or I miss an impulse to act on a feeling because I am to caught up reading into everything. I need to read, and then play, not read and concentrate. We are doing a "play" after all, not a "work". It is my hope that I can allow myself to play more, and thereby overcome this weakness.

One purpose of community-engaged work is to build and reflect the community; to allow their voice to be heard. This research explores the relationship between the professional artist facilitator and participants in a community-engaged setting while applying devised theatre practices. The facilitating artist brings to the group their expertise in playmaking and storytelling. The research centers on how a facilitating artist might approach devising a community-engaged performance project with awareness of his/her ability to influence the group. How can the facilitator channel their influence to provide productive guidance for the collective creativity in order to honor the community’s intent and minimize the distortion created by the facilitator’s perspective? Are there guidelines that can be established in order to ensure that the community’s voice is undiluted? I begin by engaging in dialogue with established current practitioners in the field and examining literature published on the subject with this goal in mind. From this research a roadmap of perils and pitfalls, signs to look for that indicate tension or discomfort within the group, and techniques and tips for productively refocusing the group’s work have been created. The objective of the research is to formulate a philosophy on facilitation that aligns with my artistic mission and values, ensuring the work truly builds and reflects the communities from which it is produced.

The Internet and intranets are viewed as capable of supplying "Anything, Anywhere, Anytime" and e-commerce, e-government, e-community, and military C4I are now deploying many and varied applications to serve their needs. Network management is currently centralized in operations centers. To assure customer satisfaction with the network performance they typically plan, configure and monitor the network devices to insure an excess of bandwidth, that is overprovision. If this proves uneconomical or if complex and poorly understood interactions of equipment, protocols and application traffic degrade performance creating customer dissatisfaction, another more application-centric, way of managing the network will be needed. This research investigates a new qualitative class of network performance measures derived from the current quantitative metrics known as quality of service (QOS) parameters. The proposed class of qualitative indicators focuses on utilizing current network performance measures (QOS values) to derive abstract quality of experience (QOE) indicators by application class. These measures may provide a more user or application-centric means of assessing network performance even when some individual QOS parameters approach or exceed specified levels. The mathematics of functional analysis suggests treating QOS performance values as a vector, and, by mapping the degradation of the application performance to a characteristic lp-norm curve, a qualitative QOE value (good/poor) can be calculated for each application class. A similar procedure could calculate a QOE node value (satisfactory/unsatisfactory) to represent the service level of the switch or router for the current mix of application traffic. To demonstrate the utility of this approach a discrete event simulation (DES) test-bed, in the OPNET telecommunications simulation environment, was created modeling the topology and traffic of three semi-autonomous networks connected by a backbone. Scenarios, designed to degrade performance by under-provisioning links or nodes, are run to evaluate QOE for an access network. The application classes and traffic load are held constant. Future research would include refinement of the mathematics, many additional simulations and scenarios varying other independent variables. Finally collaboration with researchers in areas as diverse as human computer interaction (HCI), software engineering, teletraffic engineering, and network management will enhance the concepts modeled.

This written portion of my thesis documents my process as a director in staging Taylor Mac’s play The Lily’s Revenge in collaboration with a creative team of designers, dramaturgs, and performers. I share with the reader my processes toward fostering cohesion and collaboration among a team while working on a complex play that departs from many theatrical conventions. I discuss significant learnings from several areas of dramaturgical and performance research that dovetail within the play: queer performance practice, Theater of the Ridiculous, and Noh theater, and how I used this research to support the communication with my design collaborators to design a show crossing several theatrical genres. I invite readers into the challenges and discoveries of a rehearsal process that required heightened performances from actors and creative solutions for sustaining audience engagement. This thesis includes dramaturgical research, documentation of the rehearsal process, and documentation of audience and performer experiences.