Sam Shepard was a playwright who used a variety of stories and styles to explore and understand the country he called home, The United States of America. This thesis launches the process of understanding how Greek tragedy had influenced the work of Shepard in his explorations by looking at Shepard’s final play before his passing, A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations). Using the concept of miasma that has been established as important to Greek tragedy to analyze A Particle of Dread and its primary source work, Oedipus Rex, this thesis reveals the extent of the ancient tragic form’s presence in Shepard’s last play. To do so, I approach the work in a combination of theory and practice. I first use dramaturgical analysis of Oedipus Rex, to explain what tragic role miasma has in Sophocles’ play. This is followed by a mirrored dramaturgical analysis of A Particle of Dread to uncover and compare what place miasma (and therefore tragedy) has in Shepard’s play. Following this is the review and analysis of five performance workshops exploring scenes of Shepard’s play which used a combination of performance and lighting to physicalize that dramaturgical work so as to further it and hopefully reveal new aspects through their embodiment. This dramaturgical and practical work results in the discovery of how and to what end Shepard has chosen to use the Grecian content style to analyze and commentate on Western society. The work also offers the chance to compare how the engagement with pollution has changed from the characters of 5th Century BCE Greece to 2014 America, and what that might mean for 2020 onwards.

This thesis addresses the role of the birth complex in Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy and in Richard Wagner’s operas. I see the birth complex as characterised by a dialectical relation between flesh and light, which is itself polarised by the tension between desire and anxiety. A structural determinant of the human relation to the world, this complex in my argument is of special importance for understanding the roles given to and assumed by women. Wagner gave the birth complex its first comprehensive elaboration through his operas. This, I contend, is the aspect of Wagner’s work that Nietzsche in his writings particularly reacted to through the ambivalent fascination it awakened in him. I argue that, even after Nietzsche’s break from Wagner, the birth complex remains central in his philosophy. The primary reference I build on here is Otto Rank’s theory of birth trauma, as set out in Das Trauma der Geburt (1924). To me, Rank’s theorisation of the trauma of birth is a translation into psychoanalytic language of Nietzsche’s philosophy, which itself arose with a translation into philosophical language of Wagner’s operas. In this thesis I build especially on Rank’s formulation of the tension between desire and anxiety and on his suggestions concerning the causes of the undoing of women. However, Rank did not take into account what I contend is a key aspect of both Nietzsche’s and Wagner’s work: the role of light in its dialectical relation with the flesh. By flesh I mean the interiority of the mother’s body and, by extension, the human body insofar as it is conceived through its relation to the maternal body. In the first main section of my PhD, I propose a theoretical understanding of the birth complex through an analysis of Nietzsche’s philosophy. I start with his writings pro and contra Wagner, showing that what Nietzsche primarily sees in Wagner’s operas is the birth complex. I then go on to argue that Nietzsche’s philosophy of life and of creativity is an exploration of the ways in which birth could be overcome. The second main section of my PhD is dedicated to Wagner, with largely text-based readings of three operas. I first discuss the extent to which death in Der fliegende Holländer and in the Freudian conception of the death drive is a mask for birth. I then tackle Tristan und Isolde and its famous celebration of night and death, in order to investigate whether love can be reduced to the birth complex. The last chapter of this section presents a close analysis of Das Rheingold and especially of its first scene and of Wagner’s indications on lighting. In a third and shorter section, I show that Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s and Richard Strauss’s Elektra pursued and reviewed this fundamental preoccupation of Nietzsche’s and Wagner’s work in proposing a further formulation of the birth complex that incorporates the scene of matricide. Finally, as a coda to the thesis, I explore the extent to which the uses of stage lighting pioneered by Adolphe Appia have been coming to terms with the birth complex.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-08T16:52:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ivo.pdf: 9224008 bytes, checksum: ec76a98cc9c084b666fb875791664376 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-06-06 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / In this dissertation I analyze the learning processes about stage lighting by the staff of the Theatre Alvaro de Carvalho (TAC) in Florianopolis, in the decade of 1980. I show the TAC's lighting technician, Carlos Antonio Falcon Lins Cavalcanti, as a key person in the dissemination of this knowledge. This research consists in three chapters, and the first chapter is called Space and Around:to illuminate the arrabaldes, whose focus is on analysis of the outside of the building and its surrounding relations. In this chapter I explore the transformations in the external appearance of this building until the final layout of the decade 1980. In the second chapter, titled The Theatre seen of the Bridge: to illuminate the background, I propose to enter into the space that houses the viewer, in other words, the inside of the TAC. I describe its evolution and changes over the years, setting a stage with the Italian type, stairways, walk-in technical operations, underground hall and the box where you execute the scenic lighting effects, including the historical evolution of the lighting in this house. The third chapter is called The Light of Learning: Making of Knowledge, in which describe the processes of learning and transmission of knowledge in the field of stage lighting in the decade of 1980. Present definitions of technical terms, the illuminators who worked at home, with focus in the learn of those lighting professionals. In the end of this chapter I do an approach about the technical and illuminating Carlos Falcon, telling him how the disseminator of knowledge in Florianopolis and by extension in Santa Catarina state / Nesta dissertação analiso os processos de aprendizagem sobre iluminação cênica pelo corpo técnico do Teatro Álvaro de Carvalho (TAC), em Florianópolis, na década de 1980. Aponto o técnico em iluminação do TAC, Carlos Antônio Falcão Cavalcante Lins como uma pessoa fundamental na disseminação deste conhecimento, pesquisa esta composta em três capítulos, sendo que o primeiro capítulo denomina-se Espaço e Entorno: iluminar os arrabaldes, cujo foco está na análise da parte externa da edificação e suas relações circunvizinhas. Neste capítulo abordo as transformações ocorridas na aparência externa desta edificação até a sua configuração final na década de 1980. No segundo capítulo, denominado: O Teatro Visto da Ponte: iluminar os bastidores adentro no espaço que abriga o espectador, ou seja, o lado interno do TAC. Descrevo suas modificações ao longo dos anos, a configuração de um palco com tipologia à Italiana, as escadarias, cabine de operações técnicas, corredores subterrâneos e a caixa cênica onde se executam os efeitos de iluminação, incluindo evolução histórica sobre a iluminação nessa casa. O terceiro capítulo denomina-se: A Luz do Aprendizado: Bastidores do Conhecimento, no qual descrevo os processos de aprendizagem e transmissão dos conhecimentos na área de iluminação cênica na década de 1980. Apresento definições de termos técnicos, os iluminadores que trabalharam na casa, com enfoque no aprendizado desses profissionais de iluminação. No encerramento deste capítulo faço uma abordagem sobre o técnico e iluminador Carlos Falcão, narrando-o como disseminador desses conhecimentos em Florianópolis e por extensão no estado catarinense