<p> In this research on the violence of clown, I found that clowns act as societal sheriffs by showing us a performative version of our own violence, allowing us to more readily identify those types of behavior as a choice to be made. In this thesis I examine the sources of violence in clown work. The types of clown violence that I discuss are Slapstick Violence, Verbal Violence, Emotional Violence, Natures Violence, and Ideological Violence. I will then identify specific examples of this violence in several 20th century clowns such a Footit and Chocolat, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Bill Irwin, Geoff Hoyle, David Shiner, and Larry Pisoni. I will then talk about my own clown company The Baggy Pants and discuss some examples of contemporary clown violence. My last section will include any discoveries made about clown violence and how that relates to all the clowns previously discussed.</p><p>

<p> Never once in my thirty-plus years that I&rsquo;ve been acting professionally, did I ever think I&rsquo;d find the inspiration to write a full-length play in the middle of an exercise in clown class. Here is how I stumbled upon the world of the clown, whom I&rsquo;d written it about, and why I was compelled to bring this particular story to life. This project is a reflection of how transformative my graduate school experience has been for me, both as an actress and as a writer.</p><p>

<p> In partial fulfillment of a Master of Fine Arts degree, this project report documents the lighting design process of California State University, Long Beach&rsquo;s Spring 2016 production of <i>She Kills Monsters</i> by Qui Nguyen. This report describes the approach to the production through research and personal experience, the implementation of the lighting design, and a critique on the design and production. The report details how I connected to the play and used those connections to help create two distinct worlds onstage, and then meld those two worlds into one through the use of color and texture</p><p>

This dissertation argues that the representation of authority in the comedies of William Shakespeare is more complex than the models of Renaissance authority advanced by New Historicists would seem to allow. The study suggests, first, that authority in the comedies is shaped by the requirements of genre at least as much as it is by the playwright's engagement with contemporary political debates. Second, the dissertation insists on the importance of maintaining distinctions between authority and power, and between just and unjust rulership, both as they are made in the comedies and, implicitly, as they inform Renaissance political theory. The New Historicists typically use the term "authority" in a derogatory sense; according to this view, the monarch is the source of oppression, manipulation, and unyielding restriction, while the dramatist is confined either to endorsing or subverting the status quo. This conclusion about Renaissance political authority and its control over artistic creation inadequately accounts for the representation of authority in Shakespeare's comedies, failing as it does to recognize the benevolent manifestations of authority in the social organizations dramatized in these plays, the distinction repeatedly made there between its proper use and abuse, and the influence of formal--as opposed to political--constraints upon expression. Viewed in terms of genre and with an acknowledgement of some measure of artistic independence from the dominant discourse, the authority dramatized in the comedies poses a fundamental challenge to received theories regarding the prescriptive power of socio-political structures over Renaissance representations of authority. The dissertation aims to elucidate the ways in which Shakespeare's comedies bring about a change in the definition of authority. I suggest that he stages the operations of three potentially subversive alternative powers: the power of action, the power of voice, and the power of knowledge. But Shakespeare does not simply propose to replace tyranny with one or all of these alternative means of exerting control; rather, he suggests that their temporary ability to undermine authority is itself potentially undermined by the same forces that deny false authority full supremacy, namely self-interest. The power of action, therefore, is extended only to those characters who define themselves as members of a community and who do not act solely in their own best interests; the power of voice is extended to those characters who use language as a bond between individuals rather than as a deceptive means of self-advancement; and the power of knowledge is given legitimacy only when used to strengthen social cohesion. In other words, Shakespeare's comic structure explores the nature of false authority by unmasking its fundamental flaw, self-centredness, and by examining its generation of alternative powers each of which rehearses the primary defect of its parent. Over the course of the play, authority is reclaimed as a vital communal force whose right to power rests on the absorption of the independent strength of those to whom it is bound and who legitimize it by consenting to be bound. This transformation--much like the inversion typical of the carnival tradition--occurs within a well-defined forum where the false authority is only temporarily impotent. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Dans l'élaboration de cette thèse, je me suis fixé comme objectif de me familiariser, d'abord, avec la théorie théâtrale, et plus particulièrement avec les principaux courants dramaturgiques ayant marqué la scène de façon décisive, afin de les intégrer, ensuite, dans une oeuvre de création originale. Le processus d'écriture a suivi trois étapes, qui correspondent respectivement au trois principales parties du texte. La première consistait à étudier et analyser le système théorique de différents dramaturgesthéoriciens, soit Corneille, Diderot, Zola, Brecht et Ionesco. Dans la seconde, il s'agissait d'écrire une pièce de théâtre en cinq tableaux portant sur les derniers jours de Marie Stuart, chaque tableau servant à développer l'esthétique particulière à un des auteurs préalablement choisis. Enfin, il me restait à analyser la pièce. Dans un constant mouvement de va-et-vient entre la création et la théorie, j'ai montré comment celle-ci a conditionné mes choix, tant en ce qui concerne l'utilisation des registres dramaturgiques, le traitement de l'action, l'élaboration des gestes et des mouvements des personnages, que la conception de ces mêmes personnages, le traitement de l'espace et celui du temps.

The sixteenth century has become a focal point for the analysis of the genealogy of political imperialism. It marks the shift from the medieval to the modern age as manifested in the discovery of the New World, the rise of imperial control and expansion, and the historical construction of the individual subject. My dissertation argues that Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare, to some extent, all participate in the "imperial" disposition of modern representational thinking. However, all three authors also offer alternatives to imperial and representational thinking. The first chapter uses Heidegger's conception of the work of art in order to assert that art is not always and only a representational copy of an original. For Heidegger, the work of art is not an imitation of a pre-existing thing, nor is it an epiphenomenon of a system of relations. On the contrary, it first founds these relations. The second chapter analyzes the conception of poiesis which Sidney presents in his Defence of Poesie. In some respects, Sidney's definition is merely a reformulation of the representational one. That is, for Sidney poetry imitates the ideal rather than "brasen" nature. However, in other respects, insofar as he draws on certain formulations of the Italian humanists, Sidney conceives of poiesis as a figuring forth of something for the first time. In the third chapter, I turn to Book I of Spenser's The Faerie Queene. This chapter takes issue with contemporary readings of Spenser which assert that he is our "preeminent poet of empire." I point out that the entire conception of the just and true order of things that is presented in Book I speaks against the assertion of an imperial disposition in Spenser. Finally, in the fourth chapter, I deal with Shakespeare's Hamlet in relation to the Cartesian metaphysics of the subject. In modern metaphysics, the sovereign subject becomes master over existence. I demonstrate the ways in which "The Mouse-trap" figures forth this imperial control over nature that the subject wields. However, I also explore the ways in which it presents a non-representational experience of truth along the lines of the pre-metaphysical experience of a-letheia.

The study focuses on the social, literary, and psychological significance of the brother-sister relationship to a broad range of Renaissance tragedy and tragicomedy. After a brief historical analysis of siblings, the thesis considers the brother-sister relationship as an important means for dramatists to explore questions of identity, of gender conflict, and of differing understandings of family. It also examines the relationship as a developing literary tradition in the drama of the Stuart period, a tradition which culminates in the works of John Ford. The first half of the study surveys a large range of non-Shakespearean revenge tragedy and tragicomedy. In revenge tragedy, violent brother-sister strife serves as a symbol of the self in turmoil, as an image of a disordered family and society, and as a focal point for tension over the nature of women. Brothers also subvert traditional family roles in their relationships with their sisters. The avenging brother and sister, joined in shared loyalty to their house, mount a legitimate challenge to the authority of husband and king; pandar brothers become diabolical inversions of father and husband. Proceeding to tragicomedy, the thesis analyzes the brother as a figure of illegitimate authority and considers the privileged position gained by royal sisters, whose noble blood renders them the equal of their brothers. The latter half of the dissertation reinterprets the plays of John Webster and John Ford. In The Duchess of Malfi, the royal siblings' similarity, close blood tie, and high rank overturn gender difference and affirm the intimate connection between the sexes. The study considers the importance of blood family to the Duchess' self-conception and examines Ferdinand's attempts to create identity by usurping the place of his sister's husband. Ford's two plays 'Tis Pity She's A Whore and The Fancies Chaste and Noble stand as the culmination of dramatic treatments of idealized and antagonistic brother-sister relationships alike. Both works contrast the opposing nature of physical and familial love and elevate asexual love above sexual passion, presenting a sibling tie which undermines the bond between husband and wife.

Aware that much recent criticism in Shakespeare studies has again made controversial the long assumed high value of Shakespeare's writings, my thesis is motivated and unified by one central question: how can literary critics "move closer to a true knowledge of the actual value" of Shakespeare's romances? This question itself provokes many other questions, however, and to answer these the dissertation falls in three distinct sections. Chapter one addresses fundamental philosophical questions, particularly what is knowledge, what is truth, what is value, and how many humans, in general, progress towards a true knowledge of the actual value of any object? My thesis follows E. D. Hirsch in distinguishing between meaning and value, interpretation and evaluation, and in arguing that both must be objects of knowledge for literary criticism. To answer the foundational question of what knowledge is, and how inquirers may move toward truth, my thesis adopts the epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and methodology of a twentieth-century Canadian Jesuit philosopher, Bernard J. F. Lonergan. My own first chapter concludes by arguing that, after one answers the question, "what is literature?", Lonergan's theological method can also provide a framework for literary critics who hope to be intellectually converted to the meaning of literature, aesthetically converted to its beauty, and morally or perhaps even religiously converted to its actual value. Yet rather than providing a 'Lonerganian reading of Shakespeare' my thesis illustrates what it means for a Lonerganian critic to pursue knowledge of Shakespeare. Chapter two of my thesis attempts to show that the methodology posited by Lonergan can be adapted to organize and apply a wide variety of Shakespearean criticism. In the third major section of my dissertation, chapters three through six, each chapter is devoted to a single romance and begins with a dialectical survey of each play's criticism, particularly the interpretative issues that have especially affected the play's evaluation. Attention is then focused upon a passage from each play which summarises the primary purpose that each play asks critics to evaluate. However, because value is offered by the entire dynamic structure and content of Shakespeare's play, my approach normally moves chronologically through each play and evaluates diverse aspects of its meaning. The values emphasized as the climactic conclusion of each romance then provide the foundation for an evaluation that is made within the broadest intellectual, moral, and religious horizons that I currently envision. This varied heuristic finds a wide variety of valuable meaning in each romance. In conclusion, the "joy beyond a common joy" felt by the characters at the end of The Tempest is an emotion common to the conclusion of each of Shakespeare's romances, and in each case occurs not only because these characters learn human virtue especially stressed by Christian teaching, but moreover because they experience the grace offered by the providential action of Divinity. In an implicity manner characteristic of medieval and Renaissance art, the apparently classical settings of Shakespeare's romances actually serve to teach Christian truth, and thus become valuable as Christian sacred art. The very nature of sacred art ensures that the evaluation of Shakespeare's romances must be an unending attempt to be converted not only to their aesthetic joys, but also to the value of life itself, particularly the Life who freely offers joy to us all. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.