This thesis explores two regional offshoots of the annual Burning Man Festival in Nevada (Burns)--Ohio's Scorched Nuts and Georgia's Euphoria--by examining how, through performance and play activities in these temporary festival settings, participants may form with one another deep, communal relationships evocative of Victor Turner's concept of communitas. Combining theoretical reading, field research, and participant interviews, it discusses the political potential of these relationships as well as the way that participant theatricality and festival dramaturgies contribute to their construction. The thesis begins by considering general effects that attending a festival in which people must remain inside the premises over a series of days (a "lived-in" festival) might have on participants' ability to engage with others in intimate, intersubjective encounters. It then outlines the "official activities" of Euphoria and Scorched Nuts--those activities orchestrated by event organizers and which involve all or essentially all who enter the grounds--and shows how these activities create distinct overarching dramaturgies for each festival that establish commonalities between participants and energize them to socialize with one another. Finally, it examines case studies of Scorched Nuts' unofficial activities--those orchestrated by participants, rather than organizers, and generally involving only a few people at a time--proposing that these activities are the primary sites where communitas arises in a festival setting. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Summer Semester, 2012. / April 25, 2012. / Burning Man, Burns, Community, Festival / Includes bibliographical references. / Elizabeth Osborne, Professor Directing Thesis; Mary Karen Dahl, Committee Member; Krzystof Salata, Committee Member.

"Enter the Man" is a study of representations of sexual violence that focuses on the trope of male/male rape as it has gained prominence as a linguistic and cultural metaphor in USAmerican, British, and Canadian society. This dissertation attempts to disaggregate the assumptions that adhere to representations of male/male rape, and to discuss the various uses to which representations of male/male rape have been asked to work by artists working in theatre, film, literature, and television. "Enter the Man" uses gender theory, queer theory, theories of violence, and trauma theory, to explore why male/male rape has become a popular literary, theatrical, and cinematic trope within Anglo-American media. "Enter the Man" is also a history text, detailing and analyzing the development of this trope. The dissertation follows a chronology of these representations beginning with the productions of Canadian dramatist John Herbert's playFortune and Men's Eyes. This document also considers James Dickey'sDeliveranceboth as a book and in its film version. Other texts analyzed include Miguel Piñero'sShort Eyes, Rick Cluchey'sThe Cage, John Schlesinger'sMidnight Cowboy, and Howard Brenton'sThe Romans in Britain. "Enter the Man" ends with the new movement of British playwriting in the 1990s with an examination of Anthony Neilson'sPenetrator, Sarah Kane'sBlasted, and Mark Ravenhill'sShopping and Fucking. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2012. / October 19, 2012. / deliverance, masculinity, rape, sexuality, violence / Includes bibliographical references. / Mary Karen Dahl, Professor Directing Dissertation; Patricia Warren Hightower, University Representative; Elizabeth A. Osborne, Committee Member; Leigh H. Edwards, Committee Member.

This thesis focuses on Sharon Bridgforth's performance pieces. Examining Bridgforth's performance texts, a more complicated and--at times-- contradictory way of approaching subjectivity emerges, challenging ideas of cultural authenticity, essentialism, and a self-contained Black aesthetic. I position Bridgforth's performance pieces as points of entry for discussing the U.S. American theatre's misleading categorization of plays by women playwrights of color as plays concerned with race over aesthetics-- an oversimplified system that undercuts the multifaceted, polyphonic plays and performance pieces written, and limits the multiple interpretations possible in these works. I ultimately advocate for reimagining U.S. American theatre's discourse on race and gender, asking spectators to consider ways in which the voices "from the fringe" challenge incomplete binaries of identity and community. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2012. / April 2, 2012. / Includes bibliographical references. / Elizabeth Osborne, Professor Directing Thesis; Mary Karen Dahl, Committee Member; Kris Salata, Committee Member.

This thesis focuses on the representation of the crisis of masculinity and how that crisis, real or imagined, both calls for and automatically creates a renegotiation of the masculine identity. Specifically, it interrogates three different formulations of masculine subject creation as depicted in Sam Shepard's Kicking a Dead Horse, Neil LaBute's Reasons to Be Pretty, and Sarah Ruhl's Late: a cowboy song. This document will focus on a specific theoretical formulation of masculinity found within each play. Respectively, I will utilize the theories of the mythopoetic men's movement, Michael Kimmel's contemporary theory of Guyland, and feminist reconfigurations of gender such as Anne Fausto-Sterling's Sexing the Body and Judith Halberstam's Female Masculinity. The first chapter will explore traditional, patriarchal masculinity as represented by the character of Hobart Struther in Kicking a Dead Horse. The play presents an instantiated masculinity that falls short of providing a life outside of the work force and fails to allow for a renegotiation or reestablishment of traditional masculinity. The second chapter examines the journey of Greg in Reasons to Be Pretty as he attempts to renegotiate his misogynistic male identity. Greg's desire to change and his ability to retool his subjectivity leaves the dual possibility of real progress, or a softer manipulation and oppression of the feminine gender. Finally, Late: a cowboy song presents myriad different sexualities and genders as the play asks the audience to skew or alter the way they view traditional binary gender system. It allows the location of the masculine to be considered distinct from the male body, and encompasses differently sexed and gendered individuals. I am interested in the ways that these renegotiations create or negate the possibilities of the masculine identity with regards to the crisis of masculinity in our contemporary society. These three plays represent case studies in a much larger spectrum of masculinity, ranging from the traditional, patriarchal forms of masculine subjectivity found in Kicking a Dead Horse, to the progressive and fluid construction of gender subjectivity expressed by feminist scholars and located within Late: a cowboy song. The presentation of these differently constructed subjectivities within theatrical representations allows for an interrogation of the masculine subject and gestures toward the constitution of a new masculine identity / A Thesis submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2010. / April 1, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references. / Elizabeth A. Osborne, Professor Directing Thesis; Irma Mayorga, Committee Member; Dan Dietz, Committee Member.

Dora is a multiplicitous being who transcends time, space, and reality like a cubist painting. A fictional, literary character based on a once living woman, Ida Bauer, Dora is an amalgamation of Ida and of Freud, who published the sole account of Ida's case of hysteria. I will research the two most striking iterations of Dora Bauer -the casebook Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria by Sigmund Freud and the stage play Portrait of Dora by Hélène Cixous. My multimodal form of analysis encompasses three distinct modes. Through the first mode, metaethics, I aim to assess Freud and Cixous' arguments and ethics of representation, not to judge, but to reveal the validity of their potential motivations when viewed through each one's individual matrix of ethics. Through the second, Naomi Scheman's multiplicitous identity theory, I will investigate the signs of multiplicity in Dora's portrayal by both Freud and Cixous. Through the final mode of analysis, cubism as an art form in concert with Non-Euclidean geometry, I will reveal both Freud and Cixous' fourth dimensional quality of writing and of representation. Metaethics, multiplicitous identity, and cubism can be modes of resistance, of therapy for the theatre. In concert with this thesis, I have created a rehearsal process in which the actors and I investigated these modes within the theatre. With Dora as our subject, we have created an experimental reading of Cixous' Portrait of Dora, and we have written and composed an original play with music The Dora Project. I will explain in the final chapter how we set about manifesting this scholarship on stage and what we encountered along the way. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2014. / April 15, 2014. / Cixous, Cubism, Dora, Freud, Metaethics, Multiplicitous / Includes bibliographical references. / Kris Salata, Professor Directing Thesis; Mary Karen Dahl, Committee Member; Dan Sack, Committee Member.

In this thesis, I examine how two activist groups--the Electronic Disturbance Theater and Anonymous--have transposed Thoreauvian Civil Disobedience for the virtual realm to explore how this shift of performance space also shifts traditional notions of performance. I further consider how these hacktivists, or hacker-activists, use the dynamic dimensions of cyberspace in a way that allows for interesting intersections of actors and spectators while calling attention to the ethical implications and sociopolitical impacts of their actions. The thesis begins by situating technology in a brief timeline of non-violent activism, establishing the internet as a necessary and useful site of political resistance able to provoke and incite change. Before turning to my objects of study, I take time to distinguish malicious hacking acts from sociopolitical hacktivism acts to highlight the moral and legal ambiguity between the two. To then provide an example of early hacktivist methods, I discuss how the Electronic Disturbance Theater has used technology and the internet in their performances of resistance, the ramifications of their actions, and how hacktivism might evolve alongside the increasing sophistication and complexity of the internet. Finally, I introduce the hacktivist collective known as Anonymous to explore how they have propelled and redefined online activism by incorporating simultaneous physical activism in their performances. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2013. / October 30, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references. / Mary Karen Dahl, Professor Directing Thesis; Krzystof Salata, Committee Member; George McConnell, Committee Member.

From 1993 until 1999, I worked with my colleagues at Florida State University to develop a series of workshops and presentations to advance some new approaches to teacher training for graduate teaching assistants. In these workshops, we used methods of instruction from theatre performance training, such as those of Keith Johnstone, Patsy Rodenburg, Moishe Feldenkrais, and theories and methodologies from Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed (1979, originally published in 1974). The goals of our performance-oriented program were to develop critically reflective teaching and model pedagogical strategies that teachers can use to foster embodied, engaged, student-centered learning in their classrooms. This dissertation documents the evolution of our program, by describing these workshops, examining them critically in theoretical terms, evaluating their effectiveness, and imagining future directions for the work. The dissertation is organized by the phases in which we developed at Florida State University the workshops that used performance as a training method for PIE (Program for Instructional Excellence). The dissertation consists of six chapters, each examining a new phase of the work as an individual case study. In Chapter One, I outline the theoretical foundation on which the project rests. In Chapter Two, I describe our efforts to use performance to revise/rework the plenary session of the PIE's Fall Teaching Conference. In Chapter Three, I discuss our efforts to begin training the conference participants themselves as performers. In Chapter Four, I explain the way we used Boal's "Forum Theatre" exercise as a method to promote a pedagogical dialogue among conference participants. Chapter Five documents our use of Boal's "Cops in the Head" exercise to sensitize graduate teaching assistants to some of their personal "oppressions." Finally, in Chapter Six, I speculate on future directions for continued work in this area. / A Dissertation Submitted to the School of Theatre in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2007. / November 8, 2001. / Theatre Studies, Pedagogy, Education, Teacher Training, Boal, Theatre Of The Oppressed / Includes bibliographical references. / Donna Marie Nudd, Professor Directing Dissertation; Jean Graham-Jones, Outside Committee Member; Carrie Sandahl, Committee Member; Gil Lazier, Committee Member.

This thesis is focused on the intersections of queer theory and violence. Specifically, I look at how acts of violation define and inform queer subjectivity in theatrical representation. Many theatre artists and practitioners use violence to describe gay, lesbian, and queer people on stage. This document examines two queer playwrights from Great Britain, David Rudkin and Mark Ravenhill, and the ways in which they use violence to define and constitute the queer characters in their plays. I am interested in violence as a single but important determining component of the ways in which audiences perceive queer characters. I will focus on how Rudkin and Ravenhill create characters through a dramaturgy that uses both sexuality and violence to formulate subjectivity. The thesis is comprised of three chapters, each of which covers different acts of violence. The first chapter is focused on the queer body as a combative force against acts of violation in David Rudkin's plays Afore Night Come and The Sons of Light. Chapter two is an examination of male/male rape in Rudkin's The Sons of Light and Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking. Chapter three continues to look at Mark Ravenhill, this time discussing violence against women in Some Explicit Polaroids and Mother Clap's Molly House. For better or worse playwrights, filmmakers, and other artists continually use violence to speak about and define gay, lesbian, and other queer bodies. One of the purposes of this document is to show just how much influence theatrical representations of acts of violence have on representations of the queer subject in the theatre. / A Thesis Submitted to the School of Theatre in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2008. / March 26, 2008. / Shopping and F***ing, Criminality, Sexual Violence, The Drag, Sacrifice / Includes bibliographical references. / Mary Karen Dahl, Professor Directing Thesis; Carrie Sandahl, Committee Member; Natalya Baldyga, Committee Member; T. Lynn Hogan, Committee Member.

This thesis takes as its foundational assumption that televised sporting events are not mere documentations of games as they unfold, but carefully constructed performances whose conventions are geared to its ideal spectator – the white heterosexual man. While this assertion is axiomatic, it does not explain televised sports enormous popularity amongst women. According to a 1999 article in The New York Times on the Web of the 130 million viewers watched the Super Bowl that year, 43 percent were women (Kane par. 24). Why do women want to watch a performance that is so clearly geared to white, heterosexual men? According to one recent editorial in the Elizabethtown College paper, "we watch for the 'tight ends,' and I do not mean the field position. There is just something special about tight, padded spandex football pants. Amen" (Jacobs par. 7). Corporate sponsors of sports such as football have seen the statistics and are increasingly gearing their commercials towards women. This acknowledgement within the televised performances of sport lends a new type of clout to women viewers. Now that sport programmers and advertisers know women are present, they need to keep them tuned in. As a white, heterosexual female gazer, I find myself being hailed by commercials within the sports narrative with increasing frequency, not only with the products being pitched, but how they are being marketed. I also find this hailing at work within game coverage through the inclusion of female sportscasters and the increasing coverage of women's sports. Male athletes are beginning to occupy positions as sex objects as well, as the media focus on their athletic bodies. Each of these shifts indicates the broadening of the sports narrative to include multiple identities and subjectivities. However, the unequal power dynamics working in the sports narrative often serve to recontain these identities and subjectivities within the confines of white hetero-male gazing structures. Female viewers, although hailed occasionally, often find themselves complicit in the objectification of women working within the narrative. Women's bodies continue to be common currency in sports. Although women's sports are becoming increasingly visible, they are often ghettoized in non-mainstream magazines such as Sports Illustrated for Women, websites, such as ESPN Page 2, and television, such as ESPN2. Sporting narrative representations also materialize through the eye of the camera, and often multiple cameras, which direct and exercise control over the view of the female spectator. These cameras exercise surveillance over transgressive gazes and actions. Transgression and interventions by multiple subjectivities into established white hetero-male gazing structures are quite often recontained. This recontainment is never absolute, producing gaps through which resistance is possible. An analysis of sports reveals an active site for feminist performance, particularly performances that resist the constraints of the male gaze. These perceived oppositions are performed by female athletes and broadcasters within the televised sporting performance, as well as by female spectators watching the televised event. These two areas of performance, from within the representation and from the outside looking in, resist the male gaze in separate, but complimentary ways. Representations of female athletes and broadcasters' bodies within the sporting narrative work as a type of textual performance that refuses the objectifying gaze of the male spectator, while female spectators watching the representations of the narrative may use what bell hooks refers to as an oppositional gaze that challenges and deconstructs the narrative's attempts to cater to the male gaze. I will use the tools of feminist performance analysis, cultural studies, media studies, and sports studies to explore how these performances are pitched to the white heterosexual male spectator and how white heterosexual women, women of color, and lesbians within the structures of patriarchal sport trouble the dominant constructions and readings of sporting narrative representations. / A Thesis Submitted to the School of Theatre in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2005. / April 6, 2005. / Sports Studies, Performance Studies, Male Gaze / Includes bibliographical references. / Carrie Sandahl, Professor Directing Thesis; Mary Karen Dahl, Committee Member; Laura Edmondson, Committee Member.

Perhaps no one has written musicals that address social, political, and personal issues so effectively and purposefully as Stephen Sondheim. He positions his audience to identify with his characters by placing them in every day situations. The audience walks away feeling that they, too, have been personally affected by whatever social travesty the characters are experiencing; however, Sondheim undermines his socially progressive commentary by presenting his characters in a manner that stereotypes other marginalized groups in the process. One of his most common choices for creating crisis is his use of disabled characters – physically disabled characters such as Fosca and, eventually, Giorgio, in Passion, or psychologically challenged characters, such as the entire ensemble of Assassins. While Sondheim's work is rife with social commentary on issues of race, gender, economics, and relationships, he doesn't comment critically on disability. He simply relies on his disabled characters to provide metaphors that comment on other issues. As a result, the actual disabled people become tools for social or political agendas unrelated to disability oppression. This thesis pays attention to Sondheim's use of disability metaphor and how these metaphors allow him to critique various social issues on the one hand, while unintentionally furthering oppressive stereotypes of disability on the other. I will examine two plays in which Sondheim uses disability as metaphor: Passion (1994) and Assassins (1991). While many of Sondheim's plays revolve around disabled characters (Anyone Can Whistle, Sweeney Todd, Pacific Overtures, Into the Woods….), I have chosen these two plays because they represent physical, psychological and emotional disability in the same ways that many of Sondheim's other plays do, but send very clear messages through the use of disability metaphor that can be applied to the body of Sondheim's work. / A Thesis Submitted to the School of Theatre in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2006. / March 29, 2006. / Sondheim Musicals, Assassins, Passion, Disability Studies, Disability, Musicals, Sondheim, Stephen Sondheim, Disabled Characters, Disability Metaphor, Disability Arts / Includes bibliographical references. / Carrie Sandahl, Professor Directing Thesis; Mary Karen Dahl, Committee Member; Gayle Seaton, Outside Committee Member.