In the late 1960s in New York, many actors became disillusioned with the commercial theatre practice of "jobbing in," i.e., of hiring performers for only one production. A number of these actors began experimenting with different types of performing groups or ensembles. These ensembles often reflected the culture of that period--disillusionment with mainstream middle-class values, involvement with drugs, opposition to the Viet Nam war. They attracted experimenters in professional theatre and a mixed group of performers with a wide spectrum of theatre training and experience. Some performers had none at all, and some a great deal. People from varied socioeconomic backgrounds and different races were drawn together, working for a single social, artistic purpose. Because the group members represented such a variety of performing types, the ensemble leader often became the main teacher. The group frequently met other needs, as a family would, by providing for its members a social, political, emotional, and spiritual structure. / One such ensemble was The Ridiculous Theatrical Company (TRTC), whose leader was Charles Ludlam. This ensemble was unique among the companies of that period in that it maintained a continuing group of the same five actors over a thirteen-year span. This study was an examination of the dynamics of that ensemble and the interrelations of the five long-term members under Ludlam's leadership during the period from 1967 to 1981. / Data for this study were drawn from articles written about the Company, extensive interviews conducted between 1979 and 1982 with the five long-term members, and participant observation by the researcher. The study is presented largely in the members' own words, allowing the story to speak for itself. It traces the Company's existence--philosophically, chronologically, and topically--from its inception to the final disillusionment and departure of two of the original members in 1980. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-01, Section: A, page: 0023. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) is primarily known as an enigmatic artist, author, and personality. All told, Gorey wrote and illustrated over one hundred books during his lifetime and designed book covers for countless others. He has an enormous cult following of fans that buy up his numerous books and prints and make pilgrimages to his old home, now a museum, to learn and lurk where he lived and worked in the later stages of his life. What is mostly unknown—both to Gorey aficionados and scholars—is that Gorey wrote, directed, designed, and acted in a wide variety of plays and theatricals throughout his life. Despite Gorey’s reputation as artist and author, his sizable work in the theatre, and his notable fan base, there is virtually nothing written about his theatre work from a scholarly perspective. Gorey produced “more than a dozen full-length plays and ‘entertainments’ for Cape Cod theatres, plus half a dozen shorter pieces” —almost all original works—in Cape Cod between 1987 and 1999. He played an active role in these productions, writing, directing and designing many, and even creating an original and unique puppet troupe—La Théâtricule Stoïque—that became a signature aspect of this work. What were these plays and entertainments like? Did they share characteristics with his books? How would knowing more about these performances change the conversation about Gorey’s work? I also began to question how these performances might exist beyond the confines of any given production—if there was some way that one could experience them outside of the original performances. While these questions initially centered on Gorey, how might they also extend to other performances? Can performances stretch beyond the boundaries of a given space and time in a way that pushes past the experience of the text or extant ephemera? And, in line with the dark and somewhat mysterious nature of Gorey’s art, what theatre might still be present after human actors have finished? Can there be disembodied theatre? Do performances continue after they end? My dissertation will delve into the theatrical and literary art of Edward Gorey, bringing Gorey into theatre history as a popular and well-known artist, even if he is largely unknown to scholarship to date. Just as importantly, Gorey will also serve as a case study for an exploration of the ontological nature of performance, especially as performance merges with public history. Gorey is an ideal case study for this exploration because Gorey’s work in the theatre can still be accessed through various public history sites, and I will consider the different ways that the items and sites preserve and showcase these performances. With this work I hope to bring attention to a tremendous artistic talent, as well as contribute to the way we conceive of the potential of performance to endure beyond the liveness of the theatrical encounter. With this investigation I am testing to see if the spectral meanings of a performance can be transmitted through disembodied means such as archival materials and things on display. I imagine disembodied theatre takes place away from the theatre, in spaces of public history such as a library, archive, or museum space. This is a crucial question in this investigation and one that I will suggest an answer to in the following chapters. I suggest that disembodied performance can exist, but these traces of performance must be available to view and interested spectators must be willing to use their imagination to fill in the gaps left by such materials. This dissertation seeks to both closely analyze Gorey’s theatre work in order to make his plays more well-known, and to test the limits and possibilities of disembodied theatre. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2018. / April 3, 2018. / Edward Gorey, Museum Studies, Performance Studies, Public History / Includes bibliographical references. / Beth Osborne, Professor Directing Dissertation; Jennifer Koslow, University Representative; Mary Karen Dahl, Committee Member; Samer Al-Saber, Committee Member.

This investigation was to conduct an historical study of the development of drama activities in public recreation programs for five years, 1969 to 1974, to ascertain how much drama is included in public recreation programs. / In 1974, a questionnaire was mailed to 171 recreation departments in Florida. The five with the highest number of points from answers to the questions and that responded positively for an in-depth study of their centers were included in this study. / Based on the study the following conclusions were made: (1) Most of the staff recreators who dealt with the drama program could be classified in two groups. One group included those persons who are schooled in recreation/physical education and who know nothing or little about drama. The other group includes those persons who are schooled in drama and know nothing or little about public recreation. (2) Little or no attention is given to record-keeping, and no real sense of continuing programs is in existence. (3) The recreation programs are egocentric. They are based on the philosophy of the person who is in the position of dictating the programs, usually a person in a staff position rather than an administrative one. (4) Available space was not used effectively for dramatic purposes. (5) There is no standardization throughout the programs. The same types of programming are listed under different titles. None of the programs keeps the same kind of records, none of the record-keeping forms is similar, and none of the requirements for being a drama specialist is the same. (6) The drama programs are poorly funded. (7) In some cases drama experiences are second-thought activities, something to fill out the time while the physical education programs were slack. (8) Almost all of the drama activities were held in the summer. (9) Almost all of the drama programming was for ages eight to fourteen, and the greatest number of participants were female. (10) Very little programming was done with the subject interests of all participants in mind. (11) No diagnostic tests were administered to determine the developmental stages of a child. (12) These recreation centers provide programs in drama on participant demand and make no effort for long-range planning. / The following recommendations were made: (1) Written criteria for training persons to lead drama at a recreation center should be developed. (2) An intensive seminar should be developed to provide in-service training to professional recreators who have no background in drama. (3) An inventory instrument, based on minimal standards for an active theatre program, should be developed for testing the drama programming in each recreation center. (4) A drama program should be developed to encourage younger males who are not sports-minded or athletically inclined. (5) Informal diagnostic dramatic activities should be conducted by qualified personnel before participants are grouped into beginning or advanced classes. (6) Drama recreation programs should be structured to contain components essential for personal growth through participation in the dramatic arts. (7) Programs in drama and in recreation should contain a course in drama recreation to prepare workers who can use drama in recreational settings. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-08, Section: A, page: 3328. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.

Throughout the twentieth century, Hollywood has often looked to Broadway for dramatic material, and this trend has continued into the 1980s. Hollywood adaptation significantly alters the message and the ideological dimension of the original play. By choosing four plays which contain strong ideological messages and by comparing them with their adaptations, this study aims to discover the extent to which and how these plays are transformed. Since the transformation generally involves a weakening of the plays' political or social message, the comparative analysis attempts to reveal how the dilution of message is achieved. / Chapter I establishes semiotic methodology as a tool for the analysis. The theories of theatre semiotics proposed by Keir Elam and Martin Esslin concentrate on the ideological dimension of theatrical signs. The analysis of film will employ the feminist theory which designates the Hollywood film as an imaging system which objectifies women, together with Bill Nichols's theory on the ideological aspect of genre films. Chapter II discusses the aspects of feminist theatre in 'night, Mother and Crimes of the Heart. The film versions of these plays are compared with the original plays in Chapter III, in order to explore how feminist messages are diluted in the adaptation through the use of conventional Hollywood cinematography. Chapter IV examines the message of the impossibility of genuine human relationships in Sexual Perversity in Chicago and the political messages concerning the deaf in Children of a Lesser God. Chapter V, dealing with the film versions of these plays, discusses how the Hollywood genre film fractures and dilutes the political messages of the original plays by imposing conventional narrative structure. The semiotic analysis in each chapter leads to a conclusion in Chapter VI: in the first two films, the transformation and dilution of the messages are achieved largely by the conventional use of cinematic language, while in the latter films the change of structure and the imposition of the genre frame affect the ideology. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-08, Section: A, page: 2306. / Major Professor: Karen L. Laughlin. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.

This dissertation brings to light a theatrical and political genre I call "mass pageantry," which emerged in England, the United States, Russia and Germany during the early twentieth century. Performed out-of-doors, often with thousands of amateur local performers in costume, these vast mytho-historical spectacles emerged from unusual alliances between playwrights and directors seeking to transform theater as a cultural practice, and political organizations seeking new ways to gain the allegiance of the working classes. Because mass pageants arose in significantly different political contexts, they have been primarily discussed in single-nation studies by historians of culture and politics. This trend has inadvertently led to a general neglect of their status as theatrical events and to a false distinction between American and British "pageants," which are frequently dismissed as nostalgia, and Soviet and German "spectacles," which are often reduced to propaganda. This dissertation demonstrates that despite significant differences in the political impulses behind these events, they together represent a complex and imaginative transnational theatrical genre defined by shared techniques and a common purpose. It argues that the emergence of mass pageantry points to a shared cultural goal--to reinvent theater as an art form created for and by "the people"--as well to a common social problem for which pageants were seen as a promising solution: how to reconstitute "peoples" from the "crowds" produced by mass culture, industrialization and political upheaval. Chapter One locates the emergence of mass pageantry at the intersection of two nineteenth-century intellectual currents: the development of "crowd theory" and the growth of people's theater movements. Chapters Two, Three and Four each focus on a single pageant: The Sherborne Pageant (England, 1908), written and directed by Louis Napoleon Parker; The Masque of St. Louis (US, 1914), written by Percy MacKaye; and Towards a World Commune (RSFSR, 1920), created by a team of five directors. To demonstrate the ways in which mass pageants competed with one another for the attention of audiences, as well as how theories and techniques of mass pageantry were adapted for a new medium, Chapter Five surveys mass pageants of the Weimar period in Germany and examines Leni Riefenstahl's 1935 film, Triumph of the Will, through the lens of mass pageantry. This dissertation demonstrates that pageant-devisers, influenced as often by transnational artistic movements and socio-theatrical reform efforts as by the political agenda of pageant sponsors, generated their own visions of collective life through the mass pageants they created. Although their ideas were in varying degrees informed by theories emerging from the burgeoning field of "crowd theory," I argue that pageants are best understood as contributing performative ideas of their own making to an ongoing debate rather than as stagings of crowd theories already in existence. Together they articulate a consensus about the role theater can and should play in the representation and transformation of actual crowds, and by extension, in the transformation of social life and culture more broadly.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 35-02, Section: A, page: 1146. / Thesis (D.Mus.)--The Florida State University, 1973.

Abstract not available

The object of this dissertation is to re-assess Australian examples of ???performance??? in light of discourses and directions in dramaturgy that have emerged since the 1970s internationally. The thesis applies Hans-Thies Lehmann???s comprehensive theory of post-dramatic theatre to explicate examples of departures from dramatic theatre in view of the expansive field of inquiry implied by the description ???performance??? or ???new media arts??? and general cultural-political theory. To examine the de-centralisation of text specific to post-dramatic theatre the dissertation analyses firstly, material devised collaboratively at all stages of creative development in its case studies of the Sydney based companies The Sydney Front (1986-1993) and Open City (1987 -); and secondly, Heiner M??ller???s concept of ???literature??? written for the theatre and in opposition to its convention. In addition, the analysis of M??ller serves as an introduction to a comparative analysis of a dramatic (literary) theatre project by a group of Aboriginal artists based on a post-dramatic text by M??ller. This dissertation endeavours to contribute to documentation on post-dramatic theatre in Australia and more broadly, to conceptions of contemporary forms of dramaturgy. More specifically, the thesis argues that dramaturgy no longer necessarily concerns the identification of an aesthetic locus that explicitly explicates the audience???s relation to a known macrocosm. Instead, the thesis conceives of dramaturgy as a compositional strategy that can be thought of within the bounds of Aristotle???s perfunctory visual dimension ???opsis??? and elaborated upon in terms of Kristeva???s theory of the ???thetic??? as regulating ???semiotic??? incursions into the ???symbolic??? order. In doing so, the thesis proposes the concept of a ???televisual??? and an ???abject??? dramaturgy, the latter on the basis of a relation to the older tradition of carnival and identifies a link between intertextuality (transposition) and dramaturgical strategies that engage the spectator in the theatre situation and the dissolution of logocentric hierarchy.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1960. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 621-625). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.