In spite of Ping Chong¡¯s reputation in the American theatre scene, little has been done to explore his artistic works from a fully theorized perspective. In this dissertation, I propose a category of ¡°cultural narrative texts¡± to investigate cultural and historical themes of ¡°culture and the other¡± in Chong¡¯s fascinating ethno-historiographic fables. The poetics and politics of Chong¡¯s narrative texts are the subject of this dissertation. The frames of myth and narratology in their constructive aspects (how the mythic narratives are expressed) provide the poetics part. I adopt the literary approaches of Northrop Frye and Kenneth Burke for their intense studies on image (narrative unit), rhetoric (narrative signification), and emplotment (narrative sequence). In a connective linkage from poetics, the politics part engages the cultural and historical thematics through which I read what is expressed in Chong¡¯s (counter-) myths on people, cultures, and histories. For this complex thematic part, I construe a theoretical bricolage of a broad range of disciplines and methodologies, from psychoanalysis, cognitive science, anthropology, historiography, sociology, to poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and feminism. This dissertation deals with Chong¡¯s ethno-historiographic fables throughout his theatrical career over three decades, examining how his deconstructive myth-making wrestles with the problematic notion of ¡°the other¡± in both local (national) and global aspects. Borrowing Julia Kristeva¡¯s socially informed psychoanalysis, I approach Chong¡¯s concept of ¡°the other¡± as ¡°social abject¡± inhibiting at the margins. I argue that through Chong¡¯s (counter-) myth-making which destabilizes the authority of hegemonic narratives of the incompatible split between the self and the other, multiple voices of the marginalized return, and the monologue of the hegemonic culture is interrupted. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how the performance of Chong¡¯s (counter-) narratives, what I call ¡°voicing back,¡± resist the silence, enabling the marginalized abject to become the subjects of their own desires and histories. This ¡°voicing back¡± in its shared political languages of respect, equality, and justice (toward the others) prepares for the performance of a democracy which is based on the complete modes of speech acts, speaking and listening.

The presence of English-language theatres (ELTs) in Prague in the nineties coincided with the ongoing transition to a market economy in the Czech Republic, as the English language itself became increasingly the international language of business and culture. Under Communism, Czech theatre had been highly political through veiled protests against the system of power. After 1989, Czech theatre began moving into spheres of commodification and tourism. How the ELTs in Prague negotiated their place in a shifting society reveals a performance of identity. The ELTs tracked the turning points in Czech post-revolutionary history of the 1990s. The history of the ELTs has been constructed through personal and telephone interviews and emails, as well as reviews, articles, manuscripts and production videotapes. Companies analyzed include North American Theatre, Small and Dangerous, Black Box International Theatre (which began its life as Studio Theatre), Exposure, and Misery Loves Company. Structurally, this investigation covers three distinct periods of the Czech transition: the optimistic early nineties; the mid-nineties, when the market economy flourished along with increasing instances of corruption; and the late nineties, when disillusionment affected the Czech Republic and most of the ELTs vanished. ELTs in Prague primarily used four production strategies: 1) representing the Performers Culture; 2) representing the Host culture in English; 3) bi-cultural and/or bi-lingual productions, including nonverbal work, collaboration with Host culture theatre companies, and multicultural casting, and 4) presenting plays about culture clash. Theoretical underpinnings for this study include intercultural performance theory, reception and semiotic theory, historiography, and theories of globalization and cultural tourism. The achievements and disappointments of the ELTs reveal underlying principles of production and reception applicable not only to Eastern Europe but to any region with a growing English-speaking subculture. Findings include the observation that production strategy and mission are less significant than the cultural and economic contextualizing of the production company. Curiosity about the English language dwindles as its usage grows. ELTs that were most successful worked structurally with strategy number three in terms of performance venue, schedule and style, contributing to the cultural life of the city rather than self-consciously using theatre to cross borders.

Playing America, prepared towards the completion of a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, examines Yankee Theatre in America and London through a post-colonial lens from 1787 to 1855. Actors under consideration include: Charles Mathews, James Hackett, George Hill, Danforth Marble and Joshua Silsbee. These actors were selected due to their status as iconic performers in Yankee Theatre. The Post-Revolutionary period in America was filled with questions of national identity. Much of American culture came directly from England. American citizens read English books, studied English texts in school, and watched English theatre. They were inundated with English culture and unsure of what their own civilization might look like. A post-colonial crisis, in other words, gripped the new nation. This dissertation attempts to explain Yankee Theatre, a performance tradition popular from the mid-1820s to the mid-1850s, within this complex, transatlantic, sociopolitical situation. It begins with a discussion of early Yankee plays and explains how they were written against the empire, distinguishing the new citizen from the English subject. It examines ways early Yankee Theatre actors expressed their American identity and discusses the pressures these actors faced in fighting for international success. Yankee Theatre was not only popular in America. Several American actors also traveled across the Atlantic to perform it on London stages. Thus, this dissertation also encompasses how the English understood the Yankee, how an imperial standard was established overseas, why English audiences were unhappy with the first American Yankee actors they witnessed, and how future Yankee actors were caught in this web of criterion and taste for years to come. Playing America asserts that Yankee Theatre addressed specific problems, issues, and questions arising from Americas post-colonial status. When the post-colonial crisis passed, Yankee Theatre also ended. By the mid-to late-1850s, the minstrel replaced Jonathan as the symbol of the nation. An examination of Yankee Theatre allows for a greater understanding of circum-Atlantic performance as well as issues of nationalism and national identity in the theatre. Research methodologies include historical and textual analysis as well as post-colonial, literary, and dramatic theory.

Throughout the history of the American musical, the chorus, has remained a key component in the foundation of the form. The anonymous men and women who sing and dance help create the spectacle that is an intrinsic part of the musical. While the chorus line of fifty that characterized the revues in the early part of the twentieth century has dwindled, for economic and aesthetic reasons, it has not disappeared. The role of the chorus has changed from a titillating backdrop for headlining stars to an accomplished ensemble of dancer/singers who may be the featured performers in their own right. This dissertation creates a cultural history of the chorus as it has evolved from the The Black Crook in 1866 to the beginning of the twenty first-century. Specifically, how have the issues of sexuality, gender, race and class affected the development of the chorus? Chapter one is an overview of the history of the Broadway chorus, beginning with a brief look at the origins of the chorus in Greek drama, through various dance trends, the popularity of the revue, and the emergence of director/choreographers and their influence on the form. Chapter two investigates how gender informed the construction of the image of chorus girls and boys, and how that image was manipulated through the years to reflect social concerns and anxieties around the issue of changing gender roles. Along with the schism created by the performance of gender in the chorus, the performance of race also marks a serious divide in the American musical theatre world. Chapter three examines the history of African-American performers in the chorus. The chorus is one small, but significant, component of a musical. Yet, this usually anonymous group of performers has often figured as the subject of the story in a medium that admittedly, enjoys talking, singing and dancing about itself. The final chapter of this study looks at how the chorus as a subject functions in the musical by focusing on four examples that span fifty-two years: Allegro (1947), A Chorus Line (1975), and 42nd Street (1981), and Contact (1999).

This dissertation explores the intercultural forces that affected the formation of wenmingxi (civilized drama), Chinas first Western-style theatre that flourished in Shanghai in the 1910s, following the 1907 production of Uncle Toms Cabin by the Chinese student group the Spring Willow Society (Chunliu She) in Tokyo. In contrast to huaju (spoken drama), the present form of Western theatre in China, which came into existence in the 1920s through a whole-sale importation, wenmingxi adopted a localized approach by mixing Western drama, shinpa (new school drama, the first Western-style Japanese theatre), and traditional Chinese theatre. Based on primary sources as well as recent historical and theoretical studies from China, Japan, and the West, my dissertation focuses on the ideological, dramaturgical, and theatrical transformation wenmingxi brought to Chinese theatre. The study is divided into four chapters and an introduction, which lays out previous research on this topic and my theoretical framework. Chapter One presents a historical review of wenmingxi, from early Western theatrical productions in Shanghai by expatriates and students of missionary and other schools, through Spring Willows productions in Tokyo, and finally to the rise and fall of wenmingxi in Shanghai in the 1910s. Chapter Two examines the role of nationalism in the emergence of speech-based theatre in Japan and China around the turn of the twentieth century when political instability and fear of national peril largely accounted for both the political focus of early wenmingxi and its continued nationalist content even during its brief commercial success in the mid 1910s. Chapter Three focuses on wenmingxi dramaturgy by tracing the intercultural transformation of several representative plays. It deals with three topics: the use of scripted plays vs. scenarios, adaptation vs. translation of European and shinpa plays, and melodrama as the emblematic dramatic mode for a society in transition. Finally, Chapter Four examines wenmingxis localization of the theatrical institutionespecially in the realm of performancebetween the poles of free acting, Western naturalism, and native theatrical conventions such as singing and female impersonation.

Modern theatrical scholars do not generally hold the first two decades of 20th century American drama in high esteem. The received wisdom regarding most of the era under study is that Broadway was primarily a source of frivolous entertainment that bore little or no relation to the turbulent social forces that were shaping America as well as the outside world. Nevertheless, Broadway during the years 1900-1920 both reflected and impacted upon a particularly significant series of social changesnamely, the formation and rise of the Professional Managerial Class, or PMC. This intermediate class, positioned between the workers and the capitalist owners, found its niche and its identity as mental workers preserving capitalist culture, and this emerging class made significant contributions in shaping the modern Broadway theatre. Broadway, in turn, contributed greatly in shaping PMC class identity. Through an examination of plays, actors, reviews, and audience response of the period, and using the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, this document traces both the development of Broadway as a source of modern, mature American drama, as well as the development of PMC consciousness and habitusthat is, the outward bodily and behavioral display of the unconscious acceptance of class manifestations. In particular, one of the key class problems that both the PMC and Broadway sought to solve was that of nerves. Nerves plagued the minds of the theatre-going mental workers, and Broadway practitioners tried various strategies to conquer, or at least temporarily mollify, the nerves of the audience. These strategies included the song and dance of musicals, the laughter of comedies and farces, and the therapeutic onstage talking cures that reflected the increasing interest in and assimilation of Freudian concepts. By following these symbiotic developments to their climax in the 1920s, the historian discovers that the birth of what scholars consider modern American drama is primarily the result of the PMC fulfilling its task of maintaining and preserving capitalist culture.

SAN HERMENEGILDO AS A TROPE OF RHETORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION IN SPAIN, ITALY, AND MEXICO (1590-1690) Stefano Muneroni University of Pittsburgh, 2008 During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, San Hermenegildo, a Christian martyr who died in 585, became a recurrent presence on theatre stages in Europe and the Americas. Tragedies inspired by his death began to surface due to the efforts of the Society of Jesus, the religious order that used him to embody its theological and rhetorical agendas. This dissertation investigates the figure of San Hermenegildo as a stage character in the period comprised between 1590 and 1690. Specifically, it looks at five tragedies, two Spanish, two Italian, and one Mexican, to demonstrate how the treatment of the martyr varied widely according to geo-political and rhetorical necessities. The subtle balance between the evident consistency of the Hermenegildo theatrical trope and the many differences traceable in the individual plays illuminates the powerful ideologies and the propagandistic objectives that Jesuit theatre came to embody during the Baroque era, as well as the struggle for power happening within and without the Society of Jesus. This study also examines how two non-Jesuit playwrights, Lope de Vega and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, challenged the tropological attributes with which the Society of Jesus had charged the saint; the first by focusing on pleasing the audience of the public theatre, the second by reinterpreting the story of Hermenegildo according to her subaltern position as Mexican creole and as a woman. The most relevant implication of this dissertation is that of having demonstrated the tropological significance attached to saints and martyrs as stage characters during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the layered and rich connections existing between drama and religious and political discourses. This is a particularly relevant finding especially in light of the fact that American academia has largely neglected to probe the religious theatre of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and much more needs to be accomplished in this field. Given the interdisciplinary scope of the research, the dissertation employs many languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin, and major theoretical models such as colonial and post-colonial studies, history of ideas, rhetorical studies, and theatre and performance studies.

In this dissertation, I venture to explicate the social and political significance of the Korean nationalist theatre performance. The Korean nationalist theatre utilizes elements of indigenous cultures and searches for the Korean ethnic archetype as the ideal Korean type or genuine Koreanness for the reconstruction of the Korean ethnic community. In this context, this dissertation thematically approaches rethinking the issue of rhetorical representation. As a methodological tool, I adopt feminist deconstruction to unfold the epistemological contradictions of the essentialist idea embedded in the notion of the Korean archetype, problematizing the ethnocentric and phallocentric nature of the representation. This dissertation interrogates the major task of the Korean nationalist theatre, which ideologically promulgates the idea of ethnocentric patriarchy supported by the traditional notion of community, inquiring if this type of theatre can provide useful and practical prospects for imagining a more democratic and plural civilian society in Korea today, when the interaction of globalization, nationalism, regionalism, and localism simultaneously impact our everyday life and cultural identification. In this dissertation, I explore genealogical trajectories of the Korean nationalist theatre contesting with other theatrical performances for nation building, cultural identification, and national unity. Paying close attention to changing social and political situations and conditions, I trace the routes, not roots, of the Korean nationalist theatre, and observe how its theorists and the practitioners were able or unable to come to terms with shifting situations and conditions. I have selected works mainly from the 1970s to the 1990s since the works provide grounding images, symbols, metaphors, and allegories pertinent to discussing how the Korean ethnic community has been narrativized through the performances of the Korean nationalist theatre during the turbulent epoch. Reflecting on the limits, accomplishments, and insights of the preceding researchers, I hope that this dissertation presents the Korean nationalist theatre with fully contoured critical views and ideas. This dissertation takes a small step towards a genealogy of the Korean nationalist theatre, and hopes to opens up a space for a dialogue among troubled artists and activists confronting globalization as a shared issue.

Jacques Milet's nearly 30,000-line French mystery play, Istoire de la Destruction de Troie la Grant [Story of the Destruction of Troy the Great], written in 1450, has been marginalized by theatre historians despite its 13 manuscripts (some with extensive illustrations) and 13 print editions dating until the mid-sixteenth century. As a play that treated its non-religious subject seriously, Destruction de Troie neither fits precisely with the spectacular religious cycles, nor with late medieval moralities and comedies, all genres which grew in popularity during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. However, Destruction de Troie's subject, the "matter of Troy," situates the play in the mainstream of the fictional universes appropriated by a range of groups--including sovereigns and their courts, civic guilds, and artists and writers of all varieties--for social and political purposes. And, the long list of surviving copies demonstrates how effectively the play captured the spirit of its time. Consequently, this dissertation uses Destruction de Troie as a prism through which to view the connections among political, economic, and social events, performance varieties and practices, and circulating literary and ideological concepts. Although much of direct evidence for performance remains inconclusive, the strength of the correspondence between the performance forms, tastes, and customs near the places where Destruction de Troie originated and circulated, and the traces of those practices in the text and images of various extant copies, supports the idea that the play was much more representative of the broader performance and literary cultures dominant at the time. The play's particular attention to political matters as demonstrated in its Épître épilogative [Letter of Epilogue], as well as the ideological orientation of the play's Prologue, reinforce the important relationship of performance to power. Viewed from this vantage point, a more complete picture of the culture emerges than that seen from the perspective of a few spectacular Passion-play performances and late medieval comedies. By establishing relationships in, around, and through Milet's dramatization, this dissertation argues that Destruction de Troie, far from being an exception, is in fact emblematic of trends in performance and culture in late medieval France.

This dissertation is a production history and reception study of the Market Theatres controversial presentation of Shakespeares Titus Andronicus in 1995. Although directed by Gregory Doran, the star attraction and creative force behind this event was Antony Sher, a celebrity actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company and a luminary in the United Kingdoms South African expatriate community. Johannesburg theatre audiences initially welcomed Shers self-described homecoming and the prestige his performance of Shakespeare would bestow upon that citys traditional Anglophile elite. For his part, Sher saw this event as a stepping stone towards repatriation and the beginning of a more ambitious career as a South African public intellectual. These mutual expectations were disappointed, however, when Johannesburg critics and audiences responded unfavorably to the actual staging of Titus, which featured South African stage accents instead of traditional Received Pronunciation. After Sher publicly countered public antipathy by writing a column accusing Johannesburgers of philistinism, a bitter quarrel erupted on editorial pages of both South African and British newspapers. It reignited two years later with the release of Sher and Dorans apologia Woza Shakespeare! Titus Andronicus in South Africa. To date, this polemical work has served as the primary history of this affair. Drawing on communitarian philosopher Michael Walzers theory of connected criticism, this dissertation offers an alternative reception narrative that locates the failure of this production in the rhetorical mismatch between Shers advertised intention to celebrate the achievement of racial reconciliation in that country and the aesthetic formation of relevance, (as theorized by Alan Sinfield) that governed Sher and Dorans conceptual efforts to make Titus more accessible to a contemporary South African audience. I argue that Shers professional immersion in the working methods of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and belated local knowledge of controversial new African National Congress cultural policies (such as the restructuring of the English-language radio station SAfm) diminished his ability to gauge the critical force of his production concept. The result was an inadvertent act of bait-and-switch that subsequent rancor over Shers support for the apartheid-era cultural boycott and defensive appeals to post-colonial Shakespeare did little to illuminate.