China is a cultural and economic giant in today’s world, but has been somehow misunderstood in the past decades . With more and more educational and economic communication between China and the western world, more non-Chinese people find a need to know China. This project has created a board game based on Journey to the West, a 2000-page novel which is one of the four great classical novels in China. The project seeks to transmit some of the cultural aspects of China, stimulate people’s interest in China through simple gameplay. The ultimate goal of this project was to develop a game which was fun for friends and families to play together, as well as to offer a relaxing and pleasant play space for people to experience a different culture without extensive reading. The paper explains the research that has been done to realize the project, Journey to the West: the Board Game, and the production expectation. A study has been done behind the project explored the game’s mechanics, appeal and effectiveness. The paper also details the results of this study to determine if players of this board game learn about Chinese culture more than readers of the book.

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Orientador: Marcelo Magalhães Bulhões / Resumo: As transformações sociais e políticas do final do século XX trouxeram profundas considerações e discussões que foram incorporadas às produções midiáticas da época. Dentre essas mídias os quadrinhos já se destacavam como ferramenta política tanto na China como na Itália, e essas produções eram aprimoradas conforme a tecnologia se desenvolvia. Esta dissertação busca perceber, através de uma análise comparativa, como cosmovisão atua no processo de adaptação midiática. Tomando por obra base a narrativa Jornada ao Oeste do século XVI, italianos e chineses criaram obras distintas sobre todos os aspectos: O Jornada ao Oeste em Quadrinhos adaptação chinesa de 1962 e a produção italiana Lo Scimmiotto de 1976. As duas narrativas contam como a simbologia nos quadrinhos foi moldada por artistas que interpretam e ressignificam um acervo simbólico e cultural formando uma obra coesa e repleta de significações. Ao traçar os elementos comparativos entre as duas obras e apresentá-los quadro a quadro, argumentamos que embora o enredo da narrativa base se sustente, existe um hipertexto que só pode ser acessado ao conhecer o acervo histórico, social e cultural. Esse hipertexto se relaciona diretamente com a cosmovisão e com permanência das imagens como tratados nos estudos sobre arte de Warburg e Panofsky. Por fim este trabalho discute como os quadrinhos enquanto mídia se presta a receber este tipo de manifestação artística como nenhum outro meio de comunicação devido a sua linguagem própria. / Abstract: The end of the 20th century brought deep political and social discussions that were embodied by the media productions. Among those medium, comics started to point out as a political tool both in Italy and China, those production evolved together with the technology. The present work aims to point, through a comparative analysis, how the worldview acts in the adaptation process. Taking the 16th century literary work Journey to the West, Chinese and Italians created distinct adaptations among all aspects: Journey to West in Comics, the chinese adaptation from 1962 and the italian production Lo Scimmiotto from 1976. Both comics have shown us how the symbolic system in comic books were molded by artists, who interpreted and resignified a cultural collection of symbols creating a coherent work. By tracing those comparative elements and present them each comic strip at a time, we argue that although the original plot remains, there is an hypertext that can only be accessed by knowing the social, cultural and historical context. The hypertext is directly linked to the cosmovision and to the remnants of images as discussed previously by Warburg and Panofsky. Lastly the work discuss how comic books as a media offer itself to this kind of artistic expression as any due to his unique language. / Mestre

西游记是明代吴承恩所攥写的。西游记的主角是孙悟空。孙悟空出生时，具有超自然力量，但是一直很叛逆。因为孙悟空对天堂犯了大错，所以他受到惩罚，他必须帮助玄奘去印度取经回中国。整个旅程中，孙悟空和朝圣者经历八十一场灾难，也让孙悟空变成了一个更好的人。这篇论文应用西格蒙德·弗洛伊德的性心理發展分析为什么孙悟空在朝圣中，行为和性格变的更好。孙悟空在生命的早期阶段发展了固着，通过一直吃达到自我享乐。之后，孙悟空找到了他的阳具，如意金箍棒，孙悟空一直用如意金箍棒试图征服。孙悟空也开始仿效他的父亲形象，玉皇大帝。因为孙悟空违反玉皇大帝的法律，玉皇大帝试图处决孙悟空，但是失败了。所以，孙悟空认为强的人是高于法律的。然而只有佛陀能给孙悟空惩罚，把孙悟空放在五阶山下。孙悟空在五阶山下五百年以后，观音委任孙悟空保护玄奘去印度取经。孙悟空在玄奘身上找到了一位父亲形象，在观音身上找到了一位母亲形象。孙悟空模仿玄奘不使用他的阳具，如意金箍棒试图征服。反而，孙悟空用如意金箍棒做好事，不伤人。 / The Journey to the West is written by Wu Cheng'en,1505-1580 A.D., during the Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644 A.D. The protagonist in The Journey to the West is named Sun Wukong. Sun Wukong is born with supernatural powers and is always up to no good. As punishment for his crimes against the Heaven, Sun Wukong must take a journey to India to help the monk Tripitaka, in order to retrieve Buddhist scriptures back to China. Throughout the journey Sun Wukong and the pilgrims will go through eightyone calamities. The pilgrimage transforms Sun Wukong into becoming a better man. This paper applies Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual development to Sun Wukong to understand his actions and personality and why it changes for the better during The Journey to the West. Sun Wukong develops a fixation to always pleasure himself through eating in the early stages of his life. Later Sun Wukong finds his phallus, the Golden Rod, to conquer, imitating his first father figure, the Jade Emperor. The Jade Emperor tries to execute Sun Wukong for disobeying his laws, but fails. Therefore, Sun Wukong believes that strong people are above the law. The only one that is strong enough to punish him is Buddha by putting Sun Wukong under the FivePhase Mountain. After five hundred years under the mountain, Sun Wukong is assigned by Guanyin to protect Tripitaka during the pilgrimage. Sun Wukong finds a father figure in Tripitaka and a mother figure in Guanyin. Sun Wukong imitates Tripitaka’s kind nature by not using his phallus, the Golden Rod, to conquer. Instead Sun Wukong uses the Golden Rod to do good merits and not hurt humans.

Aristotle stated in his Poetics that theatre’s dual purpose was to educate and entertain. Centuries later the Roman Horace and Indian Bharata echoed his same sentiments. I intend to realize all three theorist’s ideas on the theatre by creating an original educational and entertaining work and bringing it to performance. The audience will retain information without being aware of learning if it is presented in a pleasurable way. The most important geopolitical relationship of this century will be between China and America. In order to educate the American public about the culture of The Middle Kingdom, I propose to write and direct my own play, condensing all three thousand years of Chinese literature into a one hundred and ten minute performance. I will benefit from the personal nature of this thesis by experiencing every stage of a play’s production: from idea to page to performance. My thesis will be made of three major parts: conceiving and writing the play, a journal of directing the debut production, and a third section made of choices, influences, and reflection on the entire experience. In this manner, the ideas swirling in my head may be made clear to others reading this thesis. The play itself will be a comical distillation of ten selected works of Chinese literature. Four non-gender specific American actors will seem to make up the show as it performs in a tongue-in-cheek way. Taking my stated goal of entertaining and educating the audience to heart, the overarching plot of the play will center on the four actors teaching the audience about the literature and culture of China by acting out scenes and telling stories. The information in the scenes will be targeted to a normal American citizen’s educational level with liberal doses of humor added. The four actors will be playing fictionalized versions of themselves and at times iv breaking character by explaining and setting up the theatricality of the piece to the audience. Part of the fun of the show will be seeing how these actors explain a subject as obtuse as Chinese literature to Americans. Perhaps a cooking metaphor is the best way to think of the play: I will chop up raw Chinese literature, the actors will boil it onstage, the theatregoer will consume the mix, and exit the theatre full of entertaining intellectual nourishment. My experiences directing and producing the finished play will be recorded in a journal as a resource for future directors. I imagine directing the play will be the most challenging aspect of this thesis. How is the play changed when other people interact with it? How will the audience receive it? In addition, Committee Chair Mark Routhier and my thesis Committee Members, Mark Brotherton and Tan Huaixiang, will also give written responses to the play’s performances. The play will be performed October 10-13, 2013 in the University of Central Florida’s Performing Arts Complex Studio 2 classroom. In the final section I will write a reflection on the entire process. This will serve the dual purpose of giving me a place to collect my thoughts and giving others a special insight to the growth they might experience when producing this play. Foremost among my influences in writing a play with this subject matter are the style and tone of The Reduced Shakespeare Company