This thesis focuses on the intersection of nationalism and secularism. Specifically, I studysema, the whirling ritual ofMevlevis, and its representations in Turkey. I analyze Turkey's dissemination of a national image therefore its complex signification both nationally and internationally. The thesis examines the representation of sema inSems!.. Unutma!.., a play by the acclaimed Turkish playwright Özen Yula. It illustrates the way in which the play endorses and simultaneously subverts the discursive frameworks of the history of the Turkish national state through its use of sema. Using Yula's play as a starting point, I address the tension sema reveals in the national identity of Turkey, situated as a liminal geography, marked as a bridge between East and West. I am interested in how theatre unsettles the national imaginary embedded in and disseminated through institutional state apparati. Therefore, I focus on how Yula's play repurposes the sema ritual in regards to state's circulation of it and the increasing attention that the Turkish state receives in international media. This thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter focuses on the interweaving of nationalism and secularism that affects the citizenship in Turkey on a daily basis. Chapter two elaborates the social tension arising from this overlay, highlighting the state's use of Islam to unify the nation either through or against religious imaginaries. Chapter three explicates Yula's dramaturgy to demonstrate how the play intervenes in the state's branding of sema and re-signifies the ritual apart from its religious and secular readings. The last chapter utilizesSems!.. Unutma!..as a case study to illustrate the significance of sociocultural contexts of theatrical representations of the unfamiliar cultural practices, as in cross-cultural theatre productions. / 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. / nationalism, Ozen Yula, secularism, sema, Turkish theatre, Whirling dervishes / Includes bibliographical references. / Mary Karen Dahl, Professor Directing Thesis; Elizabeth Osborne, Committee Member; Kris Salata, Committee Member.

The post-war World War Two years were an exciting period of theatrical history. This particular era was one of great theatrical activity and experimentation. American writers and painters were a part of the post-war boom that shifted the center of art and culture from Paris to New York. In this dissertation, I will examine the counterculture theatre movement that emerged in this period and came into being in the 1950's and 60's in terms of new portrayals of character as reflected in experimentations in text and music. In order to establish the intellectual frame of my discussion, in chapter one, I will first define the major terms that I will be discussing such as modernism and character. I will address the finer aspects of the discussion such as postmodernism and humanism in my concluding chapter. I will also discuss the major trends of the historical/artistic period- terms such as avant-garde in this context and will also describe the major artists of each of its waves and what themes were most prevalent in their work. Who were the avant-garde that proceeded the New York post war theatre artists I am examining and how did they influence their work? How am I defining this wave of the avant-garde and when did it end?" How did this new sensibility materialize in some of the experimentations that took place in the staging of these productions as well as the performer/spectator relationship? In the body of my dissertation, chapters II, III, IV, V and VI I will address specific productions of the primary companies of this period: In chapter II: The Living Theatre, founded by Judith Malina and Julian Beck in 1946; in chapter III: The Open Theater founded by Joseph Chaikin in 1963; in chapter IV, Richard Schechner's Performing Garage founded in 1968; in chapter V, Medicine Show Theatre Ensemble, founded by James Barbosa and Barbara Vann in 1970. In the chapters concerned with the theater companies of the New York avant- garde that I have identified, I will primarily discuss these specific productions: The Connection and "Paradise Now" by the Living Theatre, "The Serpent" by the Open Theater, Dionsyus in 69 by the Performing Garage, and Bound To Rise, A Change of Hearts The Songs and Poetry of Leonard Cohen and Queen Being, created by Medicine Show Theatre Ensemble. As I discuss the companies and productions I have identified I will ask the question what was new about the presentation of character as portrayed through the text, music, staging and direction of these productions? The Connection, the first major production of the Living Theatre for example, marks the beginning of their journey towards the elimination of fictional characters and space on the stage (Aronson 61). Dionysus in 69 and Brace Up performed by the Wooster Group, The Serpent, performed by the Open Theater, and Paradise Now performed by the Living Theatre involved the ensemble in new ways in the creation and telling of the story. In the final chapter of my dissertation I will look at some of the new directions avant-garde theatre is taking, in particular, the work of Meredith Monk as reflected in her opera Atlas as well as the work of a group dedicated to preserving her work for future generation of singers and audiences, M6. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2009. / April 27, 2009. / New York, Music, Experimental Theatre / Includes bibliographical references. / William Cloonan, Professor Directing Dissertation; Denise Von Glahn, Outside Committee Member; Maricarmen Martinez, Committee Member; Robert Bickley, Committee Member.

This dissertation seeks to create a vocabulary and a theoretical framework with which to examine the political implications of nonlinear, non-realistic depictions of time in recent English history plays. I explore plays by Howard Barker, Howard Brenton, Caryl Churchill, Michael Frayn, Sarah Kane, and Tom Stoppard using close readings of texts in combination with research into the plays' original productions and their immediate social and political context. I look specifically at how the plays' temporal shapes reflect upon history and historiographic methods, drawing from the historiographic theories of Carl Becker, Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, and Michal Kobialka. I use my own phenomenology of time for the stage to explore my overriding question, what are the political implications of non-traditional depictions of time on stage? Chapter One discusses the intersection of time, history, and politics. I suggest that theatrical time can be examined from three different perspectives: audience time, which is experienced individually by spectators in the house; dramatic time, which is expressed by the plot or dramatic action; and narrative time, which is lived by the characters in the fictional world of the play. Together, these three types of time constitute a play's temporal shape, which impacts meaning by phenomenally orienting the audience's perception of the work. Using Michel Foucault's concept of the disciplines and the tenets of second wave feminist criticism, I define politics as operations of power in the realm of governmental or public affairs, with the understanding that what often seems personal is also public and that power reaches into the nooks and crannies of the human body. Furthermore, the historiographic approaches of Becker and de Certeau suggest that history is an imaginative creation that depends more on what people believe to be true than what actually happened. History plays contribute substantially to this mythos of history via the reality effect, defined by Roland Barthes as the process whereby depicting an event within a historical narrative makes that event a reality in the public consciousness. Non-realistic depictions of time on stage can challenge the assumptions that go into the creation of history, thereby exposing historic myths as myths and repoliticizing public speech. The remaining chapters take specific plays as case studies. I explore how the temporal shape of each text is expressed in performance as a way of speaking back to its immediate political context, with a sensitivity to the material conditions of production (via Ric Knowles) and a focus on audiences' shifting horizons of expectation (per Susan Bennett's reception theory). Chapter Two examines The Castle, The Bite of the Night, and Gertrude'The Cry, by Howard Barker, and asks how ruptures in time affect the viewing experience and if form alone can create a subversive political system. Chapter Three looks at Howard Brenton's The Romans in Britain and H.I.D. and asks how nonlinear form exposes the methods by which the State writes and rewrites history and if time can be used to address the problem of national identity. Chapter Four examines Tom Stoppard's Arcadia in conjunction with Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, investigating how alternate models of time can perturb the audience's relationship with the past. Chapter Five uses several plays by Caryl Churchill, including Traps, Blue Heart, Mad Forest, and This Is a Chair, to discuss how fractured stagetime be used to perpetuate a counterdiscourse of time. Finally, Chapter Six uses the affect theory of Brian Massumi as a framework for exploring Sarah Kane's Blasted and 4.48 Psychosis. This last chapter diverges from the others in terms of methodology (affect theory) and content (Kane is a generation and a genre apart from the others), but I do this to show how Kane's radical use of time can potentially redefine the very nature of history and agency. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2010. / October 27, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references. / Mary Karen Dahl, Professor Directing Dissertation; James O‘Rourke, University Representative; Natalya Baldyga, Committee Member.

In this dissertation I examine mainstream representations of gay men in theatre and television between 1998 and 2006 in order to reveal how these texts contain within themselves both assimilationist and queerly rebellious narrative threads. Working with popular culture scholar John Fiske's idea that hegemonic reinforcement inherently contains aspects of subordinate resistance, I counter arguments that individual plays, televisions series, or specific program episodes ultimately promote only, or vastly overwhelmingly, the idea of acceptance through assimilation or queer separatist politics. In order to reconcile issues regarding audience differences and the political economies of two significantly different media, I maintain that the majority of Broadway audiences coincide with the primary television demographic interested in and supportive of the increase in gay characters in mainstream programming and theatrical production. To this end I employ queer television scholar Ron Becker's analysis of a demographic he recognizes as socially liberal and urban-minded, namely 'SLUMPYs.' I utilize four case studies to support my argument, two plays (with discussions of production) and two television series: Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out (2003), Mois's Kaufman's The Laramie Project (2001), NBC's Will and Grace (1998 ' 2006), and Showtime's Queer as Folk (2000 ' 2005). Of these four texts, two outwardly appear more assimilationist (Take Me Out and Will and Grace), while the others seem on first glance more progressive or queer. Utilizing, foundationally, Michael Warner's 1999 The Trouble with Normal and Lisa Duggan's The Twilight of Equality?, I reveal various ways in which all my case studies provide queer points of view despite their mainstream, broad appeal. The primary areas of discussion include: establishing gay male sexual identity in the post-closet era, gay characters negotiating normative forces, the impact of publicly heterosexual actor identity on gay characters, and trends in dramatizing actual events. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2010. / March 4, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references. / Mary Karen Dahl, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Carrie Sandahl, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Leigh Edwards, University Representative; Krzystof Salata, Committee Member.

Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the lock icon and filled out the appropriate web form. / Rx Machina unpacks big pharma's impact on everyday American culture through the eyes of five women on the frontlines of the opioid epidemic. An ambitious pharmaceutical sales representative’s relentless pursuit of a rigidly principled pain management doctor leads to an intoxicating, forbidden connection that comes with a cost. Ethical boundaries are blurred in a literal manifestation of doctors being in bed with drug reps that forms a love triangle fueled by money, sex, and power. Searching for humanity in a healthcare system where patients are consumers and pain is profitable, Rx Machina asks who gets to get better and who gets left behind. / 2999-01-01T00:00:00Z

Disneyland theme park's significance draws from its development as the first themed park in conjunction with its position as representative of a 1950s suburban American psyche. In attending a themed space, a visitor supplements and completes the park 's narrative by acting as the protagonist. The continued popularity of this fifty-five-year-old park speaks to the significance of Disneyland as a cultural and social destination. This thesis focuses on the way in which the performance of a normative American identity coincided with Walt Disney's shaping of Disneyland. Focusing on 1955 and 1956, I examine the engagement of the audience with the narratives presented in Disneyland in order to explicate the performance of a postwar suburban American identity as idyllic and patriotic. I suggest that visitors ' emotional attachment to the theme park speaks to the idealization of Disney as well as visitors ' idealizations of their own suburban American identities through Disney. In the second chapter I consider the ways in which Walt 's conservative personal agenda transferred into his corporate persona and productions to identify with White, middle-class suburbia. Chapter three utilizes Robbins Barstow's amateur home filmDisneyland Dreamas a case study of one suburban family's response to Disneyland park and theDisneylandtelevision program. The fourth chapter employs Louis Marin 's postmodern view of Disneyland, interrogating the ways in which visitors create both nostalgic memories of idealization and hyperreal experiences of their suburban lives through Disneyland 's tropes. Indeed, by attending Disneyland in the 1950s, families created their idealized suburban America mythos as real. / 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. / 1950s, Barstow, Disney, Disneyland, Suburbia, Theme Park / Includes bibliographical references. / Elizabeth Osborne, Professor Directing Thesis; Mary Karen Dahl, Committee Member; Kris Salata, Committee Member.

Using Carlson's theory that text can be considered "haunted" in the ways it recycles material already familiar to the audience, I suggest that Romanian playwrights writing after the year 2000 are highlighting the historical struggles/difficult past of the nation in an effort to "move on," perhaps specifically in conjunction with Romania's bid to enter the EU. I propose that Romanian playwrights are creating hauntings through their work, and in so doing, are entering into a poly-vocal dialogue about the nation. I offer myself as a bridge in the conversation, not to provide the reader with all of the answers about Romania, but to help complicate Americans' understanding of this nation. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2012. / March 26, 2012. / Cultural Studies, Dramatic Literature, Identity, Nationalism, Playwrights, Romania / Includes bibliographical references. / Mary Karen Dahl, Professor Directing Dissertation; Edward Wynot, University Representative; Kris Salata, Committee Member.

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.