This essay charts the theoretical background to my approach as a director with regards to creating and inhabiting Heightened Theatrical Landscapes. Primarily it deals with the role of the director as the actor's guide into to an extended space where the actor is the audience's envoy into the unlived human experience. It is a supporting document to my final production of The Possibilities by Howard Barker and it forms a partial fulfillment of an MA degree in Theatre & Performance as undertaken from the position of a director. The essay focuses particularly on the director's role whilst creating with the actors in rehearsals for a production. Firstly, I identify the term “Heightened Theatrical Landscape” and associate it with the works of other theatre practitioners, drawing particularly from the writings and productions of Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski and Howard Barker, and specifically inspired by the latter's Theatre of Catastrophe. I will stipulate the major characteristics of a Heightened Theatrical Landscape with respect to the requirements for the space, actor, audience, and theme. Secondly, I explain how I as the director prepare the foundation for the Heightened Theatrical Landscape, where I will place myself alongside director Peter Brook, and his theories on the director's role. In order for the actor to inhabit the Heightened Theatrical Landscape, I put forward David Rotenberg's acting system as my main director's tool for the process. After a short analysis of the actor's requirements towards inhabiting the Heightened Theatrical Landscape, I will discuss some of the main concepts of the system and give examples of its proposed application to my production of The Possibilities. My analysis will focus on why I believe this system is successful and how it shifts the role of the director into serving as a guide for the actor in placing himself in the Heightened Landscape. As my work is primarily with young actors, I will then articulate a need for methods of working with actors which address vocal and physical training in order to develop a form for the Heightened Theatrical Landscape. I firstly put forward a vocal method, as developed by Cicely Berry, to guide the actor towards the work on the text of this landscape. Consequently, I will introduce my understanding of Anne Bogart's Viewpoints as a complement to Rotenberg's system which addresses the actor's use of the body. I will clarify the principles that are shared between Viewpoints and Rotenberg's acting system before describing the application of Viewpoints within The Possibilities. Lastly, I reiterate my understanding of the combined theories of Rotenberg and Bogart, and how they form the main component of my directing toolbox which will become evident in my production of The Possibilities.

The premise of this research is that the creation of a disordered space will have a positive effect on the stimulation of a physical response to spoken language. In a disordered space, vocal delivery is foregrounded as physical activity and has a re-patterning effect on the vocal landscapes of young actors. A disordered space co-opts elements from the vocal art forms of the popular phenomenon of the Spoken Word Movement. Disordered spaces act as an intervention on the traditional notions of western theatre voice practice. Chapter 1: The term 'disordered spaces' is explored as an imaginative mental space, feeding off the energetic impulses created by anti-establishment notions of chaos and anarchy. The language based forms of the Spoken Word Movement invite new responses to stimuli that force a repatterning of vocal responses in the actor, with an emphasis on the visceral quality of speech. Chapter 2: I outline in further detail the specific vocal elements of the Spoken Word Movement that contribute to the creation of disordered spaces. The four main strands that influence this movement are Rap Music, Dub Poetry, Slam Poetry and Freestyle. Rhythmic qualities of dialect are examined as a means of re-patterning responses to text. There is an exploration of the paralinguistic elements of speech through the concept of beat-boxing. The status of the individual performer is reconsidered in terms of the ownership of material that occurs within the movement. Chapter 3: Vocal landscapes are analysed as a socio-linguistic reality that is affected by changes in dialect. The dialect of the Spoken Word Movement is classified as non-standard dialect, which is slang based. It is concluded that it is the flexibility of a young actor's vocal landscape that leads to the success of the co-option of vocal elements from the Spoken Word Movement. I propose ways of using this material as inspiration for an intervention on the traditional notions of western theatre voice.

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The purpose of this experiment has been to complete a challenging thesis production in the style and technique of Open Theatre, utilizing imaginative production effects. The purpose was also to provide a valuable experience for those actors and technicians involved, meeting the standards and requirements of educational theatre. The experiment evolved from adapting, designing, directing, and producing a twelve-scene cutting from Megan Terry's Viet Rock and twelve episodes from Jean-Claude van Itallie's The Serpent.

This thesis uses evidence gathered from conversations with audiences carried out before and after performances at Shakespeare’s Globe 2009-10, and contextualized through interviews with performers and creatives, archival data and critical scholarship to establish new understandings of current spectatorship at the Globe Theatre. This exploratory and inductive research into current audiences at the reconstructed Globe establishes new areas of inquiry for both current and early modern audience research. In cultural terms the position of Shakespeare's Globe is contested, it is read and used (sometimes simultaneously) by audiences as: theatre, tourist site, reconstruction and experiment. In academic terms the reconstruction is also contested, for its capacity to uncover new insights into early modern performance and reception or not. The significance of the physical conditions of performance and reception at the Globe, being a shared-lighting performance space, almost in-the-round, open-air and seasonal, are made apparent through reconstruction. These material and cultural conditions combine to produce a porous and contingent site of interaction between performer, building, weather, play and audience. These conditions alter and subvert current norms of audience passivity and quiescence today and illuminate new areas of consideration in early modern audience research. The four chapters of this thesis use four Shakespeare’s Globe productions as case studies: Chapter 1 draws on Troilus and Cressida (dir. Dunster, 2009) to consider issues of history and space for audiences; Chapter 2 considers Romeo and Juliet (dir. Dromgoole, 2009) and the place of audience work in performance; Chapter 3 takes Macbeth (dir. Bailey, 2010) to examine the production of illusion and audience affect, and Chapter 4 employs The Frontline (dir. Dunster, 2009) in a consideration of community-formation amongst audience. Themes of intimacy, hospitality, antagonism, the face-to-face encounter and laughter comprise sites of sustained critical concern with current spectatorship throughout the thesis. These areas receive some consideration in relationship to evidence of early modern spectatorship from plays and other primary sources.

In this thesis I present a new dramaturgical model for understand improvised theatre. Improvised theatre is a field full of experimentation, and the art form has recently been evolving faster than the theories used to understand it. Rather than relying on colloqiual terms such as “short form” and “long form”, I propose a new terminilogy based on Chris Johnston’s notion of “Restrictions”. I explain the use of the Restrictions: Location, Role, Narrative, Game, and Materials, and how to meassure the “Scope” of Restrictions by the Number of affected performers and Duration. I explain how Restrictions affect four elements of improvised performance: Space, Time, Speech, and Physicality. By creating a rubric to illustrate the interaction between Restrictions and these elements, I move towards a new foundation for understanding improvised theatre. In addition, I propose four metrics to meassure audience participation: Number of participants, Method of participation, Agency of the participat, and Duration of the participation. Using my Restriction rubric and audience participation metrics, I analyse four case studies. Each case study is a recent piece of improvised theatre. I attended each piece multiple times and interviewed the artists behind eacch production with a questionnaire. These are Blind Date and Undercover by Spontaneous Theatre, Quest Friends Forever, and GRIMprov’s Guided Roleplay. Each production features audience participation, the effects of which I explain using Erika Fischer-Lichte’s notion of the autopoietic feedback loop.By analysing these contemporary productions I demostrate the efficacy of my new rubrics and terminilogy.

This thesis explores how five Canadian women directors who define themselves as feminists have engaged with work from the traditional Western theatre canon. However, that world actually is created by the social expectations, cultural mores, and theatrical conventions of its time. Audiences have been indoctrinated to accept unquestioningly the value of these texts while the plays’ valorized status masks social constructs that are continually reinforced and surreptitiously naturalized through their repetition. At the crux of this thesis is the notion that while repetition is used as a tool for social instruction, it can also be used as a tool for social change. Therefore, I explore how the Canadian feminist women directors whom I have interviewed use the uniqueness of performance in different ways to challenge social structures within canonical texts. In the individual chapters, each director first shares her education, training, experience, and influences; then she articulates her own feminist perspective and discusses its impact on her career and work process; and finally she reflects on how she directed a text from the Western theatre canon and used the liminal space of performance to challenge the text’s embedded gender constructs. At the end of each chapter, I present the critical response I found for each production, including reviews, individual statements, and academic investigations, and assess the extent to which the director’s intent was understood by her audience and reviewers. In the final chapters, I examine each individual director’s interview responses in the context of the others’ and situate them within the spectrum of feminisms. In general, the directors used liminal space to expose gender as a construction and destabilize social expectations based on gender. However, what also emerged from these interviews is that while there is no broad consensus of what constitutes ‘feminist’ work, each director must temper her feminist perspectives if she wants access to the upper echelons of directing in Canada and the benefits that it entails.

This thesis explores how five Canadian women directors who define themselves as feminists have engaged with work from the traditional Western theatre canon. However, that world actually is created by the social expectations, cultural mores, and theatrical conventions of its time. Audiences have been indoctrinated to accept unquestioningly the value of these texts while the plays’ valorized status masks social constructs that are continually reinforced and surreptitiously naturalized through their repetition. At the crux of this thesis is the notion that while repetition is used as a tool for social instruction, it can also be used as a tool for social change. Therefore, I explore how the Canadian feminist women directors whom I have interviewed use the uniqueness of performance in different ways to challenge social structures within canonical texts. In the individual chapters, each director first shares her education, training, experience, and influences; then she articulates her own feminist perspective and discusses its impact on her career and work process; and finally she reflects on how she directed a text from the Western theatre canon and used the liminal space of performance to challenge the text’s embedded gender constructs. At the end of each chapter, I present the critical response I found for each production, including reviews, individual statements, and academic investigations, and assess the extent to which the director’s intent was understood by her audience and reviewers. In the final chapters, I examine each individual director’s interview responses in the context of the others’ and situate them within the spectrum of feminisms. In general, the directors used liminal space to expose gender as a construction and destabilize social expectations based on gender. However, what also emerged from these interviews is that while there is no broad consensus of what constitutes ‘feminist’ work, each director must temper her feminist perspectives if she wants access to the upper echelons of directing in Canada and the benefits that it entails.

This thesis explores how five Canadian women directors who define themselves as feminists have engaged with work from the traditional Western theatre canon. However, that world actually is created by the social expectations, cultural mores, and theatrical conventions of its time. Audiences have been indoctrinated to accept unquestioningly the value of these texts while the plays’ valorized status masks social constructs that are continually reinforced and surreptitiously naturalized through their repetition. At the crux of this thesis is the notion that while repetition is used as a tool for social instruction, it can also be used as a tool for social change. Therefore, I explore how the Canadian feminist women directors whom I have interviewed use the uniqueness of performance in different ways to challenge social structures within canonical texts. In the individual chapters, each director first shares her education, training, experience, and influences; then she articulates her own feminist perspective and discusses its impact on her career and work process; and finally she reflects on how she directed a text from the Western theatre canon and used the liminal space of performance to challenge the text’s embedded gender constructs. At the end of each chapter, I present the critical response I found for each production, including reviews, individual statements, and academic investigations, and assess the extent to which the director’s intent was understood by her audience and reviewers. In the final chapters, I examine each individual director’s interview responses in the context of the others’ and situate them within the spectrum of feminisms. In general, the directors used liminal space to expose gender as a construction and destabilize social expectations based on gender. However, what also emerged from these interviews is that while there is no broad consensus of what constitutes ‘feminist’ work, each director must temper her feminist perspectives if she wants access to the upper echelons of directing in Canada and the benefits that it entails. / Arts, Faculty of / Theatre and Film, Department of / Graduate

This project is about my directing a Readers Theatre play about the Civil Rights Movement. It covers the period from 1619 to the present. The script is written by Professor Bobby Funk of the Theatre and Dance Department of ETSU. I have only been in several plays and that as an actor. This will be first my first experience as a director. As this is my first time, I will endeavor to relate an exact as possible account of this experience. I will in my first chapter tell you about the play, the characters, and my research in preparing for the project. I have kept a journal of the things that occurred during the audition process and rehearsals. Finally, I will report on the culmination of all these steps, what worked and what did not.