The creation of a one-person play is required in order to complete the Master of Fine Arts degree in acting. There are no official guidelines, only twenty to forty minutes in length is required. Although I was very excited about receiving the challenge, I did not breathe a sigh of relief until I found the topic I wanted to explore－Signs and Reality, and the one-person play that followed: Bear With Me. Since I am not a native English speaker, I have been frustrated by miscommunication through words in the English-speaking world, which gave me the eagerness to talk about the problem. Later on, I found out signs and words as well as the meaning of them change based on time and place, in other words, signs and words in themselves are unreliable, and also efficient and effective communication does not need to depend on them. These two thoughts wove into the spine of my play. Ironically, it is impossible to create a play without using words, so using words precisely became a big challenge, especially for the person who tried to create an English play and whose native tongue is not English. I believe theatre can take place anywhere, and either traditional theatre or experimental theatre has been a comfortable, convenient space for theatre creators. I think theatre should not be confined to a small box, but it should try to reach its extremes instead, so I challenged myself to have my play in a forest as the location and the atmosphere of my play. Except for the challenges mentioned above, I needed to figure out the journey of my central character and what I wanted my audience to get from the play. These both are essential questions for the play; if I did not solve the problems, my play would be just making a fuss about nothing. Fortunately, bear with me to say that my performances turned out to be a bare success.

The assigned task was to create and perform a 20-40 minute long one-person play, with no other guidelines or restrictions offered. Having never performed in or written a full one-person play, my challenge was two-fold: create a cohesive and coherent script, and craft the production and performance of that script. From several inspirational sources, I was spurred on to explore the dynamics of revolutionaries, fanatics, and vigilantes through the lens of presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth. Through the combination of Booths infamy and the modern day realities of fame-seeking, political divisiveness, and tragically pervasive spectacle killing events, I was ultimately able to craft the story that became the one-person play SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS. My research led me to amass a great deal of material to draw from, and it soon became clear from the initial script that expanding the piece and its theatrical elements would be required. Through both script revisions and the addition of sound and visuals, I was able to ultimately create and perform a piece that successfully integrated extravagant technical elements and presented several different voices within the same character embodied by my performance with the use of physical and vocal choices. The audience was responsive to the material, and the resulting video recording and production photography stand as a testament to the projects implementation. It is my intention to use all of the resulting feedback as a means of further evaluation and expansion of the piece and its subject material.

I make a major contribution to American scenographic historiography with this revised account of Norman Bel Geddes set for Max Reinhardts 1924 Broadway production of The Miracle, a design theatre scholars have consistently used not only to define Geddes aesthetic versatility, but also as a prime exemplar of New Stagecraft style. Based on both secondary and primary research material, I contend that the cathedral setting was neither indicative of Geddes fundamental aesthetic principles, nor of the aesthetic principles of the New Stagecraft. I firmly establish the principles of the latter within the first definitive, concise demarcation of what constitutes New Stagecraft design as a dialectic between European Modernism and American realism (informed by technology) that also adheres to Kenneth Macgowans principle of simplification, suggestion and synthesis, which necessarily excludes the set from the movement altogether. Using this same definition, I also offer historiography Geddes costume designs for the production as important, but little-known paradigms of New Stagecraft costuming. As part of the costume study, I also reveal the scenographers preliminary sketches taken directly from his archives and align them stylistically with design practices of three major movements of the European First-Wave Avant Garde (by all indications, Geddes did not have any knowledge of them.) In doing so, I illustrate that the European theatre did not have the monopoly on particular breakthroughs in twentieth-century stage dress. Geddes early sketches make a strong case for the position that some Modern American costume design was not derivative, but products of original conception shaped by the conditions of The Machine Age, which simultaneously influenced theatrical design on both continents. I conclude the study by reinstalling The Miracle into theatre historiography with a new significance to the American theatre: its set, which included the entire house, was the first in a succession of production designs that continue to traverse the Broadway proscenium, a permanent fixture on The Great White Way for the last century and beyond.

This dissertation aims to establish the importance of Charles II in the shaping and evolution of Restoration theatre. Even more so than the playwrights themselves, Charles II determined the future of the theatre, both by his conscious efforts to do so, as well as unintentionally through his own behavior and image. The tradition of Restoration theatre began in 1660 with Charless efforts at establishing a consensus theatre, in which it would appear that he enjoyed unanimous support for his return to England from exile. Consensus theatre was determined by the perception of Charless rule and character, his power to manipulate the new theatre companies and which playwrights wrote and what they wrote, and his person, or popular image. This attempt at consensus began to fail within a few years of Charless coming, although his image continued to dominate the theatre, even if only through sometimes negative reactions to his personal image. This influence on theatre continued until his death in 1685.

At a cast party following a Dillard University theatre production in 1965, Guy West, a senior in theatre, stated that one of his dreams was to perform in his own theatre. These remarks by West proved to be the inspiration that began New Orleans' Dashiki Project Theatre. Prior to 1965, Free Southern Theater was the only theatre of the black experience in New Orleans. Through Dashiki Project Theatre, the black community found another opportunity to relate to black experience through the medium of theatrical performance. In the mid-sixties Theodore Gilliam, a Dillard University professor, and his associates founded Dashiki Project Theatre in New Orleans. For more than twenty years Dashiki staged many plays, including new black plays as well as published traditional plays. This theatre proved to be the second most prolific black theatre in the South during the 1960s. Despite the important contributions of this theatre, only a minimum of scholarly research has examined its existence. This dissertation chronicles the history of Dashiki Project Theatre, examines how the theatre related to the Black Arts Movement of the sixties and seventies, and highlights how the theatre established a more inclusive black identity in its structure as well as in its productions. To accomplish these goals, this work examines evidence in the form of books, articles, theatre reviews, playbills, and research in the form of personal interviews with key figures and constituents associated with Dashiki. Thus, this study results in the first comprehensive documentation of Dashiki's existence, the Black Arts Movement's impact on it, and the establishing of a unique black identity. In focusing on the development and historical significance of Dashiki Project Theatre through the context of the Black Power and Black Arts Movements, this dissertation explains how Dashiki Project Theatre reflected the tastes, the guidance, and the vision of Ted Gilliam. It also explains how Dashiki Project Theatre avoided political posturing while subtly making choices that would impact New Orleans society, choices that did not always align with the philosophies of the more militant movements of the 1960s. This study, the first to deal with the impact and significance of this vital theatre, recognizes and documents the contributions of a notable black theatre operation that scholarship has ignored.

Improvisation has often been viewed and valued in terms of its service and resemblance to scripted traditions of theatre. Such a stance seriously undermines the significance and impact of this global performance modality, and has resulted in improvisatory modes being largely ignored or downplayed in modern historical accounts of theatre. This dissertation examines improvisation on its own terms, seeking to understand its unique features, functions and potentials, while freeing it from the heavy shadow of its scripted counterpart. To this end, the theories of literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin, provide important methodological guideposts and allow the silhouette of the improvisational impetus to take form. Through the application of Bakhtin's concepts of the chronotope, prosaics, polyphony and the carnivalesque, and his overarching schema of the genre as a way of seeing and experiencing the world, the communicative event of improvisation is revealed to be strikingly similar to Bakhtin's preferred model, the modern novel. In this manner, the "novelty" of embodied spontaneity is uncovered. This heightened understanding of the improvisational impetus is considerably enriched through a detailed consideration of a diverse field of spontaneous movements that span numerous regions, periods and socio-political contexts. In addition to more widely recognized theatrical movements, such as the Roman mime, Italian Commedia dell'Arte, Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, Viola Spolin's Theatre Games and Keith Johnstone's Theatresports, the inclusion of lesser known (and marginal) practices, such as Japanese renga, Nigerian Apidan and Jacob Levy Moreno's psychodrama, further elucidates and complicates improvisation's generic qualities.

Nineteenth-century white minstrels portrayed white abolitionists, suffragists, and temperance advocates in blackface, in order discriminate against them in the same way that blacks were discriminated against in minstrel performances. When minstrels blackened their faces to portray these white political advocates, the advocates were transformed into black caricatures, which demeaned the advocates as well as the political causes they supported. The separatist discourse, stressed in minstrelsy, typified the ideology of anti-abolitionist mobs and was used to symbolize their violence against white abolitionists and blacks. In 1850 minstrel performers used minstrelsy to protest suffrage. Since minstrels portrayed white suffragists the same way that black women were portrayed in minstrel performances, the minstrel suffragist was deemed undesirable and unappealing. In order to add to an already unflattering characterization, minstrels portrayed the suffragist as excessively masculine and physically combative. The political power of minstrelsys anti-suffrage and anti-temperance rhetoric was intensified when performed in saloons. Because the saloon was a place where votes were bought and sold and where political conventions and primaries were held, votes were easily manipulated and influenced. Minstrelsys nineteenth centurys racist, sexist, and drinking ideology can be found on college campuses throughout this nation. White sororities and fraternities have routinely practiced blackface. Oddly enough, the very Greek organizations that used blackface have also been criticized for practices of sexism and binge drinking, the ideology endorsed by nineteenth-century blackface performances. This dissertation is aimed toward highlighting nineteenth-century minstrelsy and the resulting legacy of the art forms Jacksonian message.

Floyd Leslie Sandle appeared on the theatrical scene in 1938 on the campus of Grambling State University. From his humble beginnings in the segregated town of Magnolia, Mississippi, to Dillard University where his passion for theatre was nurtured by Dr. Sheppard Randolph Edmonds, Sandle made significant strides in the dvelopment of Black Educational Theatre in Louisiana. Through his unique approach of presenting plays to the residents of the rural community of Grambling, Louisiana, Sandle was able to establish a state certified Speech and Drama Department at Grambling State University. He trained students in educational theatre though his lectures, laboratory experiences, and his leadership roles in the Louisiana Interscholastic Athletic and Literary Organization (LIALO) and the National Association of Dramatic and Speech Arts (NADSA). As beneficiaries of Sandle's pioneering work in educational theatre, his students have excelled as teachers, directors, actors, writers, and administrators. Sandle became the first Black student to receive a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 1959. This study examines the life and career of Floyd Leslie Sandle as a pioneer of Black Educational Theatre in Louisiana. It has three major objectives: 1) to document Sandle's contributions to the development of a state certified collegiate theatre program by recognizing his diligence in using theatre to promote social change; 2) to retrieve yet another chapter of lost theatre history that is needed for an accurate record of the development of Black collegiate theatre and its organizations and 3) to explore Sandle's influence on Black Theatre artists working today. This study will provide a broader perspective of Black Educational Theatre programs; affiliate organizations and Floyd Leslie Sandle's direct contributions to their historical development.

This study is an examination of the public imaging of gay men and lesbians during the latter part of the twentieth and early part of the twenty-first centuries. The study looks at public imaging as it is performed in the service of the political aims of gay people, with an eye towards the kinds of tensions and erasures that occur when one monolithic identity is promoted. Through these examinations, I create a kind of contemporary history of the gay political rights movement. In the study, I examine theoretical approaches to identity from several postmodern theorists and then use these approaches to support my work in the three chapters. In each chapter I focus on one site of gay identity performances: Southern Decadence in New Orleans, the murder of Matthew Shepard, and the decriminalization of sodomy. At each site, I examine the event, the various identities presented, and the tensions and erasures that result from the specific identity performances. In conclusion, I envision a political movement which is inclusive of multiple identities not just those which fit a predetermined conservative public presentation.

This thesis is constructed from the authors interpretation of the roles of Pleribo, Adraste, and Prince Florilame in Tony Kushners adaptation of Pierre Corneilles The Illusion, which was presented by LSU Theatre in 2004. This thesis is a written record of the actors work on these characters throughout the rehearsal and performance process in the form of a score. It also includes an introduction, character analysis, and a conclusion.