The Memory and The Legacy: The Whittlin' Whistlin' Brigade - The Young Company 1974-2001, is a history of the children's theatre of Brigham Young University. The Whittlin' Whistlin' Brigade - The Young Company acts as a training ground for graduate students working in theatre for young audiences. Then directing a production for The Whittlin' Whistlin' Brigade - The Young Company, students are instructed to perform all functions required of a professional company. As the The Whittlin' Whistlin' Brigade - The Young Company (WWB-TYC) spends much of its performance time on tour, those responsibilities are relegated to the students. Developed and headed by Dr. Harold R. Oaks of Brigham Young University, WWB-TYC produced children's theatre for local, regional, national and international audiences. The history includes production photos, budgets and business plans. A survey of former company members was conducted assessing the long-term affect on participants in relationship to their personal and professional life. This thesis is also in electronic form using animation, musical and narrative audio, an interactive menu and a photo-gallery. Text is available in HTML and PDF format with 'print' capability. A tutorial is included to aid in possible navigational concerns. Working within an electronic medium has facilitated the accessibility of a considerable collection of material highly diverse in nature. Twenty-seven years of production notes, performance programs, production photos, music, scripts, budgets, permissions, required licensing, travel arrangements and itineraries, performance schedules, educational/clientele data and historical developmental notes of the children's theater program itself presented not only volumes of material but also brought specific inclusion needs. In addition, the results of a program survey of the program will be presented in graph and chart format. Determined needs include: 1. A history of children's theater both nationally and at Brigham Young University. 2. Supporting documentation of program development and implementation. 3. Survey results of WWB-TYC participants.

Theatre Triad is a new approach to devising collaborative ensemble theatre starting with the three main components of Performance: Voice, Movement, and Text. These components were deconstructed and reconstructed in pairs as the basis for the devising process. The performance process begins with creating an ensemble followed by four steps: exploring the theatrical genres affiliated with the pairings of Voice and Movement, Movement and Text, Voice and Text, and completed with reintegrating all three components. Through this process many things occur, a new play is created, ensemble members focus on exploring the elements of acting and performance, and a strong foundation of acting skills is laid for young actors. Theatre Triad can also be used as a method for teaching a number of courses in Devising Theatre or Acting classes. In this paper you will learn how Theatre Triad works as both a production approach and method in actor training.

En tant qu’espace public, la scène théâtrale est le lieu de la construction et de la déconstruction de représentations de la nation, dans un dialogue incessant entre art et politique. En Écosse, la tension qui fragilise l’idée même de nation est exacerbée par le contexte géopolitique récent (référendum de dévolution en 1979, 1997 et référendum d’indépendance en 2014, puis Brexit en 2016). Miroir de cette instabilité, la scène écossaise réinvente ainsi son rapport à l’espace national en jouant sur les représentations spatiales et communautaires à différentes échelles, du local au global. Espaces et lieux, constamment problématisés, se changent en objets de représentations qui interrogent les multiples façons de faire, de montrer et de voir le théâtre. Ainsi, dans sa pratique comme dans son idéologie, le National Theatre of Scotland (NTS 2006) réinvente la nation : théâtre national sans espace physique de représentation, sans scène nationale, le NTS investit tous types d’espaces réels ou virtuels, qui donnent à repenser la présence et l’absence du corps en scène et font advenir de nouvelles communautés de « spect-acteurs » hors-frontières. Ce théâtre sans murs est métonymique de cette ouverture radicale du théâtre écossais, qui fait place à une représentation identitaire postnationale et horizontale. La scène écossaise offre donc un paradigme fécond pour rendre compte du renouvellement d’une pensée de la nation et des formes dramatiques contemporaines qui en émanent. / As a public space, the theatrical stage is where representations of the nation are constructed and deconstructed, in an unceasing dialogue between art and politics. In Scotland, the tension that destabilizes the very idea of nationhood is exacerbated by the recent geo-political context (the referenda on devolution in 1979, 1997, the referendum on independence in 2014, and Brexit in 2016). Reflecting this instability, the Scottish stage similarly reinvents its relationship to the national space by playing with the very scales of space and community, from the local to the global. Space and place, constantly challenged on the stage, become objects of representation that question the multiple ways of doing, showing, and seeing theatre. Both in its projects and its ideology, the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS 2006) seeks to reinvent the nation. As a building-less national theatre, the NTS reinvests all types of spaces, be they real or virtual, asking us to rethink the presence and absence of the body on stage, and fostering new transnational communities of “spect-actors”. This theatre without walls is a metonymy for the radical opening up of Scottish theatre itself, which invites postnational and horizontal representations of identity. The Scottish stage thus presents us with a productive paradigm to explore new understandings of the nation and the contemporary dramatic forms it fosters.

In 1992, Augusto Boal, founder of the globally influential repertoire of performance techniques known as Theatre of the Oppressed, was elected as a vereador, essentially the equivalent of city councilor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Boal and his office staff used theatre as their primary method for collecting citizen input about legislation. His term lasted from 1993 to 1997, and his office shepherded thirteen bills to their successful passage as law. This dissertation examines three twenty-first century Legislative Theatre projects, all drawing on techniques from Boal’s initial Legislative Theatre project but staged in North America. The case studies include Practicing Democracy, a 2004 production by Headlines Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, a project that directly engaged the Vancouver City Council; a Legislative Theatre workshop facilitated by Augusto Boal and his son Julian Boal as part of the pre-conference of the annual Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference in Omaha, Nebraska, in May 2008, an event that culminated with a performance in the Omaha City Council Chambers; and The Eye & Tooth Project: Forum Theatre on the Death Penalty, a 2009 workshop and performance in Austin, TX, exploring how participants could practice lobbying skills through theatre. With these three theatre processes as examples, I explain how using Forum Theatre as the primary method for Legislative Theatre constructs citizenship as a process of collective knowledge-building. These projects stage citizenship as a collaborative act through which citizens gather to teach each other about their experiences with policy. Each production differently constructs performance as a “think tank” epistemology—an embodied way of building and transferring knowledge about legislation. I describe how Legislative Theatre think tanks dismantle traditional discourses of “detached” expertise by constructing citizens themselves as experts. In the process of making these larger arguments, this dissertation also addresses a variety of practical questions useful for future practitioners of Legislative Theatre: How was each project designed? What were its goals? How did the creators apply performance toward those goals? How and why did they forge connections (or not) with lawmaking bodies? For what communities might the projects have been more or less accessible? / text

This study proposes and tests a model for play development analysis, which offers a framework and a vocabulary for cataloguing the working parts of play development initiatives. When scholars analyze a completed play text, there are several useful categories available with which to organize observations, including space and time, character, dialogue, plot and story, genre, and spectacle. Such basic categories have been lacking in the analysis of play development and dramaturgy practice. In order to create a framework for analysis, the hourglass model for play development analysis proposes the basic categories of source, perspective, leadership, company modelling, choice of form, conditions of creation (including assumed theatrical conventions), design, given and anticipated consequences, and reception. The three case studies included in this project demonstrate the uses and limitations of the analysis model for new play development and its categories. The Whispering Pines play development process at Nightswimming and the processes experienced by the participants in the 2011 Tarragon Playwright’s Unit both fit easily into the hourglass, largely because they employ traditional roles in the play development process without challenging established hierarchies and because both resulted in play texts; Nightswimming’s Rough House, as a devised piece, challenges the model and demonstrates its flexibility in dealing with non-traditional forms of theatre-making. By providing grounds for comparison between these three markedly different models, the hourglass teases out a number of productive contrasts between text-based and devised theatre. The model which I propose and test in this study has been designed to introduce a formal, pragmatic methodology to the heretofore anecdotal field of scholarship on English-Canadian dramaturgy and new play development. Its formation is indebted to and embedded within the scholarship which has come before. The pragmatic model is proposed as a methodological framework for analysis that has yet to be employed in scholarship on dramaturgy practice and new play development in particular. In my analysis of three play development initiatives, I identify the common elements inherent in each development setting and, by using the same methodology to understand each process I uncover the formative elements unique to each process. The uniquely structured analysis contributes to existing scholarship by illustrating how new play development serves or does not serve the playwright, how the relationship between dramaturg and writer affect the process, and to what extent the realities of each development model in question do or do not serve the needs of each project. The thorough analysis afforded by the model tests the three tenets of play development identified by scholarship on development dramaturgy and illuminates the inner workings of the development initiatives which are particular to each case study.

The critical understanding of Theatre in Education (TIE) presented in this thesis focuses on ‘TIE into Schools’ and its effect. The author takes the view that students’ subjectivity was influenced by the dominant mores of elements of society, such as family and school, and less often, by individual, autonomous decision. Case studies of practices that are identified with the tenets of TIE were carried out using approaches based on the principles and methods of a critical pedagogy approach. How could the TIE approach be seen as a critical pedagogy? This question is examined predominantly through the lens of Paulo Freire and Henry A. Giroux’s thoughts on education and teachers. In addition to an understanding of the tenets of TIE and the tenets of critical pedagogy, this thesis presents a criticism of its discursive approach and also a criticism from the researcher as a participant observer. This narrative approach helps explore the human side of the experience thus keeping real life issues to the fore. Fieldwork episodes of TIE practice in three different levels of schools, the Taipei He-te Primary School, 10 different senior high schools and the National Taiwan University are presented in the context of the students’ differing ages in an attempt to understand more about the methods and tenets of TIE. ‘Partnership’ is a key concept and driving force, creating mutual cooperation between the community of the school, the parents and the theatre groups. The expected outcomes of this thesis include the clarification notions of TIE, and the adoption of a subjective approach by the students in relation to the process of interactivity, leading from affection to cognition, then action. This thesis concludes that TIE is a critical pedagogy and praxis, which develops skills and attitudes in which action can be taken by the individual in fitting in the world. It improves the individual’s ability to rethink his/her beliefs and attitudes, to empathise with groups of people and individuals with whom she/he previously may not have come into social contact with and allows previously taboo subjects to be discussed openly.

Physically, vocally, and physiologically something happens to the actor in rehearsal and performance that can impact the actor’s everyday life. Practitioners have described this as boundary blurring, emotional hangover, and post-dramatic stress. Even acting as a profession can breed stressful situations for the actor. Actors can combat the blurring, the hangover, and the stress through awareness and process. As a part of process, actors warm-up to prepare their bodies and voices and to transition from real life to stage life. An often ignored aspect of process, but no less significant than the warm-up, is the cool down. After researching the acting experience and the cool down, I introduced several student actors to the cool down during two productions and a workshop. Through these practical experiences, this research, and numerous interviews, I have compiled exercises to facilitate the transition between the acting experience and everyday life.

Video games are becoming the fastest growing and most lucrative form of entertainment across the globe. The goal of this project was to take gaming to the next level; to the theatre. I have devised an original piece of theatre using the CIC’s of video gaming: Creativity, Interaction, and Community and put on a production from members of the VCU community. Aside from the project, I have detailed why video games are growing in popularity at an alarming rate and why they belong in the category of ‘Art.’ With new technology and new stories being told, the gaming industry is now an entertainment force to be counted. The project was exposed to the VCU community involving gamers from many different areas of study through theatre as our medium allowing us to convey our thoughts, emotions, and message to an audience. This experimental project is an exploration into bridging the world of gaming into the laps of an awaiting audience.

The world around us has changed so much, socio-economically, that musical theatre departments around the country are facing budget shortfalls, staff attrition and even vertical cuts leading to full departmental closings. This paper attempts to divert these measures, as well as address the new role of student as consumer, by way of proposing a new musical theatre curricular model to satisfy the needs of both student and university alike. Topics such as fiscal responsibility in academe, departmental expectations, current employment statistics in the musical theatre field and current student learning outcomes are covered. The current student learning outcomes are then joined by two newly proposed outcomes and serve as a lens through which the curricular redesign is possible.

This thesis presents the unique designs for four productions: Ain’t Misbehavin’, Is He Dead?, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, and Legacy of Light. Presented here are the research images, conversations, situations and their resulting designs represented in my renderings and photographs of the fully realized production. Throughout, I will state my objectives in bettering the quality of interaction with each director and my reflections on the ongoing process of creating a trusting and balanced collaborative process, one that expertly serves the production.