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This study will present as complete and accurate a history of the drama of Provo, from the earliest recorded activity (1853) to the decline of community theatre (1897), as available data provide.

It is hoped that through the inclusion of the history of the drama in Corinne, Utah, some interesting contrasts can be shown. Such contrasts are heightened when it Is realized that geographically the two towns are very close and that unlike Brigham City, and other Utah towns, Corinne was non-Mormon. During its zenith it undoubtedly reflected the typical frontier town characteristics more than did the Mormon town nearby. This fact provides opportunity for comparison of two societies as reflected in their dramatic activities. This comparison should assist in evaluating the history and contributions of Mormon dramatic activity by helping to answer the question of whether or not the Church promoted drama more completely as a community activity than did non-Mormon society.

This study addresses the central question of how Brisbane's La Boite Theatre negotiated its transformation from an amateur repertory society to an established professional company and, despite set-backs and crises, survived, changed and developed in an unbroken line of theatrical activity from its genesis in1925 to 2003. To answer the question, La Boite's history is surveyed within its three status modes of amateur, 'pro-am', and professional. Effective artistic and organizational leadership and a set of key manifestations of effective leadership are identified as crucial to the company's successful transformational journey. Such a transformation is a distinctive achievement in Australian repertory theatre history and, in exploring it, this study makes an original and important contribution to the history of Australian theatre organizations, very few of which have been the subject of scholarly research.

This investigation sets forth the history of community theatre in Anchorage, Alaska and proposes to define a future role direction made necessary with the advent of professional theatre in the community. By 1976 the Community Theatre movement in Anchorage found itself in direct competition with the professional performing programs for the limited performing space, subsidies, and audience. For the Community Theatre to continue functioning, a re-definition of non-professional theatre in Anchorage had to be found.

The point of departure for this study is the meeting-place between an author and his times. Both in his youth and in later years, August Strindberg was in bitter conflict with the Swedish Establishment. At the turn of the century, however, when the fifty-year-old author returned to Stockholm after many years of exile, he was able to be accepted by the cultural community in the country of his birth. This fact is studied here both from the point of view of a change in Strindberg's own attitudes, and of the changes that had taken place in Sweden during the author's exile. In the early 1880s, Strindberg had challenged accepted truths by writing a work of considerable proportions dealing with the history of the Swedish people, this in conscious opposition to the established view of history which was primarily concerned with the history of its monarchs, Strindberg was criticised both by the Press and by history scholars, and the reaction contributed to his decision to leave the country. By the turn of the century, considerable changes had taken place. Sweden had become an industrialized country, and the emerging middle class had made its mark on the philo­sophy of the time and also gained control of the organs of public opinion. Because Strindberg only wrote plays at this time, a considerable amount of attention is given in the dissertation to the development of the Stockholm theatre. Privately-owned theatres had now come to replace the earlier Royal theatre monopoly. On his return, Strindberg set about writing historical dramas. He was now willing to cater to the conservative views that he had fought against twenty years previously. He wrote of the Swedish monarchs and tried to satisfy the demands of an earlier period for dramas with historical facts that were completely correct. In the autumn of 1899 while he was busy writing "Gustaf Adolf " (Gustavus Adolphus), his recently-completed plays "Gustaf Vasa" and "Erik XIV" were being performed at the Svenska teatern in Stockholm. It now became apparent that the majority of critics regarded esthetic considerations as being more important than those of historical accuracy, and that they also prefered to see the monarchs portrayed as psychologically credible figures rather than as impersonal, glorified hero figures. Only the most conservative critics failed to hold this view. Despite the resounding success of both "Gustaf Vasa" and "Erik XIV", Strindberg tried in his new play to cater even to his few adversaries. He engaged in deep historical studies and peppered the play with historical details, resulting in a play that is inordi­nately long and very difficult to manage. However, concerning the main character, Strindberg was unable to pander to con­servative criticism. Fundemental artistic characteristics reemerged and transformed the 17th century monarch into a problematic individual who undergoes a personal develop­ment, laboriously seeking the right road. He has to battle with religious intolerance, his role as monarch, his understanding of the world, and his personal dreams of power. When "Gustaf Adolf" appeared in the bookshops in autumn 1900, the critics were unanimous in the belief that Strindberg had succeeded in his depiction of history. On the other hand, many felt that he had degraded the hero-king by giving him personal problems / digitalisering@umu

This thesis investigates the ways in which Webster’s Duchess of Malfi has been framed and interpreted, selecting various case studies from the four hundred years of the play’s history. It analyses the way in which a number of discourses have been brought to bear upon the play to delimit and shape its meanings, in the absence of a powerful determining author-figure such as Shakespeare. The investigation is organised around three “strands”, or elements which reappear in the commentary on the play. These are “pastness”, the sense that the play is framed as belonging to an earlier era and resistant to being completely interpreted by the later theatrical context being used to reproduce it; “not-Shakespeare”, the way in which Malfi has been set up in opposition to a “Shakespearean” model of dramatic value, or folded into that model; and “the dominance of the Duchess”, the tendency for the central character to act as a focus for the play’s perceived meanings. It identifies and analyses the co-opting of these elements in the service of wildly varying cultural politics throughout the play’s history. Sited within the assumptions and practices of Early Modern performance studies, this thesis constitutes an intervention in the field, demonstrating the possibility of a radically decentred approach. Such an approach is freed from either a reliance on Shakespeare as a prototypical model from which other works are imagined as diverging, or from the progressive narrative of theatre history in which twentieth century scholars “discovered” the true inherent meaning of early modern drama which had been “obscured” by the intervening centuries of theatre practice. It reveals blindspots and weaknesses in the existing Shakespeare-centred conception of the field, and opens up new possibilities for understanding Early Modern drama in historical and contemporary performance.

La más constante mujer is a Spanish Golden Age play written by Juan Pérez de Montalbán in 1631 and published for the first time in 1632. Although he was once one of the most famous playwrights in Madrid, known for running in the same literary and social circles as Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca, the bulk of the dramatist's work has been greatly ignored by scholars, or is referred to as being of second rate, and the author himself has nearly tragically been forgotten throughout the centuries following his short life. Although research has been conducted to chronicle the literature produced by Montalbán, his plays have been generally overlooked by modern scholars and very little of the dramatist's theatrical production has been analyzed within the last one hundred years. As a result, there are no modern editions of his plays. The intention of this thesis is to provide a regularized critical edition of La más constante mujer, together with an in-depth analysis of the life and times of its author, and the play's main themes, topics, influences, and characteristics.

During the latter half of the nineteenth century Utah was undergoing physical and cultural colonization. Four months after the first Mormon pioneers arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, the site of Ogden city had been purchased from Miles Goodyear. The city developed slowly during its first twenty years, but when the railroad joined at Promontory Point in 1869, Ogden became the junction of East and West. The city experienced a peculiar economic and cultural boom not known elsewhere in the Mountain West or along the railroad due to the predominately Mormon population which now was imposed upon by the non-Mormon railroad and business interests. This thesis investigates theatre in Ogden before and after the introduction of the railroad, examines the pressures of the conflicting ideologies, and demonstrates the results of these pressures in the theatrical activities of the city.

Theatre history provides little information on theatre audiences and how the concept of an audience has changed over time. Through the investigation of theatre history texts, theatre theorists' manifestos, and interviews with workers in the field of theatre for young audiences, this thesis outlines the theatre audience from the first performance to the present and examines how the history of the concept of "child" and young audiences has developed in recent years. Opposing views exist on the subject of how a child is perceived as well as the purpose and role of a theatre audience. In this thesis, I investigate the classical, romantic, realist, modern, and current theatre movements and how scholars and theorists have perceived or written about their audiences in an effort to cultivate an understanding of what an audience is today and how the concept of theatre etiquette has or has not changed throughout history in order to relate these findings to experiences of audiences today. I began this thesis with a general knowledge of "audience," from a personal perspective as a performer and audience member. However, through my collected data, I find that audiences are valued in distinctive ways throughout various movements in theatre history. With this understanding, I wrote a short book to help young audience members to understand what the present conventions are as a theatre audience member.