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The beginnings of modern stage lighting emerged during the late 1800s when Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig theorized about the potential use of lighting to create plasticity in a theatrical production. Appia and Craig conducted experiments, only to find that the limitation of the instruments available at the time prevented the achievement of their theory. The next documented step was when Stanley McCandless proposed and published a system for implementing the Appia and Craig theory of plasticity. Stanley McCandless' lighting textbook, A Syllabus of Stage Lighting. The book broke down the elements and function of light; ultimately becoming the common practice of academic lighting designers. One of his students, Jean Rosenthal, studied the theory and became aware of its limitations. Jean Rosenthal attempted to apply the McCandless theory to dance and found that it was not useful for sculpting the body. She then developed a new technique that better served dance lighting and adhered to the ideas of Appia and Craig. Rosenthal's theory became the foundation of contemporary dance lighting practice. The aim of this thesis consists of four parts. First is to research the evolution of dance lighting, second is to explore and apply the Rosenthal Theory of Dance Lighting, third is to document the design process and the fourth part is the personal growth and development throughout this entire process. As the Lighting and Scenic Designer I will have extensive documentation of both the process of design and the production. I will also have documentation on my growth and development based on this thesis project.

Cloud Nine by Carol Churchill is a good example of non-linear play structure. Episodic plays are part of an even more disjointed time structure. There are both many different locations and characters in an episodic play; it is similar to a film script for that matter. Onstage, this was a revolution; how can a person be in one city and then the next shortly after? This was the rule of continuity that episodic structure broke. Bertolt Brecht did this throughout his movement in epic theatre, and traces of this structure can also be found as early back as Medieval plays. Therein lays the problem. If there are so many different way to write a play, how is it possible to just pick one? How does one even decide? There are many texts on playwriting that all say something different. In the end, the way you format a play script is decided by the structure in which you are writing your script, whether it be linear, non-linear, and episodic structures. This is an exploration to research possible methods of playwriting in the English language, choose a format, and create a story, ultimately forming a universally acceptable play script for a one-act production. Through my process, I researched various elements about play structure. I researched various types of formatting options found throughout texts, and the formatting options found in different publications of plays. I also researched the options of different software programs I could use to format my play. In regards to the show's content itself, I researched the personality disorders of my main character, John, in order to ensure I am staying accurate to the realistic expectations of the disorder. The possible disorders that might influence John included Bi-Polar disorder, Autism, Alzheimer's, or Narcissistic Personality Disorder. These disorders fit the characteristics of John and further research led me to finally adopt Autism as the end result.; David Ball's Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays, Rosemary Ingham's From Page to Stage: How Theatre Designers Make Connections Between Scripts and Images, and Cal Printer and Scott E. Walter's Introduction to Play Analysis aided in ensuring the translation from the script to the stage works together fluidly. By understanding how the play will be analyzed, the potential flaws with the work can be identified before it is put in front of an audience, publisher, or director. A writer needs to know why they made certain choices with both script and character. When a writer can analyze how their script can be perceived, they can create a more solid structure. It also is useful to utilize available play scripts in order to understand the conventions through example. Works that were useful included: Proof by David Auburn, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, Equus by Peter Shaffer, The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov, The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler, Doubt by John Patrick Shanley, and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. The Vagina Monologues follows the format of episodic structure because of its inconsistencies to time and the multiple characters included in its script. Equus, Proof, and Death of a Salesman are examples of non-linear play structure because of the non-specific timeline the characters follow between past and present. The Glass Menagerie, The Cherry Orchard, and Doubt are all examples of linear structure because a majority of their play's content was written within a specified chronological order.; I researched the historical significance of the car, an all-original, 1969 Stingray Corvette Convertible, in order to allow my characters to speak accurately about their knowledge of the car. I also researched how previous playwrights have accomplished their transitions between the world of the play and a character's alternate reality. This was done in order to provide both a believable and a sly transition so the audience is left unaware until the reveal. In the final stages of this process, I polished the script for inclusion in the Theatre UCF Spring 2012 One-Act Festival (OAF). As stated above, the process of writing a play can be taken down many different avenues; however, the format of a play script is something that remains constant throughout. Knowing the history from where plays derive and which movements created such is just as essential. W. B. Worthen's The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama and Living Theatre by Edwin Wilson and Alvin Goldfarb provide an adequate brevity into the history of theatre. The books Playwriting: Brief and Brilliant by Julie Jensen, Playwriting: A practical guide by Noel Greig, The Art and Craft of Playwriting by Jeffrey Hatcher, and The Elements of Playwriting by Louis E. Catron all provide an introduction to the structured format of the play. These books also contain sections on theory explaining how to create a storyline for a play, how to accomplish believable dialogue, and how to defeat writer's block. Jensen, Catron, and Hatcher all go one step further and take their readers through the processes of publications, copyrights, and productions. Those sources help create the play, but during the editing phase, it is wise to acknowledge how others may study and analyze the work.; Through exploration and research, I plan on combining my two degree tracks, Theatre Studies and Creative Writing, in order to create an original one-act play for production, utilizing the techniques of both fields. My education has been lagging in playwriting, specifically. Neither Creative Writing nor Theatre Studies have any courses geared towards playwriting. Students appear to be taught everything but this aspect. I will, therefore, complete in-depth research in playwriting techniques through literature studies and one-on-one consultations with my professors in both departments. There are many different types of writing structures and play movements. Play scripts can be written in linear, non-linear, and episodic structures. Each structure is measured by the action of a script. The action of a script is developed with each action a character completes that moves the script further along towards a conclusion. Linear structuring of a play is when a majority or all the action of a play occurs in a chronological order. The play, therefore, always will be moving forward in time without any disruptions of said timeline. In a linear play, it does not necessarily mean all the action occurs in this chronological sequence. Comparable to Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, the entire recollection of Tom Wingfield's story is told chronologically in linear structure, despite the fact that this story is from Tom's memory, about an event he is no longer part of at that time. Non-linear structure occurs when the chronological timeline of a play is broken. The play's action constantly moves backwards and forwards through time. This type of play is based on the ideology of the human thought process. As humans, we may not remember the exact order of how things are remembered; these images and events are distorted somehow by our subconscious in order to remember. Thus, a non-linear play erupts based on the infrequencies of a timeline.

This thesis examined the ways in which present-day 6th through 12th grade theatre educators approach the topic of mental health, both implicitly and explicitly, in theatre education. Through a survey of existing literature, as well as interviews with 6th through 12th grade theatre educators, the researcher examined ways in which theatre educators were aware of the mental health needs of their students in any of the following capacities: explicit discussions regarding mental health, theatre curriculum, show selection, script analysis, and casting choices. The reveal the educator perception that mental health issues are increasingly relevant to 6th through 12th grade youth, and that some educators have been taking specific and creative steps to incorporate explicit discussions surrounding mental health into their classroom and rehearsal processes. The researcher’s intention to conduct this study was to start a conversation about the needs students have for their mental health to be supported in the classroom; moreover, it was the hope of the researcher that this study would bring awareness to how students need more specific education taking place in their classrooms to understand this topic. The researcher specifically analyzed how theatre education spaces provide an opportunity to explore the topic of mental health with students using a unique, arts-based platform.

This collection of videos were created by Jonathan Taylor for THEA 4540 (Theatre Drawing and Rendering Techniques) and THEA 3330 (Scenic Design). The majority of the videos provide tutorials on using Vectorworks. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-oer/1011/thumbnail.jpg

This thesis details the Costume Design process for David Emerson Toney’s Frankenstein: Dawn of a Monster at Virginia Commonwealth University. Toney’s original adaptation interprets Mary Shelley’s genre-defying novel as biography, directly influenced by the tragic events of her young life. Costumes differentiate the two narratives, with Mary Shelly in gray scale, regency-inspired modern dress and the novel in period and color. This follows the design process from concept to production to execution.

After working over twenty years in theatre and the entertainment industries, I began teaching high school level stagecraft and looked for a textbook geared towards those students just stepping into the world of technical theatre. What I found was that there is no one single source textbook for high school level students. The textbooks were either too elementary or had too much information that was written for college level students. I begin my teaching career using a textbook I thought would serve the purpose, but found my students were frustrated with the text as much as I was. I began incorporating material from other sources to cover the various components of the class; construction, rigging, lighting and sound, to name a few. After a couple of years having my students telling me that I should just write a stagecraft book, I thought maybe I could. After talking and sending out a survey to other technical directors, or the alike, in high school theatre, I found I was not alone in the way I had to cover the content of the course. Therefore, I decided to take my students challenge and write a textbook for them. I hope this will be a good resource for both students and teachers like me.

This thesis explores the current state of voice and speech education to discover if there is a standard of learning from university to university. By examining the history of voice and speech, discovering basic skills, breaking down teaching methodologies, and taking a look at current university and conservatory acting programs, the thesis discovers there is not a standard way of teaching, but there is a standard set of skills that should be upheld when planning voice and speech curriculum.

Research has revealed that underutilization of breast cancer screening by ethnic minorities often is related to language difficulties and cultural values and beliefs about cancer. The problem addressed in this secondary data analysis was the late diagnosis of breast cancer in the Chinese immigrant community. The purpose of the quasi-experimental study was to test the efficacy of a theatrical preschool performance, guided by the diffusion of innovation theory, in educating Chinese American women about breast cancer detection. The research questions sought to determine whether the performance increased the participants' knowledge of breast cancer screening guidelines and whether country of origin, length of stay in the United States, and self-reported attentiveness were associated with knowledge gain of breast cancer screening guidelines. The preschool performance was performed by Chinese children ages 3 to 5 who displayed breast health guidelines from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure. One hundred and seventy-seven pre- and postperformance surveys were collected from a sample of Chinese women (84% foreign born). The secondary data were analyzed using standard linear regression analyses and bivariate logistic regressions. The findings demonstrated that promoting breast health screening guidelines among Chinese American women through a preschool theatrical performance significantly increased the participants' knowledge of the guidelines. However, no major impact was detected between knowledge score and attentiveness to the theatrical performance and any of the demographic variables. Health care professionals can foster social change by adapting a preschool theatrical performance to educate ethnic communities on cancer control guidelines for early detection.

THESIS: An investigation into my handling of the production’s key challenges, and into what came of those efforts, will reveal a pattern: decisions made from trust – trust of myself as a leader and of my collaborators – yield a better, more satisfying harvest than do decisions made from fear. KEYWORDS & PHRASES: The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, by Naomi Wallace; theater; theatre; stage; directing; director; process; challenge; time; ritual; live music; heightened language; movement; physicality; casting; actors; designers; lighting; deviant sexuality; audience; conscripting; growth; lessons learned; depression; railroad; train; trust; faith; artistic process; collaboration; leadership.