”Problems for the HIgh School Actor” has been prepared so that the teacher and the student have been given a certain degree of flexibility in its use. The order of presentation of the various problems, the amount of time spent on any one time, and the focusing on the major amount of emphasis may vary from class to class and from year to year as the interests, needs, and skills of the enrollee vary. The most educationally worthwhile method can be used to meet these varying situations. This study has been developed so as to make possible further study of the problems herein presented. The resources unit that has been included will be found most helpful. It should be a stimulus for a continued analysis of the great plays. It would be well to consider the objectives involved in “Problems for the High School Actor”: (1) To enable the student to realize the communicative possibilities of bodily action and facial expression; (2) To enable the student to realize the possibilities of emotional expression through the voice.; (3) To help the student acquire grace of movement.; (4) To help the student develop a pleasing, expressive voice.; (5) To make the student aware of the world and the people around him as a source of characterizations.; (6) To develop powers of observation in the student so that he may find in the world around him the inspiration and materials of characterization.; (7) To enable the student to acquire memorization techniques.; (8) To give the student practice in memorizing and characterization.; (9) To give the students practice in working with others in dramatic scenes.; (10) To develop the student’s sense of responsibility in self-organized, self-directed scenes.; (11) To develop the ability to sacrifice personal ambitions to the welfare of the group.; (12) To give the student a knowledge of stage directions and acting techniques.; (13) To develop a critical sense in the student in evaluating his own and other’s work.; (14) To give poise and confidence to the student. The over-all plan in “Problems for the High School Actor’ has been to give the student a chance to act. It has long been the belief of the investigator that the average, serious-minded high school actor can best learn how to act by working on excerpts from the World’s great dramatic literature. When the actor is told exactly what is expected of him in playing his role. He will most appreciably grow, and he soon senses the importance of a well-motivated characterization, and sometimes he will have the techniques so ingrained, he can attack the more complicated problems in acting with sincerity and understanding.

It was the purpose of this study (1) to discover the similarities and dissimilarities in three ancient Greek plays that used the legend of the house of Atreus as the basis for their plots; (2) to discover how these similarities and dissimilarities illustrate separate points of view concerning man, the universe and man’s place in that universe; and (3) to discover what relationship if any exists between the points of view expressed and the particular moment in history at which each playwright wrote. The plays considered were the Oresteia, a trilogy by Aeschylus first presented about 458 B.C.; Electra by Sophocles; probably presented first sometime before 413 B.C.; and Electra by Euripides, first presented in 413 B.C. SInce the purpose of the study was to compare ideas and points of view expressed by the three great tragic dramatists of Greece, no attempt was made to justify the plays selected as works of art nor their authors as master craftsmen. However, in cases where translators disagree or left out portions of the manuscript which seemed to be mistakes in copying or lapses in artistry on the part of the playwright, the investigator adopted the attitude expressed by H.D.F. Kitto. All the plays were read in translation, but where more than one translation was available at least two translations were read, one literal and one poetic; in some cases as many as three were read in an effort to insure accuracy.

A DESIGN CONCEPT FOR THE LIGHTING OF HELL IN HIGH WATER BY MARCUS GARDLEY MAY 2012 JESSICA GREENBERG, B.A., HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE M.F.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Penny Remsen I designed the lighting for this new play with music HELL IN HIGH WATER by Marcus Gardley, produced by the UMass Amherst Theater Department. In this thesis paper I discuss the creative process from start to finish. I include relevant lighting paperwork and images from the production.

A reflection of the lighting artist’s approach for the lighting design of The Twenty-fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. University of Massachusetts, Amherst Department of Theater’s Fall 2010 production used as a research ground for the experimentation of lighting design through the cueing process.

In this thesis, I take the reader through the process and particular challenges of directing The House of Bernarda Alba, from choosing a translation, to casting from a pool of mostly undergraduate actors, to staging a show in-the-round. More particularly, I compare my previous work with adaptation to this process of treating the script as a fixed entity. I also offer a detailed explanation of the exploratory work I did with the actors in building the physicality of the play-world and exploring the relationships of the characters. For this, I drew heavily on Anne Bogart’s composition exercises, found in The Viewpoints Book. In this thesis, I transcribe and analyze some of the material generated through these exercises. Finally, I endeavor to prove that a certain freedom can be found through structure, and that the challenge of this production - which was assigned to me rather than a personal choice - helped me develop a more subtle creative voice than I had previously possessed.

This essay describes tools for unlocking accessibility in theatre, specifically for those within the disabled community. Throughout my own research in accessible theatre, and the research reviewed within this paper, it is seen that inclusive theatre yields a multitude of positive benefits for those involved, both emotionally and socially. Throughout my experience with OpenSpot Theatre, an accessible theatre company that teaches drama classes in areas throughout the United States, I learn methods to implement accessibility in theatrical settings using devised theatre, affinity therapy, and applied theatre techniques. Within this thesis, I describe my experience with accessible theatre, OpenSpot theatre, and take a look into how the brilliant realms of theatre and psychology collide.

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Within the discipline of Performance Studies there is a debate about what is included within the ontology of “performance.” Peggy Phelan suggests that performance can only be experienced in the here and now, and any recording of a performance makes it “something other than performance.” Phillip Auslander argues the exact opposite, claiming that mediatized performance is not only valid, but also preferable to the live. This thesis is about performance in sports broadcasting, and states that performance, like sport, can be valid in both live and mediatized forms. The thesis also details how sports broadcasters perform and how their performance changes based on the time frame of the sport they're talking about: past, present and future. When sports are televised the process of broadcasting creates voids and gaps in the viewing experience that must be filled by the sportscasters. For past sporting events SportsCenter, and highlight shows like it, cut entire sporting events down to segments that only last a few moments. A need is created for these sportscasters to fill in the gaps with their performances, which explain what is happening, analyze how the game was played, and give humor and fun to the images. When announcers and analysts perform over live games they attempt to make up for the gap in broadcasting by narrativizing the event and turning a contest into a story. They do this by giving background information and histories about the game and players, explaining how the game is played, why events unfolded the way that they did, and bringing excitement to the game by how excited they themselves become. When Sportscasters predict outcomes of future events they usually do so by first looking to the past, and then making prognostications based on either statistical data, or on their own “gut” feelings. These predictions are very rarely accurate, and mostly have as much validity as guesses. Through these performances the sportscasters can sometimes greatly enhance a viewing experience of a game, but sometimes these performers take away from the enjoyment and the essence of the sports they broadcast. Viewers need to be aware of how performers can manipulate, or attempt to manipulate, an audience to keep them tuned in.

Fintan O'Toole states: "Plays survive not by being carefully preserved, not by being exhibited from time to time in theatrical museums, but by being tried and tested, taken apart and reassembled" (Game Without End).One of the great misconceptions and critiques of Samuel Beckett is of his presumed unrelenting control over his works. Artists, hoping to creatively collaborate with Beckett as they move his texts to performance, feel limited by his strict enforcement of that which he has written in his texts. Traditional relationships and functions allow directors to interpret an author's text. Not so with Beckett. Beckett demands that directors follow his authorial intentions as stated by his 'direct expression,' the indissoluble link between form (the text's physical nature) and content (the ideas expressed) within his texts. Beckett's control of his 'direct expression' is not a method of forcing meanings and interpretations upon his collaborators and his audience members. Rather, his purpose in protecting his 'direct expression' throughout the production process is to ensure the text's 'lack' of meaning and to preserve its ambiguities in performance. In this thesis I will analyze and argue that by preserving this 'direct expression' in Beckett's texts, the active relationships between author and reader (audience members) will be preserved throughout the production process and ultimately in the performance. Through this relationship, the viewer of the performance has the opportunity to become what Jacques Ranciere refers to as a more "active participant," composing their own poem with elements of the poem before them (Ranciere 13).