This is a course outline for the first semester of movement training for beginning performers in theatre, part of a two-year course of study based on the Becque-Todd method of movement development. Emphasis is on a psychophysiological approach to developing new motor habits. The introduction presents the history, background, basic premises on which the course is based, and the techniques and tools used. Each subsequent chapter represents a unit of work on a specific problem, each taking one or more class periods.

This study is a critical ethnography that examines the relationship between the racial-identity, coping strategies and educational aspirations of two African American males who live (and attend school) in a predominantly White community. The participants reside in a Northeastern state where the African-American population is below 3%. Although they live in different parts of the state, symbols like the Confederate flag were regularly seen inside and outside of both high schools. Critical Race Theory (CRT) is the primary interpretive framework used in this study. However, theory from educational psychology and sociology were also included. Through semi-structured interviews, on-site observations, and artifact analysis (e.g. high school transcripts, SAT scores, and samples of creative writing), this research advances the understanding of how being Black in a predominantly White community affected the participants' identity, coping strategies and educational experiences. Similar to how any system functions, the participants' identity, coping strategies and educational aspirations were nested and dependent upon each other. This included a number of balancing and re-enforcing feedback loops. Although this study is qualitative and cannot be generalized, the experiences of the participants were similar. The difference was in their coping strategies. The predominant culture that currently exists in most communities and educational institutions is deeply embedded in racism. This is systemic. It is time all institutions move forward and embrace diversity. Similar to the earth's resources, race relations must be sustained if we are to create a prosperous world for future generations. Key Words: achievement, acting-White, agency, aspirations, identity, racism, resilience, stereotyping and self-efficacy.

This thesis records and details my journey of bringing to the stage Fire and Cloud, a short story by one of America's most respected and controversial writers, Richard Wright. It chronicles what I learned about him as a writer and the value of his work for the stage. In producing Fire and Cloud the director endeavored to assemble of group of actors who were willing to take risks while creating an environment for them in which they could function effectively as an ensemble.

This thesis is dedicated to illustrating the unique challenges of staging works by the playwright Tennessee Williams, and to making suggestions on how to avoid common pitfalls in production, performance, and direction of his plays. It uses evidence from the playwright’s various biographical works as well as insight and conjecture from the author’s experience to illuminate these challenges and help the reader to avoid hackneyed or ineffective staging practices. It touches on the effect of film adaptations on stage performances; the typical portrayal of American Southern characters onstage; the aural ramifications of Williams’s poetry to a now-visually-centered audience; stylistic elements similar to Williams’s contemporaries, including Rice, Brecht, O’Neill, and others; the delicacy of Williams’s signature meter and rhythm in his plays; dramaturgical groundwork in the playwright’s intentions; and a systemization of archetypical Williams characters. This thesis does not prescribe a cut-and-dried set of rules and regulations for performing Williams’s works, for the simple reason that the Williams canon is so diverse that no singular set of “tricks” will be effective in every play. Furthermore, the author understands that a producer, director, or actor will not find use in all facets of a rigid “system”. The thesis does outline a number of practices whose aims are to make productions more effective from an integral perspective. There are exercises to attempt, questions to pose, and matters to consider in the staging of Williams’s plays during any part of production—from in-class reading to designing the scenery, and from deciding why to put a Williams play in a season to the living moments of an actor’s performance. The thesis aims to be helpful, informative, and accessible, rather than doctrinaire: much like the playwright’s works, its purpose is to illuminate dark corners of something that viewers think they already fully understand.

Rudolf Laban: Father of Modern dance, revolutionary within the field of movement studies, and inventor of Labanotation. His work is so universal it has been applied to dancing, acting, industrial work, and movement therapy. This thesis will specifically discuss the use of his system as it applies to actor training. However before that it is important for me as a teacher to understand the potential ideologies and historical implications that are associated with a theory or body of work before passing it on, lest we unknowingly propagate a system of thought that is associated with destructive ideologies. This becomes particularly significant in the case of Laban. From 1933 until 1936 Laban’s movement analysis and choreographic skills were an integral and leading part of the Reich Chamber of Culture’s division of dance. Many of his contemporaries labeled him a Nazi, and many scholars today struggle to extricate his work from the Nazi stain. If his work, as his contemporaries claimed, was fascist in nature and his work was uniquely expressive of the German volk, as Goebbels had instructed him it should be, then we as teachers have a moral obligation to be judicious in our applications of his system. Therefore in this thesis I will first examine the time Laban spent working for the Third Reich, and only after concluding that his actual system of understanding movement had little to do with the politics during that time of his life will I then go on to discuss how Laban Movement Analysis can be an integral tool for actor training, and discuss the ideologies that I, as a teacher, bring to the table.

Student of Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, co-founder of the Group Theatre, Artistic Director of the Actors Studio, founder of the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, and developer of The Method, Lee Strasberg is one of the most famous acting teachers of the twentieth century. In the same way a concert pianist must practice her scales daily to maintain expertise, Strasberg believed an actor must regularly practice the use of sense memory to be emotionally authentic. Using Strasberg’s Method, this is achieved through a combination of relaxation and concentration, which leads to a sense of truth in performance. The Method, a praxis built on Stanislavski’s own approach to actor training, since the death of its founder has slacked off in popularity. This is noteworthy for the gold standard status the Method once held in the United States. More easily accessible, less process oriented, more demonstrably obvious and observable techniques such as the work of Michael Chekhov have taken stronger hold in some academic circles. Empirical evidence seems to suggest that a mixture of prejudice for the Method and possible personal dislike for Strasberg the man has made this so. Curious to discover if the Method still held value for the next generation, I committed to teaching a Method class to Virginia Commonwealth University undergraduates. Drawing on my experience at the Strasberg Institute studying under Anna Strasberg, Geoffrey Horne, my practical experiences on stage, and research available after Strasberg’s death, I created my own approach to The Method. Through analysis of my students’ Method acting work and my own teaching, I intended to learn the efficacy and practicality of Strasberg’s Method as we begin the twenty-first century: what we can keep, what we must let go, and what we can change for the better.

This paper considers two purposes for actor training—textual interpretation and devising original works—through the teaching of a class based on contemporary theatrical clown and physical theatre exercises which are then applied to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Devised work can be used to interpret a script, and a script can be used as a jumping-off point to devise new works. Beginning with an explanation of the teaching methods for the class, the paper then gives a background of clowns who performed in Beckett’s plays, and analyzes various productions' use of games to enliven text. Exercises from the class are used as examples of exploring the uncovering of clown personas and the application of games to both Beckett scene-work and invented theatre pieces. The students’ final performances are examined to demonstrate the effectiveness of the classwork, confirming that textual interpretation and devising are complementary instead of opposing practices.

Neil LaBute is one of the most prolific and challenging playwrights in America today. My thesis will explore his work bash: the latter-day plays through the frame of the performance and use of masculinity by his characters, and will create a vocabulary through which the remainder of LaBute's works can be studied, both in terms of academic scholarship and the practical application of that scholarship to the process of theatrical creation.

Psychology and theatre have a remarkable amount in common. In using the basic concepts and theories of psychology, actors can develop more concrete, logical approaches to characters. This thesis is a summation of the course I developed, "Psychology and the Theatre," which was an attempt to teach students introductory psychology and then experiment with translating those concepts to character analysis and stage performance. Students were taught eight units of psychology: Sensation, Perception, and Memory; Learning; Motivation and Emotion; Development; Freud and Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality; Adlerian Individual Psychology; Love and Social Cognition; and Psychological Disorders. Students were given reading quizzes and written tests on the material from the psychology texts. In addition, students wrote journals and papers to help work through potential uses of the material. They also performed contemporary scenes, attempting to put the material into practice. This course was an overall success; most students felt that this was a unique and helpful set of tools they could use to analyze and perform characters. Students found uses for each unit of the material, allowing more depth and logic to their character choices. With further development, this material has the potential to enhance the techniques of many actors.

This thesis studies the process of creating, producing and performing a solo performance titled UNLISTED PROPERTIES. We intend to intertwine historical text and contemporary narratives to create portraits of women throughout different periods of history/her-story dealing with the theme of women as property or owning others as personal property. The historical text will be taken from the self-written works of Mary Chesnut, Harriet A. Jacobs, and Elizabeth Packard. The contemporary pieces have been pulled from a variety of sources, which include an interview with Mary Ford, an Army bride during World War II, Pagan Moss, a website blogger describing her experiences working in the sex industry, and Bhumika Ghimire a New York freelance writer who recalls her trials as a new housewife in an article for American Chronicle. Lauren will discuss her roles as actor, co-writer, and dramaturge, and Jason will discuss his work as a director, co-writer and producer.