This thesis is an examination of autobiographical solo performance. It explores the use of personal trauma and illness in the dramatic form. In addition to investigating how other solo performing artists utilize their medical conditions in their work, this thesis gives some historical context to the author’s own process and development. The thesis culminates in the author’s solo performance script and a desire for its audience to find solace and compassion through the experience of witnessing it being performed.

This thesis investigates drinking water quality and the ways in which our built environment can be used to as a tool to alter or confront perception through the violation of expectations. Research indicates that the design of public interiors could be a key component in regulating healthy urban ecologies. Desire to understand the opposing needs of two user groups – the skeptic and the advocate – led me to research design prototypes that prioritize the unexpected as it is manifested in spectacle as underscored through proximity. By abstracting this research, a new hypothetical design is formed in the form of a comedy lounge, water museum, and research laboratory that will evoke inclusivity, collaboration, and surprise. This reimagining of public programs will serve to invite users to be “in on the joke,” as well as, become participants in acts of reckoning, accountability, and conservation for the future of common goods like drinking water.

Thesis (M.A. (African languages)) --University of Limpopo, 2012 / This is a comparative study of Tragedy and Comedy, with special reference to the works of Mathivha, Mahamba, Milubi and Madima. Chapter One is an introduction of this study. The aim, scope and methodology are discussed herein. Concepts such as characters, plot and conflict are defined in this chapter. The chapter also includes a summary of Mabalanganye, Zwo Itwa, Khoro dzi sa dzhenelani and Hu na Savhadina respectively. Chapter Two focuses on what is considered as tragic in Western culture as well as in Tshivenda culture. The elements which the researcher believes are necessary for this study are: stature of the hero, catharsis, hubris, harmatia, ignitio, nemesis, victims, confidant, bravery, death, witchcraft and feminism. Chapter Three gives an exposition of the requirements and criteria for drama such as plot, characterization, and conflict. A comparison between the works of Mathivha and Mahamba has also been made. Chapter Four focuses on the elements of comedy. The elements of comedy which the researcher believes are necessary for this study are: the comic individual, verbal comedy, physical comedy, lack of feelings, unfulfilled expectations, the plot and the audience and western culture perspective. A comparison between the works of Milubi and Madima has also been made. Chapter Five gives the conclusion of the study. It also gives findings and some recommendations to new authors.

This dissertation develops the theoretical framework of “trainwreck feminism.” Forwarded by contemporary women in comedy like Mindy Kaling, Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer, and Amy Schumer, trainwreck feminists adopt the trope of the trainwreck—excessive in need, sex, and madness—to demonstrate the disastrous consequences of growing up in postfeminist culture that both insists women are finally liberated and continues to police their choices. Engaging ongoing debates about whether postfeminism is over since feminism is becoming a status symbol for celebrities and public figures, I argue that postfeminism remains a powerful cultural force, and women in comedy are some of its most vocal critics. Trainwreck feminism exposes the misogyny at the core of postfeminist culture, while arguing that feminist activism is still needed. Trainwreck feminism is reflective of a larger rejection of postfeminist culture, a contradictory moment that celebrates feminism’s achievements while insisting the movement is outdated. Trainwreck feminism represents a larger re-politicization of feminism in pop culture. Each chapter examines a different comic and the specific branch of postfeminism they undermine: Mindy Kaling and the postfeminist life cycle, Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer and commodity feminism, and Amy Schumer and choice feminism. Ultimately, these women imbue the trainwreck with true feminist potential, pointing a finger at postfeminist culture as a source of women’s madness. Because they are cautionary tales, trainwrecks can highlight the unspoken rules and expectations of femininity. While comedy can have a fairly nasty, depoliticizing relationship with feminism, often turning feminism into a lifestyle or label devoid of political activism, I argue that some contemporary comic texts are actively politicized, inspiring viewers to critique and change the world around them. They do so by appropriating particular vernacular rhetorics that appeal to younger, millennial audiences and using it to demonstrate how postfeminism has failed women. That is, each comic I examine leverages postfeminist sensibilities in order to critique and undermine them, engaging in a trainwreck feminism that highlights the contradictions, absurdities, and misogyny at the heart of postfeminist culture.

This thesis examines the mechanical comic techniques which are characteristic of farce as a dramatic forma in the European theatre. It briefly traces the origins of the term in the mediaeval liturgical drama and the history of its critical usage. Contemporary criticism of the genre rests upon the common, though ill-defined, understanding that farce is a specific form of comedy and that certain distinguishing characteristics are associated with plays which may be described as farces; although farcical techniques and scenes of farce may also be utilized by other comic forms for their own dramatic purposes. Some of those characteristics are examined in detail -- farce's exclusive concern with laughter and its lack, as a genre, of any more serious dramatic purpose; its spirit of festive liberation; its obscenity and its essential conservatism; its irregularity and improbability in plot structure; its dependence upon predictable co-incidence and other mechanical patterns of events; its use of stock, or 'type' characters and its association with masks; its exploitation of visual comedy and its relationship to the actor's art. Brief historical outlines are given of the chief period of farce in the European theatre, between the development of the Graeco-Roman stages and the close of the nineteenth century. These range from the crude and traditional folk-performances and the buffooneries of the fairground and the boulevarde to the sophisticated 'manners-farce', the vaudeville and the 'naturalistic' farces constructed in the style of the 'well-made play'. From the most popular and best-known pieces of these different periods a total of twenty-four plays is taken for detailed discussion. The analysis of each deals firstly with the broad structure of the plot, with the targets of the aggression in the play and with the pattern of resolution of the conflict. Secondly, it examines within that structure the use of recurring mechanical devices or motifs, such as those identified by Bergson, Hughes, Bentley and others: repetition, reversals, disguise and trickery, physical violence, mental and physical 'fixations' in the characters and so forth. Given this approach, which sets aside particular concern with wit and verbal comedy, some of the plays are studied in English translation after careful comparison with the original text. From these analyses it is apparent that the mechanical devices invest both the broad structure of the plot and the individual farce-scenes with a fundamental balance between the opposing forces in the farcical conflict. This balance is achieved in different ways for different structures depending upon the complexity of the conflict. In the plays in which a single rebellious impulse carries the conflict forward, the rigidity of the victim restores him a the resolution to his position of authority. In others, the aggressors suffer a specific reversal and the action is resolved in a draw between the two sides. In others, the victims directly earn their humiliation by their own repressive action and the aggressions are equally balanced from the outset. In still others, the mechanical devices are applied so minutely that they remind the audience at all times that aggressors victims alike are puppets reacting to interventions beyond their control. A pattern of co-incidence visible only to the audience may be invoked to overwhelm all the characters with a mutual humiliation. Farce proclaims its own characters; but when such a rule is allied to sympathetic and human characterization and to a serious social concern, the result may be that farcical techniques powerfully serve some other dramatic purpose.

This exegesis will aim to research and analyse the conventions of writing a black comedy in a feature film script. As a screenwriter with a particular interest in black comedy, my aim is to explore the technical structures of black comedy in order to facilitate the writing of a tragicomic screenplay. We will attempt to define the components of black comedy and survey its origin in theatre and literature. The exegesis will aim to explore what components comprise the middle ground between drama and humour and position it in relation to the classical genres of tragedy and comedy. The exegesis will also aim to examine the function of black comedy in relation to the psychology of the protagonist and the audience, as well as defining the characteristics of the genre in the context of Screenwriting. The exegesis will observe the film adaptation of the renowned play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as a case study. The research will inform the writing of the feature length screenplay entitled The Actions.

In the essay “William Kennedy’s Ironweed: Francis Phelan’s Purgatorial Journey Back Home” I intend to show that William Kennedy has borrowed his narrative structure and symbolic language in the novel Ironweed from The Divine Comedy. I will also try to show how William Kennedy has used these allusions to enhance the imagery of Ironweed and the protagonist Francis Phelan’s wandering through the novel, and his return home. To accomplish this I will present a detailed comparative analysis of William Kennedy’s Ironweed and Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. I will begin by showing that Kennedy establishes the protagonist Francis Phelan as a Dante-like figure and a sinner who needs to go through purgatory to redeem himself. Moreover, Kennedy uses Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy’s landscape to enhance the imagery of a journey back home, and by showing that each chapter represents a different level on Mount Purgatory Kennedy makes Albany a symbol of the mountain itself. Details such as the mentioning of the seven deadly sins are also there to make the reader think of Dante and thereby reinforcing the image of The Divine Comedy’s landscape in Francis Phelan’s New York, Albany. I also demonstrate that Kennedy borrows his symbolic structure from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. For example, the intricate ending of Ironweed where several parallels can be drawn to Purgatory and Paradise reinforces the impression of Francis Phelan’s happiness, that is, a reader who is familiar with The Divine Comedy will appreciate and understand Francis Phelan’s happiness and the journey he has accomplished even more.

This dissertation sets out to explore Lacan’s idea of the paradoxical condition of the masculine gender construction. As privileged, favored, powerful, entitled, and hegemonic as it may seem, masculinity does not come without its awareness of what Lacan has most accurately labeled the “threat or even […] the guise of deprivation.” In fact, this construction not only assumes threat and deprivation to its identity but goes so far as to rely upon these potential attacks as necessities in order to perform itself. In other words, the masculine role can only be identified, recognized and/or mean when presented with a threat. As with any identity, masculinity is not autonomous nor is it essential in signification; it must confront that which is not masculine, that which is always a potential threat to its identity, if it is to appear in any way privileged, favored, powerful, entitled, hegemonic or whatever any culture construes masculinity to be. This argument is applied to four of Shakespeare’s comedies in terms of the male characters’ ability or reason to speak.

Issued also as Thèse, Paris. / Bibliography: p. [321]-334.

Inaug.-Diss.--Greifswald. / Vita.