In this research I have explored the performance making process of world renowned director Robert Lepage. This exploration informed my own process, creating an original performance called GAIJIN, where my roles included producer / director / designer and co-writer. The practice-led research strategy employed in this research has allowed me to navigate the sometimes slippery slope of connecting various performance discourses with the pragmatics of the performance making process. The reason for this research is my strong interest in the director’s role and my affinity with the practice of Robert Lepage. My observation of the performance making process of Robert Lepage prompted the creation of a conceptual framework informed by Hans-Thies Lehmann’s work Postdramatic Theatre. These theoretical concerns were then further investigated in the creation of my own show. This research process has uncovered a performance making process that foregrounds the working principles of simultaneity and synaesthesia, which together offer a changed conception of the performance text in live performance. Simultaneity is a space of chaotic interaction where many resources are used to build a perpetually evolving performance text. Synaesthesia is the type of navigation required – an engagement consisting of interrelated sense-impressions that uniquely connect the performance makers with the abundance of content and stimulus; they search for poetic connections and harmonious movement between the resources. This engagement relies on intuitive playmaking where the artists must exhibit restraint and reserve to privilege the interaction of resources and observe the emerging performance. This process has the potential to create a performance that is built by referential layers of theatrical signifiers and impressions. This research offers an insight into the practices of Robert Lepage as well as a lens through which to view other unique devising processes. It also offers a performance making language that is worthy of consideration by all performance makers, from directors to performers. The significance of this process is its inherent qualities of innovation produced by all manner of art forms and resources interacting in a unique performance making space.

This dissertation entitled CROSSOVER, between the layers of my own staging experience, on the boundaries of forms, genres and not only those, is divided into three parts. All sections are primarily based on my own theatre experience and are interlaced with numerous examples from performances and theatrically performative thinking of selected foreign ensembles. Given the subject matter, the first part primarily deals with Gob Squad and Shunt ensembles and the director Mike Leigh. In the second part, Rimini Protokoll and again Gob Squad are mentioned. The third part is dedicated mainly to the director Tim Etchells and his Forced Entertainment ensemble. My theatre experience is presented in the introductory part of this dissertation; starting with complex shows which represent a symbiosis of all components and are linked by their staging style and formerly discovered drama methods to authorial/devised projects to theatre which implements documentary and technological elements. In the first part of this dissertation, differences and subtle nuances between authorial and devised theatres are examined with focus on the specific devising creative method. The second part of the dissertation is focused on documentary and technologies. The third part consists of subtopics introduced in the previous chapters with respect to crossing boundaries between forms, genres and methodologies, which are more closely related to the phenomena of boundaries between theatre performances/events, fiction/reality, spectator/witness, actor/performer. The methods or the optics with which I work are based on the phenomenon of the mentioned areas and topics. The manner of addressing the issue can be likened to a phenomenological insight.

Submitted by Natália Guimarães null (natalia_guimaraes@hotmail.com) on 2016-07-13T20:00:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO DE MESTRADO CORRIGIDA PÓS DEFESA PDF.pdf: 3173876 bytes, checksum: 0ce3b75089bac621092964a17f1a4cb7 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Paula Grisoto (grisotoana@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2016-07-15T20:14:30Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 guimaraes_n_me_ia.pdf: 3173876 bytes, checksum: 0ce3b75089bac621092964a17f1a4cb7 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-15T20:14:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 guimaraes_n_me_ia.pdf: 3173876 bytes, checksum: 0ce3b75089bac621092964a17f1a4cb7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-05-16 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Esta pesquisa propõe uma análise das referências estéticas das práticas teatrais da Cia. Artehúmus de Teatro, grupo paulista fundado em 1987. Nas pegadas do teatro contemporâneo, esta companhia teatral mobiliza múltiplos elementos estéticos ao longo de uma experiência artística que dá a mesma importância a todas as etapas do processo criativo. Diante de tamanha pluralidade, a pesquisa aqui projetada mobiliza um instrumento metodológico também plural – a “crítica genética” – que se notabiliza por desvelar a gênese criativa da obra artística ao invés de se prender ao espetáculo finalizado. Contudo, como a “crítica genética” ainda se prende a um referencial exclusivamente estético e, considerando que nenhuma obra vaga num vácuo social, esta pesquisa também propõe a “sociologização” do processo criativo, isto é, propõe desvelar as escolhas estéticas que engendram a obra, conectando-as às raízes sociais dos artistas e do grupo. Em suma, se o espetáculo final é um ponto de condensação da experiência criativa, esta, por sua vez, é a condensação das múltiplas experiências sociais dos artistas envolvidos no processo criativo. / This research suggests an analysis of the aesthetic references of the theatrical practices of Cia. Artehúmus de Teatro, a theatre company founded in São Paulo in 1987. Following the paths of contemporary theatre, this company has applied several aesthetic elements throughout its history based on giving equal importance to each stage of the creative process. In order to address such a wide variety, the present research employs an equally plural methodological instrument – the ‘genetic criticism’ – known to be effective in unveiling the creative genesis of a work of art, instead of simply evaluating the final performance. Nevertheless, once the ‘genetic criticism’ grantedly focus on a merely aesthetic referential and considering that no work of art operates in a social vaccum, this research also proposes a deeper look over the social roots of the artists and their work, in order to understand their aesthetic choices. In a nutshell, if we consider the final performance to be the ‘condensation point’ of a creative experience, this last one is the epitome of multiple social experiences lived by each and every artist involved in the creative process.

abstract: Those who are in or have aged out of foster care, most of whom are queer, Black, brown, and low-income, are represented by social workers, educational advocates, behavioral health specialists, and the mainstream media as “at-risk” for criminal behavior, teen pregnancy, homelessness, and lower levels of educational attainment. Current and former residents of foster care and their experiences must be understood beyond these deficit models in order to restore humanity to and bring about positive change for this population. This project traced the strategies for survival of those in and aged out of foster care in Arizona through artmaking and critical qualitative methods. Using borderlands theory and medicinal histories, I demonstrated how system involved youth paint a picture of foster care as a dehumanizing borderland creating una cultura mestiza – a hybrid culture that youth learned to navigate as both healers and healing. Additionally, I argued the foster care system is inherently disabling by way of the processual (re)narrativization the system dictates in order to make those in the system legible to the State through the labeling of mental and physical disabilities. Lastly, I explored insights garnered about foster care through ensemble-based devised theatre. I found it is important to have systemic representations of foster care in tandem with embodied experiences of said system. Collage-making served as an accessible mechanism for relationship building, material generation, and material knowledge. I discovered meaningful ways of representing absent presences of system involved people through feeding forward their artistic creations into the devising process. Taken together, I found foster care system involved people survive through art and creativity, connection to people and places, and keen resourcefulness cultivated in the system. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Women and Gender Studies 2020

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Dramaturgs have been struggling to define themselves and assert their raison d'être in the American theatre for the past four decades. In an evolving theatrical landscape that includes expanding new play development processes and new modes of collaborative interdisciplinary theatre-making, the role of the dramaturg must be reexamined in order for it to stake a new artistic claim in the field. Devised theatre-making processes rely on dramaturgical practice as an integral part of generating, editing, and structuring performance material and offer a fertile artistic avenue for dramaturgs to utilize their skills. To explore the role of the dramaturg in devised theatre, I chose to curate a festival of three new devised works entitled Beyond the Horizon. This thesis describes in detail my role as curator in the planning, creation, and execution of the festival, as well as my role as a dramaturg within the devising process of one of the three works. To encompass both the idea of the dramaturg as an active co-creator of performance and an empowered facilitator of change, I proposed a new title for the role: artistic instigator. Drawn from my conclusions and discoveries while working on the Beyond the Horizon festival, I have formed a description about how the dramaturg-as-artistic-instigator might function within devising ensembles, propose changes to current new play development practices, and advocate for expanded methods of play-making.

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Theatre Triad is a new approach to devising collaborative ensemble theatre starting with the three main components of Performance: Voice, Movement, and Text. These components were deconstructed and reconstructed in pairs as the basis for the devising process. The performance process begins with creating an ensemble followed by four steps: exploring the theatrical genres affiliated with the pairings of Voice and Movement, Movement and Text, Voice and Text, and completed with reintegrating all three components. Through this process many things occur, a new play is created, ensemble members focus on exploring the elements of acting and performance, and a strong foundation of acting skills is laid for young actors. Theatre Triad can also be used as a method for teaching a number of courses in Devising Theatre or Acting classes. In this paper you will learn how Theatre Triad works as both a production approach and method in actor training.

Conceived in the wake of a global pandemic and the unanticipated need to create digital theatre, COVEN-19, or Magicks for Unprecdented Times as a devising project consisted of two witchcraft-inspired performances: a fall 2020 Samhain ritual and a spring 2021 Beltane ritual. The company of undergraduate and graduate theatre witches explored decentralized, iterative, slow, caretaking, queer forms of devising over digital platforms. The written portion of this thesis takes the form of a digital tarot blog: 22 (plus a bonus) interconnected essays and spells that interrogate feminist and queer theories as they pertain to the Coven’s devising process. This digital format not only reflects the malleable nature of the creative process, but it is also a kind of praxis that invites the reader to take an active role in meaning-making and resists an objective, singular narrative. Woven through these tarot cards are threads of utopian futurity, situated subjectivities, and anticapitalist temporalities. The essays and spells are primarily in conversation with adrienne maree brown, Judith Butler, Audre Lorde, Jose Estaban Munoz, and Starhawk – engaging with these theorists as thought-ancestors in order to activate rather than regurgitate their knowledges of radical hope and nonlinear process. The tarot deck takes a situated, backwards glance toward these ancestors as it grasps at seemingly impossible utopian horizons of collaboration and creation.