Thesis advisor: Caroline Bicks / In the last ten years, Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues has morphed from a successful off-Broadway production into an activist movement that fosters fundraising productions of the play by community and campus groups in almost every country. In this thesis, I examine how the ‘body stories’ told by actual women made it to community stages all over the world through a series of translations: first, how Ensler poetically/theatrically interprets their stories; second, how the monologic form (and the current multiple-actor form) of the play affects the meaning of those stories; third, projecting how the audience reacts to those stories; and last, suggesting possibilities for broadening the audience’s experience into community discussion and social change. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English Honors Program. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: English.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-163). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-163). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of California, San Diego, 2010. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 14, 2010). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Sound files consist of recordings of North and Yet somehow comes emptiness in single-channel and stereo. configurations.

Something About Marybell is a children's book with audio compact disk, in which I combined three art forms: storytelling, illustrating, and music composition. The nature of the story reflects my love of animals, which has been the essence of all my previous works as well. Beyond the technical matters I practiced and obstacles I encountered while working on each of the aforementioned art forms, the most important point I discovered was that all three were consistently interrelated, and I never could develop one medium without considering the others. Working on this project also was a journey to trace my major influences in different subjects. My drawing style is influenced by cartoons and animation films, which are now considered significant artistic styles in Japanese subculture. My music composition reflects a broad influence from many composers' works working in a variety of genres, especially piano works, of all eras. There are two specific works I studied as model works for this project: Poulenc's L'Histoire de Babar le petit éléphant (The Story of Babar the Little Elephant) and Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. It was a challenge to blend one stylistic approach into another to accurately realize my musical conception.

Eve Ensler's goal in writing The Vagina Monologues was to generate a dialogue regarding women's sexuality to counter the silence that pervades the patriarchal culture that they inhabit. To achieve this goal, Ensler constructs two ideologies—one grounded in patriarchy and another supposedly grounded in female agency and dialogue—to reveal the problems within the current ideology in hopes that her audience will adopt her new ideology and resolve the detrimental silence women endure. To evaluate its success, this study utilizes an eclectic approach—comprised of constitutive rhetoric, second persona, third persona, and bell hooks' rhetorical options—to determine if the play's content encourages the dialogue Ensler desires. / Master of Arts

Les formes du temps chez Albert Cohen ont montré qu'il existe une interaction entre le temps chronologique romanesque et l'histoire écrite en filigrane l'ensemble des œuvres. Les différentes formes et modes d'expression du temps chez Cohen constituent le socle d'une écriture plurielle en contradiction avec son temps. L’œuvre de Cohen dépasse tous les clivages de la temporalité poétique, romanesque, lyrique, théâtrale, autobiographique, profane et sacrée pour atteindre une dimension universelle d'une construction du temps fondé sur la différence. Le récit a précisément pour rôle de permettre le décryptage du temps par l'homme à travers une expérience intime dont les différentes manifestations les plus fréquentes dans les romans cohéniens sont l'attente, la solitude, l'ennui et la mélancolie. Le moment intime est non seulement illimité mais il reste ouvert à plusieurs horizons ce qui permet d'ailleurs la cohabitation de multiples séquences spatio-temporelles. Avec l'Histoire, le temps admet deux réalités parallèles : une première, terrestre, à partir de laquelle l'homme commence à évaluer le temps chronologique et linéaire ; une seconde, mythique regroupant la première en lui donnant un ancrage dans le temps d'antan que l'écrivain régénère avec l'avènement d'un nouvel Adam. / Forms at the time Albert Cohen showed that there is an interaction between chronological time and history novels written between the lines of all works. Different forms and modes of expression of time in Cohen are the foundation of a plural writing in contradiction with the times. Cohen's work transcends all divisions of temporality poetic, romantic, lyrical, dramatic, autobiographical, profane and sacred dimension to achieve a universal construction based on the time difference. The History is precisely to allow the decryption part time by man through an intimate experience with the various manifestations common in novels cohéniens are waiting, loneliness, boredom and melancholy. The intimate moment is not only unlimited but it remains open in several horizons thereby also the coexistence of multiple spatio-temporal sequences. With history, time admits two parallel realities : first, land, from which he begins to evaluate the chronological time and linear second, involving the mythical first giving it a foothold in the time of old regenerates the writer with the advent of a new Adam.

This poetry manuscript tells the story of a family dealing with betrayal, loss, and aging.

The essay is an exploration of a thought, an idea, an experience. To essay is simply to attempt. A conclusion is not always reached, a solution is not always found, but the writer is compelled to attempt to contain the thought, the idea, the experience, in words on the page. The performance essay makes the same attempt. But where the written essay is complete on the page, the performance essay is subject to constant transformation by the necessity of the physical body to the finished work. Not the body of the writer, but the body of the performer who stretches and bends the writer-shaped space of the essay to make it fit, completing the work in the creation of this new shape. This is the excitement for the writer of the performance essay. To surrender control of the work to another artist and see what they will make of it.

Le théâtre de Yasmina Reza s’inscrit dans le cadre du théâtre contemporain. La présente étude aborde la problématique de la quête identitaire. Dans cet espace conflictuel, les personnages rezaldiens – écrivains en manque d’inspiration, critiques ou historiens – sont en perte d’identité. Ces protagonistes souffrent de l’angoisse de la mort, de la disparition d’un proche ou de leur vieillissement, vécu comme un naufrage. Ils ne peuvent que subir les circonstances qui leur sont imposées et vivent une vie vouée à la répétition des scénarios du passé. Dans ce théâtre sans action, le drame intérieur transparaît à travers l’absurdité d’une vie remplie d’actes dérisoires et de paroles insignifiantes ou d’un retour vers le passé familial. Seul le langage est le lieu de l’action constituant la clé qui va résoudre le nœud dramatique. Dans cette quête d’unification identitaire, chacun essaie douloureusement, par le récit, d’accepter son passé et ce qu’il est devenu, loin de ce qu’il aurait rêvé d’être. Cette fragilité identitaire se montre un moteur de la création. L’écriture théâtrale de Reza, pleine de contradictions, conduit vers la pacification. C’est dans une écriture du quotidien que l’auteur invente son style et son identité. Une telle quête théâtrale montre la volonté de Reza d’emmener ses personnages vers une quête de sécurité, d’identité et du sens de leur vie. / Yasmina Reza’s theatre is a part of the contemporary theatre. This study approaches the identity’s quest. In this theatre of conflict, the rezaldians ─ writers lacking in inspiration, critics or historians ─ are in loss of identity. These protagonists suffer from fear of death, of living in the memory of close relative or of the fact of getting older, experienced as a shipwrecked. They can only suffer of the imposed circumstances upon them and live a life doomed of a repeat scenarios of the past. In this kind of theatre without action, the inner drama transpires through the absurdity of a life filled with ridiculous acts and insignificant words or remembering family’s history. In this kind of plays, the language is the only action as the key which solves the dramatic plot. In this quest for unification of identity, each one tries painfully, through the story, to accept his past and the fact how he becomes now, far away from what he can imagine himself. This fragility of the identity is thus tending to end up as an engine creation. Reza’s writing, full of contradictions, is a looking for pacification. The author of this play invents her own style and identity by describing the quotidian life of her character. Such quest theatrical shows how Reza wants to make her character doing his quest of security, of his own identity and looking for a meaning in his life.