The present discussion is based on my performance research with Elastic Theatre (originally named Vocal Motions and also known as Vocal Motions Elastic Theatre), a company that I founded and have directed since 2001. A specific focus is placed on the body of work produced between 2005 and 2011, which comprises six performance outputs: Ophelia’s Song (2005-2006), Medea Made Medea (2007), The Magdalene Mysteries (2008), Medousa (2009), The Passion of Saints Sergius and Bacchus (2009) and Baroccata/Baroque Box (2010-2011). These productions have been informed by an overriding ethos, which is presented and reflected upon in the following chapters. I refer to such ethos by using the term elasticity, which I define in the Introduction, contextualising this within the broader spectrum of contemporary tendencies in performance practices, with particular reference to the notion of 'post-dramatic theatre'. This concept of elasticity is presented in relation to three aspects of my productions: respectively, the combination of performance disciplines (Chapter 1), the dramaturgical approach (Chapter 2) and the staging choices made (Chapter 3). Across these chapters, I provide a contextual overview of the aspect treated, a discussion of my methodology in relation to this, and a reflection on my findings, referring to the concept of 'liminality'. My Conclusion draws my reflections together, emphasising the original contribution that my work has represented in the field of contemporary performance. Each of my outputs is documented in the Appendices, through written, photographic and video material. The Appendices also include a chronological overview of the productions discussed, a summary/glossary of my methodological strategies and a brief presentation of the company’s history. Additional details can be found on the website: http://www.elastictheatre.com.

The focus of this treatise is pedagogical material and solo literature for the E-flat clarinet. Despite the E-flat clarinet's inclusion in many pieces for orchestra and wind band, the instrument is rarely incorporated into an applied clarinet curriculum. Perceptions of the instrument as piercing, shrill, and out of tune only perpetuate the discomfort and apprehension many clarinetists experience when faced with situations in which they must perform or teach E-flat clarinet. Discussion of the instrument's development, along with its treatment in large ensembles, serves to demonstrate how the stereotypes associated with the E-flat clarinet may have evolved. Several excerpts from orchestral and wind band literature are included as examples of the instrument's typical functions in ensemble writing. Since there is limited pedagogical material available for E-flat clarinet besides orchestral excerpts, the second half of this treatise provides suggestions for teaching methods and solo repertoire to be used in private lesson or practice settings. Conceptual exercises adapted from B-flat clarinet etude and method books, as well as recommendations by several performers and educators who specialize in playing the E-flat clarinet are presented. Standard excerpts are also adapted as examples of potential fundamental exercises. The final chapter of this treatise includes descriptions of six pieces for E-flat clarinet and piano, along with performance and teaching considerations. This material is intended to aid clarinetists in their teaching and practice of E-flat clarinet, and to highlight selected repertoire of an instrument that does not often receive attention in lesson or recital settings. / A Treatise submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Music. / Fall Semester 2015. / October 30, 2015. / clarinet, E-flat clarinet, excerpts, music performance, pedagogy / Includes bibliographical references. / Jonathan Holden, Professor Directing Treatise; Clifton Callender, University Representative; Deborah Bish, Committee Member; Jeffery Keesecker, Committee Member.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Choruses—the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus (ASOC) and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus (ASOCC)—have become exemplars for the performance of choral-orchestral repertoire. Exhibiting the highest professional technique yet infused with the unqualified love and commitment of their volunteer members, the ASO Choruses are an enduring legacy of their founder, Robert Shaw. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine and formally document how the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Choruses were formed, how they grew and flourished, and how they have continued to thrive under new artistic leadership. Robert Shaw founded the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus (ASOCC) in 1967 followed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus (ASOC) in 1970 to perform choral-orchestral masterworks with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as a core component of its repertory. Shaw and his assistants employed specific organizational and musical systems to form and build the ASO Choruses. Shaw transformed these choruses into world-class ensembles through uncompromising discipline and a firm belief in the power of unison singing. The resulting unanimity—a hallmark of the ASO Choruses—was heard in every aspect of the sound of the ASO Choruses. This sound was characterized by warmth and roundness, exceedingly crisp diction, immaculate dynamic control, precision of pitch and metrics, and the smoothness and transparency of a chamber ensemble. Shaw worked tirelessly to develop a community of musicians and supporters that cared deeply about music and the Arts. The ASO Choruses, while auditioned, were volunteer ensembles in contrast with other notable symphony choruses, such as those of Chicago and San Francisco, which had a paid contingent of singers. The ASO Choruses were unique for having attained an extremely high level of excellence while remaining entirely volunteer. Chorus members committed substantial time and effort in support of their common love of music and excellence. The ASOC made its Carnegie Hall debut in 1976, and the ASO Choruses have returned there over twenty times. The ASOC made history on its international debut tour as part of the largest American performing arts organization to travel to Europe. More recently, the ASOC traveled to Berlin in three different seasons to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic. The ASOC has a significant, award-winning discography of over fifty recordings, including nine Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance. Today, the ASO Choruses continue to uphold the legacy established by their founder, Robert Shaw. Under the present leadership of Norman Mackenzie (Director of Choruses), Robert Spano (Music Director), and Donald Runnicles (Principal Guest Conductor), the Choruses have engaged in new ventures that combine various art forms in an expanding repertory, which includes numerous commissions and premieres. In so doing, the ASO Choruses honor the vision for which the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center was created. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2017. / June 19, 2017. / Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Norman Mackenzie, Robert Shaw, Symphony Chorus / Includes bibliographical references. / André J. Thomas, Professor Directing Dissertation; Alexander Jiménez, Outside Committee Member; Kevin Fenton, Committee Member; Alice-Ann Darrow, Committee Member.

This treatise explores the historical background of instrumental educational outreach concerts, and provides an overview of current educational outreach programming. The closing section discusses educational outreach concerts presented by a solo violinist, and provides a blueprint for a teaching performance which explores the storytelling power of music. Newly commissioned works for solo violin are included which are especially suited for outreach performances for children. / A Treatise submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Music. / Spring Semester 2018. / April 4, 2018. / Composition, Music, Outreach, Performance, Storytelling, Violin / Includes bibliographical references. / Benjamin Sung, Professor Directing Treatise; William Fredrickson, University Representative; Greg Sauer, Committee Member; Shannon Thomas, Committee Member.

Mitt examensarbete handlar om att gå från kvinna till man på scen, hur man gestaltar olika typer av byxroller.

This thesis centres on the 48 hour performance of Lad Broke in Liverpool on the 20th April 2012. This written component addresses a range of ideas that have emerged in relation to the event of durational performance including modes of inscription, the performing body and its position within a network of performance art and writing practice. By examining Lad Broke within the fields of art and wider cultural practices I am able to draw on ideas of duration that include narrative time, boredom and the effects of duration on the performing body and its spectators. I discuss duration within the context of music by examining rhythm, tempo and time signatures alongside the punk movement, where boredom and a need to act/react immediately remain significant factors in my performance and writing practice. I explore inscription as a physical act of writing, mark making and labour in order to position performance and writing as a combined practical and critical enquiry that intersects in the event of Lad Broke. I also examine notions of the inscribed body in relation to the writings of Michel De Certeau, where he describes the body as written by authority and the law. I refer to experimental writing in order to demonstrate how writing can reveal the materiality of duration and time passing, while also discussing the temporal structure of Lad Broke as a continuous present, displacing traditional narrative structures and emphasising the act of 'doing' rather than the production of a complete and finished object. The performing body is considered in a number of contexts that emerge in the performance of Lad Broke. Ideas around the labouring body are especially useful, where I draw on a lineage of labour practices that have informed my performance works. I look at ideas of labour in relation to wider cultural practice, raising questions around displaced masculinity and the role of the artist as cultural worker. I return to punk where alternative labouring practices position the body as a site of resistance and dissidence. This leads to a discussion of networks and the systems of dissemination that allow post sub-cultural groups to express themselves while evading a capitalist economy. I look at the zine as an art form that successfully provides a model of dissemination and autonomy which relates back to the formation of performance art networks, where the sharing of work displaces monetary exchange and subsumption into a capitalist economy. The event of Lad Broke is examined through a series of viewpoints including the performer, the writer and responsive representatives of the performance art network. The event is then offered to I a wider readership in the form of a zine, where the materials and leftovers of Lad Broke are reconfigured as a material response. The content and structure of this thesis discusses and argues for the performing body to be considered as a site of inscription resistant to the commodification of cultural practice. Yet, throughout this work, it is the immediacy of the live event which remains vital, an event which refuses to be recuperated through these written responses.

This dissertation explores how a recent set of practices III contemporary choreography in Europe (1998-2007) give rise to distinctive concepts of its own, concepts that account for processes of making, performing, and attending choreographic perfonnances. The concepts express problems that distinguish the creation of seven works examined here (Self unfinished and Untitled by Xavier Le Roy, Weak Dance Strong Questions by Jonathan Burrows and Jan Ritsema, heatre-elevision by Boris Charmatz, Nvsbl by Eszter Salamon, 50/50 by Mette Ingvartsen, and It's In The Air by Ingvartsen and Jefta van Dinther). The problems posed by these choreographers critically address the prevailing regime of representation in theatrical dance, a regime characterized by an emphasis on bodily movement, identification of the human body, and the theater's act of communication in the reception of the audience. In the works considered here, the synthesis between the body and movement-as the relation of movement to the body as its subject or of movement to the object of dance-upon which modem dance is founded is broken. Choreographing problems, in the sense explored in this dissertation, involves composing these ruptures between movement, the body and duration in perfonnance such that they engender a shock upon sensibility, one that inhibits recognition. Thus problems "force" thinking as an exercise of the limits of sensibility that can be accounted for not by representation, but by the principle of expression that Gilles Deleuze develops from Spinoza's philosophy. "Part-bodies," "part-machines," "movement-sensations," "headbox," "wired assemblings," "stutterances," "powermotion," "crisis-motion," "cut-ending," and "resonance" are proposed here as expressive concepts that account for the construction of problems and compositions that desubjectivize or disobjectivize relations between movement, body, and duration, between performing and attending (to) performance. Developed through a careful analysis of how problems structure these performances, this thesis on expressive concepts further contributes to a redefinition of performance in general by making two additional claims. The first concerns the disjunction between making, performing and attending as three distinct modes of performance that involve divergent temporalities and processes. The second regards the shift from performance as the act in the passing present towards the temporalization of perfonllance qua process, where movement and duration are equated with ongoing transformation, a process that makes the past persist in the present.

The original contribution of this work is its engagement with the conceptualisation of modern bodies and the impact of the bounded body on our understanding of the idea of comfort. The way in which modern bodies are constituted as bounded, immune entities, differentiated from their surroundings, is of paramount importance in defining comfort as protective, compensatory and passive - a zero grade feeling or avoidance of stimuli. Taking a definition of comfort from John Crowley's influential work on the topic as 'a self-conscious satisfaction between one's body and its immediate physical environment' as its point of departure, this thesis interrogates this in-between space to argue for comfort as an affective and intensive experience. Approaching the theme from an interdisciplinary perspective, a genealogical method combined with inspiration from new materialisms challenges dualisms such as nature/culture, body/mind, inside/outside, body/environment and comfort/discomfort. Following the trajectory of work from Nietzsche to Foucault to Deleuze, phenomenological and psychoanalytical ideas of boundedness and identity are displaced with a theory of bodies as fortuitous and dynamic compositions of forces, where affirmative difference replaces negative difference. As a result, the comfort zone, comfortable numbness and sitting comfortably are transformed from states of indifference to intensive events of difference whereby boundaries and borders are reconstituted as thresholds and spaces of transformation.

The association of women and mysticism this century is not always perceived as a positive one. In Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism (1995), the feminist philosopher of religion, Grace Jantzen, suggests that the experience of mysticism gradually became defined as an ineffable, private emotional encounter in order to remove it from the sphere of political management of society and religion. She writes of a direct increase of association between mysticism and women, who were permitted to have spiritual experiences, but powerless to speak with authority about their insights. Jantzen's view of this association of women with mysticism is therefore somewhat negative; she warns of mysticism's ability to silence and disempower. But as women mystics, particularly in the medieval period, have spoken and written of their (often vivid and imaginative) experiences with authority, this thesis explores how ideas about mysticism have been addressed by women writers this century. In particular, 1investigate whether the women writers treated in this thesis developed the definition of such spiritual experience in a more affirmative and expressive way than Jantzen suggests. Rather than assuming that mysticism is an unchanging spiritual experience within a strictly religious context, this thesis explores how women writers discovered a creative expression of their inner spirituality through the inspiration of contemporary ideas about mysticism, and how they helped to move these ideas on. I introduce my argument, therefore, by examining constructions of mysticism at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the idea of mysticism was defined and developed both in terms of experiential philosophy and of psychology. In particular, the attention paid to the emotional effects of a "mystical experience" became associated, by William James, with the importance of what he termed the "subliminal realm" of the mind, a realm which would subsequently be defined as the unconscious by Freud, but which James saw as a valid channel for imagination and spirituality As well as drawing attention to the "subliminal realm" and its role in spiritual experience, James first suggested the idea of the "stream of consciousness", a term which became important for much modernist literature, but which James did not link directly with the expression of mysticism. Not all psychological studies of mysticism were as open-minded as James'; I also look at texts which were hostile and eclectic in turn. And James himself was not immune to contemporary prejudice regarding gender. But the period's general interest in the imaginative workings of the mind, flowing from the unconscious into consciousness, and the struggle to express this imaginative process, has led me to the study of its literature in order to explore how such ideas about mysticism were used, by women writers, within a creative context. Evelyn Underhill provides a link between the areas of religious thought and women's fiction writing. Underhill in fact started her writing life as a novelist, exploring those themes of spirituality which she was later, more famously, to address in texts such as Mysticism, in which James' ideas are acknowledged. Importantly, Mysticism was certainly read by two women writers - May Sinclair and Dorothy Richardson - who, while fascinated by mysticism, were equally concerned to develop the novelistic form in order to allow the expression of individual consciousness. They were also interested in the subject of gender to a greater degree than was Underhill. By examining the work first ofMay Sinclair, whose mysticism is chiefly concerned with loss, then of Dorothy Richardson, who was to develop the mystical concepts of vision and illumination, I trace the progression of mysticism's influence in women's writing, an influence which Underhill had to a large extent initiated. Underhill, Sinclair and Richardson were not the only women writers to explore mysticism alongside stylistic innovation and an awareness of gender issues. There was, for example, Virginia Woolf, whose aunt, Caroline Stephen, was a respected Quaker. But rather than continue to explore all the women writing in this period, a task too large for this thesis, I move on to show how ideas about mysticism, gender and writing have developed in later thinkers. In examining the ideas of the feminist critics Cixous, Irigaray, and Kristeva, I show that mysticism, and the ways of articulating what James termed an "ineffable" experience, are even more strongly linked with gender and innovative creative writing in their work, whether "novelistic" in a strict sense or not. I have not anal.vsed the work ofUnderhill. Sinclair, and Richardson solely. in terms of psychoanalytically acute feminist criticism I, although I introduce such Such work is generally available: Jean Radford's examination of PiIbTfi mauc. for example critical ideas where appropriate, and have shown that these writers point towards the critical concepts of later feminist writers and thinkers. My emphasis is on the particular space lor creativity which mysticism develops and towards which psychoanalysis with its emphasis on the talking curehas indicated but paid less attention to than the aetiology and symptoms of madness and hysterical disorders. Rather than continue to pursue this psychoanalytical preoccupation, I have looked at the work of the later feminist critics as experimental mystical writers in their own right, and I suggest that it is mysticism. rather than hysteria or other forms of "madness", which has provided the creative space for gendered exploration of imagination and writing. Just as psychoanalytic criticism seeks to explore those "moments of vision" which madness has been said to facilitate in writers such as Woolf I have set out to show that the insights of mysticism, classed as neither mental illness nor rigorous rationality, have played an essential part in the development of women's fiction-writing, criticism and religious thought this century, allowing, additionally, the closer relationship of these three disciplines. In concluding this thesis therefore, I examine the way in which mysticism has provided a place for "visionary" gendered discourse in contemporary theology, and return to the area of religious thought, where I had begun my research. I examine ways in which there is now an increased awareness of the imagination in feminist theology and, specifically, in mysticism within a feminist theological context. The developments of mysticism's creative space have facilitated this awareness in theology, just as they have in the fiction and criticism through which I have traced its influence. Although the question of what constitutes mysticism and who counts as a mystic may remain open (plurality being one of the emphases of feminist critical thought), the conclusion of this thesis affirms that the space of spiritual creativity developed by mysticism has been one of the major forces to have shaped women's writing and critical thought (both literary and religious) this century.

Street performers have to create and manage their own performance events. This makes street performance an ideal type of situation for studying how an audience is assembled and sustained in practice. This thesis uses detailed video-based ethnographic analysis to investigate these processes in street performances in Covent Garden, London. Drawing on the performance literature, the role of the physical structure of the environment, the arrangement of physical objects within the environment and the physical placement of people are all examined. The argument of the thesis is that these analyses alone are insufficient to explain how an audience is established or sustained. Rather, an audience is an ongoing interactional achievement built up through a structured sequence of interactions between performers, passers-by and audience members. Through these interactions performers get people’s attention, achieve the recognition that what is going on is a performance, build a collective sense of audience membership, establish moral obligations to each other and the performer, and train the audience how to respond. The interactional principles uncovered in this thesis establish the audience as a social group worthy of studying in its own right, and are in support of a multiparty human-human interaction approach to design for crowds and audiences.