The Revenger's Tragedy, a Jacobean revenge tragedy by Cyril Tourneur, was produced and directed by Jana Veverka, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Master of Arts degree in the Department of Theatre of the University of British Columbia, at the Dorothy Somerset Studio Theatre, from October 15th to 18th, 1969. The following is a detailed record of that production, along with the director's analysis and interpretation of the script. The Revenger's Tragedy was performed by a predominantly student cast, in costumes and setting by Michelle Bjornson, with music arranged and played by Jim Colby. This record is divided into three main sections. The first is an essay in three parts, consisting respectively of a discussion of the historical background of the play including a brief biographical note on the author, a detailed analysis of the play with reference to the significant critical interpretations available and with reference to its position in the genre of Revenge Tragedy, and concludes with the directorial concept adopted for this production. The essay is followed by a short bibliography which is not intended as a complete list of the works on or by Tourneur, but gives an indication of those which were taken into consideration during the preparation of this production. The second section is made up of the prompt script of the production, showing cuts, blocking, significant divisions of the play into units, and indication and light and music cues. The script is followed by a unit by unit analysis of each scene, briefly discussing the directorial approach taken in terms of purpose, action, motivation, dominant emotions, character dominance and particular difficulties involved. The third section is made up of various tables, records and illustrations relating directly to the. production. Included are lists of light cues, set changes, property and costume lists. Also included are transcripts of the music arranged for this production, samples of the programme and copies of the press reviews. The illustrations include colour photographs of the production, renderings of the sets, costumes and finally blue-prints of the floor plan and working drawings. / Arts, Faculty of / Theatre and Film, Department of / Graduate

My dissertation proposes that the history of early modern repertory theatre cannot be understood free from the history of disability. I argue that disability was a far more ubiquitous presence in early modern theatre than scholars have hitherto recognized. This is because playing companies represented disability through a manifold web of tools pervading the theatrical marketplace, including player identity, props, embodied acts, gestures, vocalizations, fragments of dialogue, and even the staging of locational places. Tracing disability’s overt and allusive ubiquity is essential for understanding how assessments of (dis)ability consistently informed spectators’ encountering and interpretation of staged drama. Chapter One places period commentary on stage players in dialogue with Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, arguing that ability and able-bodiedness were valued and idealized by playing companies and audiences alike. Chapter Two examines Robert Greene’s Orlando Furioso, Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy, and George Chapman’s The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, proposing that leading players’ consistent embodiment of disability troubled a firm binary between disability and able-bodiedness in theatrical performance, as players’ stage identities consistently bore the residues of disabled performance. Chapter Three examines William Shakespeare’s Richard III and Othello, as well as Shakespeare and John Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen, arguing that even minute tics and gestures onstage evoked the memory of past and present disabled performance. Disabled characters were, this chapter argues, often self-consciously constructed upon one another in ways that allowed repertory theatre to both recount and rework its history of disabled representation. Chapter Four examines the anonymous The Fair Maid of the Exchange, Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday, and Robert Armin’s The Two Maids of More-Clacke, arguing that disability was essential to the conception of place in early modern theatre—especially within a repertory system in which “place” often depended upon tools of theatrical representation that bore the residues of past and present disabled performance.